3464 BARBADOS - Morgan Lewis Windmill

3464 Morgan Lewis Windmill in Saint Andrew

Located in the northern parish of St. Andrew overlooking the eastern coastline of the island and the Scotland District, Morgan Lewis Windmill, is the last sugar windmill to operate in Barbados, and one of only two working in the world today, the other being at Betty's Hope Estate on Antigua. The mill stopped operating in 1947, but was dismantled for restoration and reopened in 1999 as museum. During the 'crop' season, February through July, its sails are put in place and it operates one Sunday in each month, grinding cane and providing cane juice.

 

0555-0557, 3319, 3327 BULGARIA (Burgas) - Ancient City of Nessebar (UNESCO WHS)

3319 The Ancient City of Nessebar

Posted on 15.03.2013, 31.12.2019, 03.01.2020

For miles, the road from Varna to Nessebar creeps like a snake along the coast, through the forests where coniferous and deciduous mix like the ethnic groups in the Balkans. But that's not what saw with three millennia ago the Thracians, who came from inland to built the settlement named Menebria, neither the Greeks, who came from the sea to lay the foundations of the prosperous colony named Mesembria. In 71 BC the town fell under Roman rule, yet continued to enjoy privileges, and from the 5th century AD onwards had become one of the most important strongholds of the Byzantine Empire.

0555 A bird's-eye view of the Ancient City of Nessebar

In the following centuries it passed several times from the hands of the Byzantines in those of the Bulgarians, and even of the Crusaders in 1366. The Bulgarian version of the name, Nesebar or Mesebar, has been attested since the 11th century. Conquered by the Ottomans in the same year as Constantinople (1453), it gradually declined until returned to Bulgaria in 1885, becoming since the beginning of the 20th century a key Bulgarian seaside resort.

3327 Vernacular wooden houses in Nessebar

 

As an "outstanding testimony of multilayered cultural and historical heritage", a place where many civilizations left their tangible traces, from the Dorians Black Sea colony's structures to the churches from the Middle Ages and the vernacular wooden houses built in the 19th century, Nessebar was included on the list of UNESCO WHS under the name Ancient City of Nessebar. It is sometimes said to be the town with the highest number of churches per capita, because a total of forty churches had survive, wholly or partly, in the vicinity of the town. Its ancient part is situated on a little peninsula, previously an island, linked with the mainland with only a relatively narrow passageway.

0556 The Church of Christ Pantocrator in Nessebar

One of them is the Church of Christ Pantocrator, constructed in the 13th-14th century and best known for its exterior decoration, rich and colourful. Designed in late Byzantine cross-in-square style, was builded from stones and brickwork, a construction technique known as opus mixtum. The best-known feature of the Church of Christ Pantocrator is the rich and colourful decoration of its exterior walls. Used today as art gallery, is among Bulgaria's best preserved churches of the Middle Ages.

0557 The windmill on the passageway from New Nessebar to Old Nessebar

The Old Windmill shown in the third postcard, located on the passageway from New Nessebar to Old Nessebar, is a lovely, very intact Black Sea style wildmill. Aren't known too much about it, but it's supposed that was built in the Bulgarian revival period from the 17th to the 19th century. The building have a rough style, the design being entirely functional. The windmill base reveals a wooden guiderail and direct wood-to-wood contact.

2943 FRANCE (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) - A tower mill in Provence

A tower mill is a type of vertical windmill consisting of a brick or stone tower, on which sits a wooden "cap" or roof, which can rotate to bring the sails into the wind. This rotating cap on a firm masonry base gave tower mills great advantages over earlier post mills, as they could stand much higher, bear larger sails, and thus afford greater reach into the wind. The advantage of the tower mill over the earlier post mill is that it is not necessary to turn the whole mill with all its machinery into the wind; this allows more space for the machinery as well as for storage.

2925 RUSSIA (Pskov Oblast) - The Old Mill in Mikhailovskoye

Located in the heart of the Pskov Oblast, on the spurs of the Valdai Hills, not far from Pskov and the border of Latvia, the State museum-reserve of Alexander Pushkin «Mikhailovskoye» is a unique monument of Russian culture of national significance. In Russian history Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye, Petrovskoye, Pushkinskie Gory (or Holy Hills) are connected with life and creative activity of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837), probably the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

1925, 2815 GREECE (South Aegean) - Mykonos

1925 Mykonos - Kato Mili in Chora

Posted on 29.09.2015, 12.10.2016
Nicknamed The Island of the Winds, Mykonos is one of the Cyclades islands, which neighbour Delos in the Aegean Sea. It rises to an elevation of 341m, and has about 10,000 inhabitants, most of whom live in the largest town, Mykonos, also known as Chora (i.e. the Town in Greek). There are two seasonal winds in Mykonos. The one in winter, the Sirocco, a famous southern wind, which carries sands from the deserts that border the Mediterranean. In the summer a cooling wind comes from the north, the Meltemi. As a result, the windmills are a defining feature of the Mykonian landscape.

