Portslade in the Past: Copperas Gap Windmill, Portslade

Judy Middleton 2003 (revised 2022)

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove
An early 1800s painting of the windmills at Copperas Gap, with Shoreham Harbour in the distant background and storm clouds approaching. Painting attributed to Frederick Ford

Location

The Copperas Gap windmill was situated south of St Andrew’s Road and on the corner of West Street and North Street. It was a white post-mill with a tail pole.

Copperas Gap

The name Copperas Gap arouses considerable interest. It is not of ancient origin as some may imagine because the small area it covers was once known as West Aldrington. In the Armada Map drawn in 1587 Aldrington Beacon is recorded and W. Scott’s drawing of around 1816 depicts some cottages at Copperas Gap with the beacon on the cliff. The ‘Gap’ part derives from Anglo-Saxon and in Sussex meant an opening in the chalk cliffs.

The name Copperas Gap was certainly in use in October 1795 when a local newspaper carried a paragraph about the Princess of Wales and Lady Cholmondley taking an airing to Copperas Gap where they sat on a bank and enjoyed a picnic.

Historian Geoffrey Mead is of the opinion the name derives from the 17^th century when the locals collected stones made of iron pyrites (copperas) from the tidal area of Shoreham Harbour. The stones were exported out of the area and used for the manufacture of sulphuric acid.

Local Historian Captain Bately thought that sulphate of iron, or green vitriol was employed in the manufacture of inks and dyes. Others say the stones were used in glass-making.

It is interesting to note that copperas has a long history as an ingredient in black ink going back to Anglo-Saxon times and used in early manuscripts – the other ingredients being oak-galls and gum Arabic. Black ink could also be made using lamp-black, or charcoal mixed with gum. Either of these inks, or both, could have been used in the creation on parchment of the designs for the Bayeux Tapestry, which was worked by Anglo-Saxon female embroiderers in the south of England. England was renowned for the skills of her needle-women, and the females involved in embroidering the Bayeux Tapestry are thought to have been nuns, and high-born ladies who had fled to the nunneries for protection as a result of the Norman Conquest in 1066. (Jan Messent The Bayeux Tapestry Embroiderers’ Story 1999).

Chambers Dictionary defines copperas as the name formerly used for copper and other sulphates and derives from the Latin ‘cupri rosa’ (rose of copper).

Old-timers told Bert Pierce that Copperas Gap was the name of a particular rock in the sea south of where the Electricity Works were built and it was well known to local fishermen as a fine place to catch large conger eels.

There is also the possibility that it was simply named after a person living there because the area was named Coppard’s Gap in Ordnance Survey Maps up to around 1873 and in the Directory for 1855; Coppard is a recognised Sussex surname.

It is interesting to note that the original Portslade Railway Station built in 1841 once rejoiced in the name of Copperas Gap Station.

Millers

Richard Tidy was the first recorded miller and he died in 1790. He left his house, mill and warehouse to his wife Ann. She sold the mill in 1793.

William Huggett was miller for around 24 years. In 1813 he had the unnerving experience of being severely burned when lightning struck Copperas Gap. The year 1813 was also memorable for him in another way too because his daughter Sarah was baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade. At the time he was unmarried and the mother was recorded as being Mary Pockney, single-woman. But at least he acknowledged being the father, which was not always the case with illegitimate births. Perhaps his family thought he was too young for marriage. But whatever the reason the pair had married by the time the next child came along in 1818.

William Huggett was in partnership with William Pennington Gorringe whose name was associated with another prominent landmark in the locality, the lighthouse at Shoreham Harbour, which was built on land formerly belonging to him. Naturally, Gorringe had an interest in what went on at Shoreham Harbour because he was also a Shoreham Harbour Commissioner, as well as being a ship-owner with an interest in the timber trade, and a landowner.

