Green's Mill in Sneinton, Nottingham, was restored to full working order in 1985. In the mill yard is the George Green Science Centre: it incorporates a 'hands-on' collection of exhibits featuring the properties of electricity, magnetism and light, a video presentation and display illustrating Green's life, mills and milling; it also has a seminar room.
The Mill was restored, on the initiative of the George Green Memorial Fund, as a memorial to Green by the City of Nottingham and is now one of its most successful museums. It is a fully working mill, grinding yearly some 20 tonnes of grain, and stone ground flour is on sale at the Mill. The miller is available for demonstrations and regularly takes parties through the mill. It is popular with schools, the general public and tourists; there are, on average, some 40,000 visitors a year. The Mill is a centre for craft workshops and displays and there are frequent bakery demonstrations.
There is a small shop selling books, including copies of Green's papers and the smaller of the two biographies of Green.
Visitor Details
A Little History
The following is extracted from an article by Lawrie Challis.
When George Green was 14, his father built a windmill at Sneinton, then a separate village a mile or so from Nottingham. It was a fine five-storey brick tower mill with stables for eight horses and storage for hay and corn. Milling was a skilled trade and he employed a foreman-manager, William Smith, who lived in a cottage attached to the side of the mill. The mill could not easily be worked single-handed; George helped William Smith, and so learned to operate the mill himself. This must have been an exciting change from the bakery for a boy of 14, and it would have been a strenuous, mostly outdoor life. When there was wind enough, he would have worked long hours even at night trimming the sails, maintaining the inflow of grain and taking away the milled flour or cattle fodder. As the Greens were still living in Nottingham, it seems likely that George might have stayed overnight with the Smiths or perhaps slept in the mill rather than walking back through the dark and probably dangerous streets of overcrowded Nottingham. It seems likely too that during this time he would have spent some of the calm days studying mathematics while waiting for the wind to come. Certainly his youngest daughter, Clara, who lived until 1919, told Professor Granger of University College, Nottingham, that her father used the top floor of the mill as a study.
When George was 24, he and his parents moved to a five-bedroomed house they built next to the mill and a few years later he joined the recently-opened Nottingham Subscription Library. This soon became the centre of intellectual life in Nottingham. It contained a modest collection of mathematical and scientific textbooks, and, of great importance, it took the important British scientific journals. These usually also included the titles and abstracts of papers from foreign journals, so that Green would have been able to follow what was being done elsewhere. In principle, he could then have written to the authors asking for copies of their papers.
In 1974, there was a rumour that the mill might be knocked down to make way for a by-pass. The timing could not have been less appropriate. Green’s functions were being very widely used throughout the world, and this was hardly the moment for such destruction. So the George Green Memorial Fund was created with the aim of restoring the mill to provide a living and educational memorial to George Green. The City of Nottingham was immensely supportive of the idea and finally in July 1985 the mill was "opened" together with a Science Centre built on the foundations of the stables and storage areas. It is now grinding corn under the direction of the miller, David Bent. The Science Centre which was opened appropriately by Sir Sam Edwards, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge and Fellow of Gonville and Caius, contains a number of working models illustrating Green’s interest in electricity and magnetism, optics and elasticity. Green’s theorem is illustrated by a fountain sculpted following a national competition, by Mr Ron Haselden, and Green’s functions are presently illustrated by a computer game (although suggestions for a working exhibit would be gratefully received). The mill and science centre attract large numbers of visitors including school parties and is a splendid sight on the Nottingham skyline.
Many people and organisations have contributed to this project. It was effectively launched in 1974 by a telegram to the Lord Mayor of Nottingham from the 500 delegates at an International Physics Conference in Budapest and it was appropriate that a telegram of thanks could be sent from a similar conference, also in Budapest, in the autumn of 1985. The national scientific societies have been very supportive and the Institute of Physics can be singled out for its generous donation towards the scientific exhibits. Altogether, the George Green Memorial Fund raised nearly £40,000 towards the project, including the purchase of the mill in 1979, but the major contributor by far was the City of Nottingham. The success of these efforts and the publicity the project has received throughout the world has ensured that George Green has at last had the recognition he was so sadly denied in his lifetime.