Marsh Mill

Marsh Mill is a late 18th-century tower windmill with an attached drying kiln, dating to 1794 and built by Ralph Slater. The mill was altered around the mid-19th century and in 1896, with extensive repairs in 1964, and restored to full working order between 1986 and 1990. The drying kiln was fully rebuilt between 1988 and 1989.

The tapering brick tower has an attached two-storey drying kiln to its right. The mill tower is rendered and built on a circular plan, with five storeys. It is topped by a rotating boat-shaped wooden cap with an eight-bladed fantail and four double-sided patent sails of traditional Lancashire type, the sails being renewed in 1989. A wooden staging with railings encircles the tower at the second floor level, supported by timber props resting on projecting stone corbels at the first floor level. The windows are generally square, with four on the ground floor, five on the first floor, and three on each of the three upper floors. A plain stone-cased doorway is located on the south side of the ground floor, and there are two doors leading onto the staging on the north and south sides. Inscriptions read “Marsh Mill” on the west and east sides of the top floor, and "Bold Fleetwood Hesketh 1794" on the lintel of the main door. The drying kiln has a small gabled ridge ventilator and a first-floor taking-in door that penetrates the eaves, beneath a steeply-pitched dormer roof.

The interior retains its main machinery, which has been restored to working order. The mill cap turns on a dead curb with skid plates attached to the top of the tower, centred on a well plate. This encloses a clasp-arm brake wheel with cast-iron gear teeth added in 1896. An octagonal clasp-arm wallower at the top of the mill’s upright shaft, and the spur wheel at the shaft base, both have similarly modified gearing. A short horizontal shaft from the spur wheel drives two belt pulleys, powering a sack hoist and grain dressing machinery on the floor below. The main drive powers four sets of stones on the third floor (the stone floor), three of which are controlled by belt-driven governors. The second floor (the meal floor) has a belt-driven countershaft to power a bolter and a reciprocating sieve.

Originally equipped with common sails and chain and wheel winding gear, a four-bladed fantail was fitted in the mid-19th century. In 1896, local millwright Dick Blezzard installed patent sails, a cast-iron windshaft and cast-iron gear teeth. The mill continued to operate until 1922.

Marsh Mill is of special architectural interest as a late 18th-century tower windmill with an attached kiln house. It retains all of its machinery, much of which dates to the original installation, and was restored to full working order. It is an exceptionally complete example of a tower windmill and represents a significant specialist industrial building type. The mill is thought to be now the only mechanically complete example of its type in north-west England.