In 1837 the partnership was dissolved and in April of that year all the stock-in-trade was advertised for sale including the following:

Two useful, strong horses

A light, tilted van

A new coal cart with trace harnesses

A new winnowing machine

A coal-weighing machine

A corn measure

A quantity of corn

Sacks

Building bricks

Copperas Gap by W.H. Stothard Scott (1783-1850)

John Borrer (1785-1866)

John Borrer purchased the mill and let it. Borrer was born in Hurstpierpoint but had lived in Portslade since 1807. He became a considerable landowner in Portslade and lived in his newly constructed Portslade Manor, which was quite near the ancient manor house. He had his own private doorway cut into the churchyard wall so that he and his family had easier access to their parish church. Borrer married three times but unhappily for him both Kitty and Mary Anne died at the early age of 27, the latter after childbirth. All Mary Anne’s children came to an untimely end; the last two sons died at the age of two or three months, Ellen died aged seventeen, John died after a carriage accident and William was lost at sea. You can still see the touching memorials to these children on the wall of the North Aisle at St Nicolas Church, Portslade. Borrer’s third wife Sarah Ann produced three children and although Lindfield died before he was two months old, at least Henry survived to adulthood (he was also a mariner) while Kate lived to the grand old age of 84. Borrer’s first wife Kitty had two children Mary and Kate. Out of a family of ten children there were just two marriages and only Mary, who married John Blaker at St Nicolas Church on 18 April 1839, had children. John Borrer certainly experienced a great deal of sorrow during his life and it is remarkable that he lived to the age of 81 and died on 12 August 1866, having outlived three wives.

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
An advert in the Brighton Herald 9 June 1838
which states Copperas Gap was in the Parish of Southwick.
In the early 1860s when St Andrew's Church was built,
Copperas Gap was incorporated into Portslade which greatly
annoyed the Vicar of Southwick.

Benjamin Broadbridge and John Bodle

The 1841 census records these two men as the resident millers.

Benjamin Broadbridge aged 59

Wife Fanny 57

Daughter Jane 17

Son William 10

Son Henry 7

John Bodle aged 25

Wife Eliza 25

Daughter Eliza 1

Many years later when Eliza Bodle was a widow she ran the Crown Inn at Copperas Gap in the 1870s until her son William took over.

Henry Whiting

By 1842 Henry Whiting was the miller and he was there again from 1855 to 1856. As well as being a miller, he was also the local postmaster. In 1856 his son James Whiting was baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade.

James Everest

In between times James Everest was the miller. In the 1851 census he was described as a 43-year old widower who lived with his daughter Georgina aged 13 and son 12-year old James.

Thomas Hicks

By 1858 Thomas Hicks was at the mill and the Directory described him as a bread and biscuit maker. He was there for around four years but was followed by other millers. However, he was back by 1870 and was the last recorded miller.

Charles Richard Smith

He was a member of the well-known Portslade family who were involved with the nearby Britannia Flour Mills. The 1861 census recorded 48 year-old C.R. Smith living in Palatine House, near or next to Halfway House pub in Station Road, Portslade. He lived there with his wife Ann aged 39, and the two eldest sons, Frederick and Richard were of an age to earn their living as clerks while the younger siblings were Charles 9, Jane 7 and three-year old Wilhelmina, plus two servants. By 1862 C.R. Smith was running Copperas Gap windmill. He rented the mill from Borrer but he did not stay there for long because Borrer died in 1866 and the aftermath was a quick succession of millers, Herbert Maynard in 1867 and John Muddle in 1869.

Demise

It is interesting to note that the name Copperas Gap was falling out of use by the late 1860s. When John Muddle took his children to be baptised, daughter Rosa in 1868 and son Charles some eighteen months later, he was specifically described as a miller of Portslade-by-Sea.

But soon the mill was up for sale again and Thomas Hicks returned, perhaps for old times sake. However, the mill was at the end of its working life and it is thought to have been demolished in around 1872.

copyright © Brighton & Hove City Libraries
This historic photograph dating from around 1914 shows long-vanished parts of Copperas Gap, Portslade. The Britannia Flour Mills, which replaced Copperas Gap windmill, stands at the centre with a ship at the wharf, the Crown Inn is on the right, the Star Model Laundry is on the left while in the background the spire of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and St Denis is visible.

copyright © D.Sharp
The former Copperas Gap area of south Portslade in August 2016, the red brick building is the former Salvation Army Hall built in 1910.

