Molendinum: Oldlands Mill Star Trails

February 27th, 2022, took me to Oldlands Windmill near Hassocks in West Sussex. The Latin title 'Molendinum' means 'mill', and this distinctive post mill has been a Sussex landmark since the 1750s. I'd been planning this shoot for months, waiting for moonless skies and positioning that would place Polaris directly above the mill's cap, creating perfect circular star trails around this historic structure.

Oldlands Mill sits prominently on the South Downs near Keymer, visible for miles around. Built as a post mill—where the entire mill body rotates on a central post to face the wind—it's one of the few surviving examples in Sussex. Though no longer working, the mill has been restored and stands as a reminder of the area's agricultural heritage. These windmills once dotted the South Downs, grinding corn from the surrounding fields.

The conditions that February night were ideal—crystal-clear skies with no moon, and cold enough that there was no atmospheric haze to dim the stars. I used my Samyang 14mm ultra-wide lens to capture both the full mill structure and the expansive sky above. At f/2.8 and ISO 800, each 25-second exposure balanced the illuminated mill against the star-filled sky. Over 82 minutes, I captured 189 frames.

The mill's white weatherboarding glowed softly under ambient light from the nearby village, creating this beautiful contrast against the deep black sky. Meanwhile, the stars wheeled around Polaris in their eternal rotation. Stacking 189 exposures revealed these circular star trails centered perfectly above the mill's cap—as if the cosmos itself was rotating around this 270-year-old windmill on the South Downs.

There's a poetic connection here—windmills harnessed circular motion (the rotating sails and millstones) to grind grain, and now this image shows another kind of circular motion: Earth's rotation making the stars appear to circle above. Both are examples of humanity observing and documenting circular motion, centuries apart.

When you look at this photograph, I want you to feel that connection—standing on the South Downs near Hassocks, watching 82 minutes of Earth's rotation traced in star trails above Oldlands Mill, where circular motion powered by wind once ground wheat, now framed by the circular motion of stars powered by our planet's spin in the West Sussex countryside.