Bardowick: smock windmill with gallery

After numerous applications for a mill during the 17th and 18th centuries had met with resistance from Lüneburg, it was in 1813 that the miller Johann Friedrich Meyer built a smock mill on the western edge of Bardowick. The old windmill is still in commercial use today and processes up to 300 tonnes per year. A green storehouse with a health-food shop is the second commercial mainstay of the business. The mill was fitted with a pitched roof in the 1950s, from which time it stood without sails until 1994/95, when a comprehensive restoration programme – partially funded by the local windmill society – restored the mill to its original beauty.

Today, the new sails drive a pair of millstones and a 20-kW generator transforms wind energy into electricity, which is used to drive the electric motors of the other grinders. The sails of the mill are of particular technical note. The Ten Have sails feature fok wings and rem shutters and are a Dutch version of the well-known ventisail system, which was invented by the German aviator Major Bilau in the 1920s. The technical maturity of Bardowick mill’s sail design results in a high wind yield and enables the sails to be controlled safely. When driving along the B4 road, nothing compares to the sight of the old mill’s sails rotating, with the towers of Bardowick cathedral rising in the background.