Chronology

1725 – possible date of mill’s construction

1790 – Richard Tidy died, leaving house, mill and warehouse to wife Ann and others

1793 – Owner Ann sold the mill at the White Horse, Brighton

1801 – It was recorded that there were two windmills at Portslade capable of grinding ten quarters in 24 hours

1804 – Mill to be sold at Sloop Inn, Copperas Gap

1808 – Mill to be sold at Old Ship, Brighton

1813 – Severe storm, miller William Huggett badly burned by lightning

1813 – Sarah, daughter of William Huggett, miller, baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade

1818 – William, son of William Huggett, miller, baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade

1820 – John, son of William Huggett, miller, baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade

1837 – Partnership of William Huggett and William Pennington Gorringe dissolved. Mill sold to John Borrer of Portslade Manor.

1841 – Millers were Benjamin Broadbridge, 59, and John Bodle, 25

1843 – John Whiting, miller

1845 – Mill let to James Everest

1855 – Henry Whiting, baker, miller and postmaster

1856 – James, son of Henry Whiting, miller, baptised at St Nicolas Church, Portslade

1858 – Thomas Hicks, miller, bread and biscuit maker

1862 – Charles Richard Smith, miller

1866 – John Borrer died

1868 – John Muddle, miller

1869 – Mill to be sold

1870 – Thomas Hicks, miller and baker

c.1872 – Mill demolished

See also Easthill Windmill in north Portslade

An Image Problem

For many years an old photo dating back to the 1860s has rested undisturbed in the archives, claiming to be an image of the windmill at Copperas Gap. But in recent years, this assumption has been called into question by eagle-eyed fans of all facts to do with mills. The claim is that it is definitely not the windmill at Copperas Gap, while another expert admits he has not the foggiest idea of where the pictured mill might have been situated. The facts can be more easily assembled as follows.

Captain William Clegram 1815 - Captain Clegram’s plan for the improvement of Shoreham Harbour is dated 3 February 1815, and in his notes he says the mill was white.

Frederick Ford c.1820 – It seems likely that he painted two pictures of local windmills. One depicts the Copperas Gap mill as a black open-trestled post mill. But another painting attributed to the same artist shows two mills. Perhaps the white one is the Copperas Gap one, and the black one is Shoreham windmill which was a also a black post mill, but according to Brunnarius this mill was destroyed by fire in 1899.

Frederick Nash 1841 – The painting of East Hill Windmill shows a black mill. It also shows it resting upon a base and this could be the roundhouse that survived into the last century, and there is a photo of it when it had been converted into a house. The painting is of a black mill, and not a white one, as often associated with the Copperas Gap one. Simmons notes that the East Hill windmill once had a tail-pole but later on a fan-tail was substituted, along with other improvements. E. H. W. Simmons was a windmill fanatic of earlier times and his exhaustive volumes of research are to be found locally. They are Sussex Windmills in three 4to volumes at Hove Library containing newspaper and magazines cuttings, and Sussex Windmills in five volumes in Brighton Library.

Photo of the 1860s – This is the problematic image. Apparently, there is a photograph of Red House Farm with the windmill in the background, that looks nothing like the earlier image while the nearby buildings do not tie in with evidence available from an old Ordnance Survey map. In fact, the image is better qualified to be the East Hill windmill because of the fan-tail. However, the terrain, being flat, is all wrong for East Hill, and it is the wrong colour. One cannot imagine a black mill being painted white, although of course the surviving roundhouse became a lighter colour. It is also given as further evidence that there is no record of the Copperas Gap windmill having been improved with a fan-tail etc. On the other hand, why should there be evidence? Unless such a thing was noted in contemporary newspapers, a deed or a diary. Surely, in the days before planning approvals, a mill owner might do as he pleased with his own property providing he had the means. But (With thanks to Justin of the Sussex Mills Group Newsletter for bringing this matter to my attention)

Sources

Census returns

Directories

Middleton J Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade
Sussex Mills Group Newsletter

12 August 2016

Copperas Gap Windmill, Portslade