William Coles Finch
Encyclopedia
William Coles Finch M. Inst. C. E.
Institution of Civil Engineers
Founded on 2 January 1818, the Institution of Civil Engineers is an independent professional association, based in central London, representing civil engineering. Like its early membership, the majority of its current members are British engineers, but it also has members in more than 150...

 (1864-1944) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 historian and author of a number of books on Kent-related topics. He is best known for writing Watermills and Windmills, published in 1933 and reprinted in 1976, which is considered a standard work on the topic of Kent windmill
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...

s.

Personal

William Coles Finch was born on 23 October, 1864 in Rochester, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

. His wife was Emily, and they had four children, Vera, Dorothy, Irene and Neville. In 1908, his first book, Water, its origin and use, was published. This was followed in 1914 by Water in Nature, jointly authored with Ellison Hawks. In 1925, In Kentish Pilgirm Land was published, followed by The Lure of the Countryside in 1927, Life in Rural England in 1928 and Watermills in Windmills in 1933. The latter is considered a bible
Bible (disambiguation)
The Bible is a sacred work treated as the scripture of either Christianity or Judaism.Bible may also refer to:* Bible , reference document for testing consistency of fictional portrayals with a set of premises in television production...

 on windmills in Kent. Coles Finch died in Luton, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 on 6 June 1944, aged 79. In 1976, Watermills and Windmills was reprinted. BBC Radio Medway produced an hour-long documentary Sweeping Changes, The Windmills of Kent in response to the reprint.

Career

Coles Finch was the resident engineer of the Brompton, Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester Water Company. He lived at Waterworks House, Luton, Chatham. In 1897, Coles Finch read a paper at the British Association of Waterworks Engineers meeting at the Town Hall, Westminster
Westminster
Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on Electrical Water Level Recorders.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK