Untitled

Press, 19 April 1980, Page 1

The 35-year-old signal tower at the end of Gladstone Pier in Lyttelton harbour is lowered on to the wharf by two cranes yesterday, in the first part of a project .to change it into a Dutch windmill. The Lyttelton Harbour Board, offered the 15m steel-framed tower to the Ferrymead Trust three years ago, for conversion to a windmill in the trust’s historic park, and the park is now ready to receive it. ;

'■The, Ferrymead director, Mr Don Muir,; said yesterday that concrete foundations had been laid and 56 6m piles had been driven into the former Heathcote County dump, which has been leased by the tnist, to receive the future windmill. The tower, which was in use until six months ago, will be brought over Evans Pass and through Sumner and Redcliffs to Ferrymead this morning, and should arrive about 9.30 a.m. ■ . . So far the foundations

and removal costs have reached $6OOO, but it will take more “money, time, and expertise” before the tower’s top floor is rotating and its large windmill sails are in place. Whether it would eventually grind flour, as the original windmills used to do, remained to. be seen, Mr Muir said. The venture is the “pet project” of the chairman of the trust, Mr Simon Wood, whose family were well known flour millers in Christchurch for many years.