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Why Was It Built?
Ullesthorpe is one of six villages in the large parish of Claybrooke. Comparatively free of manorial regulation and so open to immigration by poorer people seeking employment, the village had grown in population, reaching nearly five hundred by 1800 and six hundred by the mid-nineteenth century. This was partly because there was non-agricultural work available, particularly hosiery-knitting, one of the local industries of the Hinckley area. This was the first automated manufacture, although hand-powered and very much a cottage industry. The workers were at the mercy of the master hosiers who leased them the knitting- frames, supplied the wool yarn and collected the knitted hose. They were also victims of fluctuations in supply and market demand; at times a family might be paying rent for the frame in their own home with no prospect of being able to use it. Such a family then became the responsibility of the local overseers of the poor to maintain. Poverty and crowded housing made some of the problems of Ullesthorpe similar to those in the towns.
One urban problem was the feeding of the poor, especially as the economy became more commercial. In earlier centuries most bread was made from grain grown locally, almost every village having access to a wind or water-mill for grinding it into flour. A miller usually took payment in kind for his work by claiming a toll, a certain proportion of the grain brought to him, which he could sell as bread flour. Years of grain shortages, the Napoleonic Wars and the high tariff on imported grain (the infamous " Corn Laws") together ensured that the poor were finding it increasingly difficult to afford even bread. The more commercial millers, many of whom had a milling monopoly in their parish, were seen to be profiteering unfairly from these difficulties. In some communities people clubbed together to erect a new mill in an attempt to continue the provision of milling at a reasonable rate for the poorer people. One such was the Subscription Windmill in the town of Lutterworth “built for grinding corn for the poor” in 1805. This was an “undertaking for the purpose of affording to the Community an Opportunity of having their Corn Ground at a moderate Price Per Bushel and free of Toll”. It is interesting that, from it's beginning, the miller was paid on the basis of a weekly wage.
One urban problem was the feeding of the poor, especially as the economy became more commercial. In earlier centuries most bread was made from grain grown locally, almost every village having access to a wind or water-mill for grinding it into flour. A miller usually took payment in kind for his work by claiming a toll, a certain proportion of the grain brought to him, which he could sell as bread flour. Years of grain shortages, the Napoleonic Wars and the high tariff on imported grain (the infamous " Corn Laws") together ensured that the poor were finding it increasingly difficult to afford even bread. The more commercial millers, many of whom had a milling monopoly in their parish, were seen to be profiteering unfairly from these difficulties. In some communities people clubbed together to erect a new mill in an attempt to continue the provision of milling at a reasonable rate for the poorer people. One such was the Subscription Windmill in the town of Lutterworth “built for grinding corn for the poor” in 1805. This was an “undertaking for the purpose of affording to the Community an Opportunity of having their Corn Ground at a moderate Price Per Bushel and free of Toll”. It is interesting that, from it's beginning, the miller was paid on the basis of a weekly wage.