Windmills
Contents
- Types
- Post Mill
- Smock Mill
- Tower Mill
- Wind engine
- Location
- Materials
- Sails
- Preservation & Conversion
- Surviving Windmills
- England
- Bedfordshire
- Buckinghamshire
- Cambridgeshire
- Cheshire
- Cleveland
- Cornwall
- Cumbria
- Derbyshire
- Devon
- Dorset
- Durham
- Essex
- Gloucestershire
- Hampshire
- Hertfordshire
- Kent
- Lancashire
- Leicestershire
- Lincolnshire
- London
- Norfolk
- Northamptonshire
- Nottinghamshire
- Oxfordshire
- Shropshire
- Somerset
- Staffordshire
- Suffolk
- Surrey
- East Sussex
- West Sussex
- Tyne and Wear
- Warwickshire
- Wiltshire
- Worcestershire
- Yorkshire
- Isle of Man
- Ireland
- Down
- Dublin
- Kerry
- Kilkenny
- Londonderry
- Louth
- Meath
- Monaghan
- Ofally
- Roscommon
- Waterford
- Wexford
- Scotland
- Aberdeenshire
- Angus
- Ayrshire
- Berwickshire
- Caithness
- Clackmannanshire
- Dumfriesshire
- East Lothian
- Fife
- Kirkcudbrightshire
- Lanarkshire
- Midlothian
- Morayshire
- Orkney
- Perthshire
- Roxburghshire
- Stirlingshire
- West Lothian
- Wigtownshire
- Wales
- Anglesey
- Conwy
- Carmarthenshire
- Flintshire
- Glamorgan
- Gwynedd
- Monmouthshire
- Pembrokeshire
- Powys
- Mock windmills
- As seen on TV
- Further reading
Types
Post Mill
A small wooden mill based on a central pivot, turned manually by a tiller.

The remains of this mill show the central post that the whole structure would pivot on.

Smock Mill
Varying in size, a timber weatherboarded structure on a brick base. The top section with sails pivots automatically with the wind with a tail sail.

Cranbrook windmill is the tallest smock mill, with eight storeys.

Tower Mill
A substantial larger structure, typically built of brick. A timber built roof cap (sometimes called an 'onion cap') with attached sails allows it to pivot independently from the main tower to face the wind, this is controlled by a fan tail sail.

The tallest tower mill is at Moulton.

Wind engine

Location

Windmill coverage map for England, Scotland & Wales © Copyright 2008 nearby.org.uk/Barry Hunter

Materials
Like all vernacular buildings, windmills were typically constructed from the materials local to them, using local timbers, brick, stone, tile, or slate. There were other determining factors for construction materials, such as the brick tax from 1794 to 1850.Sails
Four | Five | Six | Eight |
![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
Typically mills have four sails though larger numbers were used particularly in Lincolnshire. Five sails was seen as more efficient but unlike mills with even numbers of sails could not operate if a pair of sails was removed for repair.
Preservation & Conversion
Around 800 windmills are listed buildings.As windmills are not used commercially any longer, further uses need to be found, if they are not to be preserved as a museum. Typically this means conversion to a dwelling. Often converted windmills use just the remaining base of the mill, in the case of smock mills, as the timber structure was often removed, leaving a sound brick base.

( Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... next >> )