Lytham Windmill

I was in Lytham St Anne’s this afternoon. I thought it was a really smart place.

Amidst my regaling my lovely companion with my vague memories of my one & only visit so far to Lytham (I was 4, possibly 5 & on a school trip; the priest rolled his trousers up to his knees & splashed through the waves with us) I noticed this windmill.

Naively, I thought it was a novelty replica of a windmill (a source of great amusement to my companion) but no, it is indeed a real one that had a meaningful & integral function during the nineteenth century. It was of course, a grain mill.

We read the information board, like proper tourists. As is often the case with a slice of 19th century history- especially that of the north; we found ourselves, a few paragraphs in to be discovering the following:

A “small boy” had become entangled by loose clothing on one of the “wings” of the windmill & was “swept up into the air” where he lost his grip & “sadly, fell to his death”.

What a conversation stopper! The poor boy.

Is it just me or is there something very obscure about our British fascination with the macabre?