228. Ferme les Buttes

Also known as ‘Rouillon’ [0°0´0˝N, 0°0´0˝ E]

Location—Pays de la Loire. Département: 72 Sarthe: Ferme Les Buttes, 115 route de Rouillon.
Date—between 1894 and 1898.
Erector—Auguste-Sylvain Bollée.
Purchaser—not known.

Type—No. 2 head (3.5m diameter), with an Entonnoir.
Mount—a 4-unit column, with six two-piece wrought-iron cap-stays and three one-piece wrought-iron stabilisers.
Cap platform—circular, with serpentine balusters and cardinal points.
Access—a spiral staircase with plain balusters and pierced-and-ribbed segmental treads.
Base—a circular brick plinth.
Pump-house—circular in plan, built of coursed brick, with a wooden door set in brick pillars and a round-head arch. Conical roof, laid with graduated slates on wooden rafters. The ventilator, supported on a ribbed sheet-steel cylinder, has a scalloped skirt and a ribbed roof of galvanised iron.
Pump—assumed to have been the standard three-throw overhung-crank type.
Well—directly beneath the pump.
Storage—unknown (a sheet-steel tank nearby?).

Status—visited by the late J. Kenneth Major in April 2002. Owner: not known. Condition: poor in 2002, verging on near-relic, lacking the entire rotor assembly and the Papillon. Access: on private land, but visible from the public road.

Remarks—though a few Entonnoir sections remained to be inspected by Ken Major, he gained the impression of a structure which could not last too much longer. It is not known if the éolienne survived until 2012.