The Windmill

The Windmill is a post windmill, likely dating to the late 18th century, and situated on Windmill Hill, Herstmonceux. It was built by the Lewes millwright, Medhurst. The structure is notable as the largest postmill in the country based on its body size, possessing a basic floor area of 21 feet 3 inches by 12 feet 3 inches, with a 1 foot 6 inch projection on the windward face. It stands at a height of 48 feet, making it the tallest windmill in Sussex and the last remaining mill in England to have remnants of a centrifugal governor system for sail area control, although this was removed for safekeeping.

The windmill comprises a two-storey roundhouse constructed of tarred Flemish bond brickwork, featuring sash windows, and a three-storey timber-framed body with an ogee head clad in weatherboarding and further sheathed in sheet iron on the exposed sides. While much of the ladder and part of the tailpiece remain, the sails are missing.

The roundhouse contains, on the ground floor, the bases of four brick piers which support the main post and trestle on the first floor, alongside a heavily joisted ceiling. The first floor houses crosstrees, quarterbars, the main post carved with the date 1856, and bins for steam-driven stones set upon the quarterbars. The body’s bottom floor features the upper part of the main post supporting the crowntree, an oscillating sieve grader, the bottom of a wire cylinder flour dresser, a wire cylinder grain cleaner and extractor fan, the complete tentering gear, and a governor for tail millstones. The first floor of the body contains the cast iron windshaft carrying the brake wheel and tailwheel, the tail millstones (with bedstones in place and a runner stone resting on the crowntree), driving quants and bevel pinions for both sets of stones, a wire cylinder flour dressing machine with driving gears, and a transverse shaft with pinion and pulley for driving the flour dresser from the brake wheel. The second floor of the body houses the top of the brake wheel with a pinion and pulley to drive the sack hoist, the sack hoist bollard and pulley, various bins for feeding the millstones and flour dresser, and part of the centrifugal governor system for sail regulation.

This mill never had a tailpole; instead, the body was rotated manually using the tailpole. The mill ceased operation in 1893 with the introduction of steam-driven stones within the roundhouse.