2815 Mykonos - Panagia Paraportiani in Chora

There are many windmills around the island, but most are concentrated in Chora. The famous "Kato Mili" (Greek for lower mills), stand in a row on a hill overlooking the sea to harness the strong northern winds. With a round shape, white colour and capped with wood and straw, the windmills were built by the Venetians in the 16th century to mill flour, and remained in use until the early 20th century. Many have been refurbished and restored to serve as homes to locals and vaults to numerous Mykonian heritage documents.

2413, 2700 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / South Holland) - A hollow post mill in Kaag

2413 A hollow post mill in Kaag

Posted on 27.03.2016, 21.08.2016
The post mill is probably the earliest type of European windmill, and it was invented because in Europe the wind has no prevailing direction. The defining feature is that the whole body of the mill that houses the machinery is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. The design and usage of these windmills peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries and then declined after the introduction of high-speed steam-driven milling machinery.

2700 A hollow post mill

Among the many variants of post mills are the hollow post mills. In these mills the main post is bored to take a driveshaft, similar to an Upright Shaft in a smock or tower mill. This enables the mill to drive machinery in the base or roundhouse. In the Netherlands, they are called wipmolen and were mostly used for drainage (poldermolen). This type of windmill was used mainly in the polder areas of central and western Netherlands.

2345 ESTONIA - The map of the country

Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Russia. With a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union. Ethnic Estonians are Finnic people, and the official language, Estonian, is a Finno-Ugric language closely related to Finnish. It is a developed country with an advanced, high-income economy and high living standards. The capital and its largest city is Tallinn

2282 RUSSIA (Vologda Oblast) - A log windmill in 1909

A major component of the Volga-Baltic Waterway (formerly called the Mariinsk Canal System), linking Saint Petersburg (therefore the Baltic Sea) with the Volga River basin, is the Sheksna River, which drains the southeastern part of White Lake (Beloe ozero). The original length of the Sheksna was 395km, from White Lake to the Sheksna’s confluence with the Volga at the town of Rybinsk. The Sheksna is now largely hidden by vast reservoirs created in the mid-20th century that submerged the land along the river.

2116 UNITED STATES (California) - The Old Mill in Busch Gardens, Pasadena

In nowadays, Busch Gardens is the name of two amusement parks, located in Tampa, Florida, and in  Williamsburg, Virginia. There were also previously Busch Gardens parks in Pasadena, California (1905-1937), Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California (1964-1979) and Houston, Texas (1971-1973).. These parks were initially developed as marketing vehicles for Anheuser-Busch, a brewing company founded and based in St. Louis, Missouri.

2092 Struve Geodetic Arc (UNESCO WHS)

The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820 km, which yielded the first accurate measurement of a meridian. It was established and used by the German-born Russian scientist Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (1793-1864) in the years 1816 to 1855 to establish the exact size and shape of the earth. At that time, the chain passed merely through two countries: Union of Sweden-Norway and the Russian Empire.

1828 NETHERLANDS (Aruba) - The Old Dutch Windmill

1828 The Old Dutch Windmill

Located near the Palm Beach, right where J.E. Irausquin Blvd makes a jug handle turn near the Aruba Butterfly Farm, this windmill is now a restaurant. It is an authentic Dutch windmill, built in 1804 in Friesland, Netherlands, originally used to drain water from low lying land, and later used as a grain mill. By 1929, two storms had damaged it to the point where it was useless and abandoned. In 1960 it was purchased by a private merchant, who had it carefully disassembled, shipped to Aruba, where was.reassembled.

1747 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / South Holland) - Windmills of Leidschendam

Located in the western Netherlands, on the banks of the canal Vliet, near the historic city of Leiden, Leidschendam is now part of the agglomeration of the city of The Hague and is often regarded as its suburbs. The town's name has been in use for centuries and refers to the lock in the Vliet. The settlement on the Northern side of the lock was known as Veur, until the formation of the municipality of Leidschendam in 1938. As elsewhere in Holland, windmills were constructed to power local industry, such as a wheat grinding mill in 1594 and wood processing mills in 1643 and 1739 (de Salamander and de Hoop). In the postcard are three smock mills.

0272 PORTUGAL (Setúbal) - A windmill with jib sail in Palmela

So far I received postcards with windmills only from the countries with harsh winters (Netherlands and Finland), which have the sails with wooden slats. The common sails consist of a framework on which is spread a sailcloth. The miller can adjust the amount of cloth spread according to the amount of wind available and power needed. In medieval mills the sailcloth was wound in and out of a ladder type arrangement of sails. The jib sail (as it has the windmill in the image) is commonly found in Mediterranean countries, and consists of a triangle of cloth wound round a spar. In all cases the mill needs to be stopped to adjust the reefing of  the sails.

0227 & 0254 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / South Holland) - Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout (UNESCO WHS)

Posted on 28.05.2012
The windmill in the picture is a variant of smock mill (I wrote here about this type of mill), namely grondzeiler (ground sailer). These mills can be operated from the ground, and because the sails reach almost down to the ground, being a great danger to people and animals, are surrounded by a fence. This type of mill was built in locations with little wind barrier, for example in the barren western polders of the Netherlands. The best known example of such mills is the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. The mill in the image is part of this group, which is the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.

Located in Alblasserwaard (-waard = "land in or along the water), a polder at the confluence of the Lek and Noord rivers, about 15km east of Rotterdam, this network, consists of 19 windmills built around 1740 and very well preserved, had the purpose to drain the polder. In Alblasserwaard, problems with water was always apparent, so when the large canals dug in the 13th century weren't sufficient anymore, were built this windmills, which pump the water into a reservoir at an intermediate level between the soil in the polder and the river, and from there into the river, by other windmills. Although some of the windmills are still used, the main works are provided by two diesel pumping stations.

The legend about the name Kinderdijk (Children's dike) is very nice. During the Saint Elizabeth flood of 1421, one of the worst floods in history, the Grote Hollandse Waard was flooded, but the Alblasserwaard not. It's said that someone who went on to the dike between these two areas to see what could be saved, saw a wooden cradle floating on the waters, and on the cradle a cat, trying to keep it in balance by jumping back and forth. When the cradle reached close enough, he saw a baby who sleeping inside it.

The stamp is part of Green Progress set, about which I wrote here.

Added on 19.06.2012

Outstanding this winter image of the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout. Ever since I saw the postcard it made me think to the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who otherwise was born in Breda, 45km from Kinderdijk. Regarding the legend about the name of the place, you can find here the lyrics of The child in the cradle, an old Dutch folk song very known in Netherlands.


About the stamp

The stamp is one of the two presented by Netherlands for the theme Visit..., chosen for Europa Stamps 2012. The stamps, issued on March 26, 2012, show how Amsterdam’s wealth and development as a city has been dominated by its historic concentric rings of canals and the River Amstel. The second stamps of the series can be seen here.


sender 1: Marion / patmar (postcrossing)
sent from Nijmegen (Netherlands), on 14.02.2012
sender 2: Wilma van Vegten (direct swap)
sent from Leiden (Netherlands), on 11.05.2012
photo: Emile Luider 

0190 FINLAND - An unidentified smock mill

Yes, after all appearances, what is seen in this postcard is a smock mill with what might be called a boat shaped cap, i.e. (according to Wikipedia) "a type of windmill that consists of a sloping, horizontally weatherboarded tower, usually with six or eight sides. It is topped with a roof or cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind. This type of windmill got its name from its resemblance to smocks worn by farmers in an earlier period." What distinguishes a smock mill by a mill tower (as is this one) is the shape and the material of construction, because that the tower mill is cylindrical and built from brick or stone masonry, the smock mill is often hexagonal or octagonal (as this one from the picture) and constructed of wood.

0037 NETHERLANDS - A mill in the moonlight

A windmill that has close its sails like a butterfly the wings and went to sleep, guarded by the shiny penny of the full moon and by the poplars sorrowful that the autumn has robbed their leafage. Only the owner is still awake, counting for the third time the earnings of the daytime to the light of the gas lamp, while his wife fell asleep waiting for him and dreams as she lost her slipper to the ball of the royal court. That's shown in the postcard.

0024 SPAIN (Murcia) - The water wheel of Alcantarilla

0024 The water wheel of Alcantarilla

Between the 9th and 12th centuries the Arabs (or Moors, as the european have named the population who have conquered the Iberian Peninsula) had undoubtedly a civilizing role, leaving to Europe a legacy hard to ignore. Beyond the architectural wonders, from which Spain is full, they recovered and passed on the teachings of ancient Greece, to which have added their own not negligible contributions, be it mathematics, philosophy, alchemy, astronomy or medicine.