Draper'S Windmill

Draper's Windmill

A smock windmill with three pairs of overdrift millstones, constructed around 1843, probably by John Holman of Canterbury. The mill has been fully restored to working condition and is currently in use as a museum.

The smock tower is timber-framed and clad in replaced weatherboard painted in coal tar, positioned atop a brick base also treated with coal tar. The cant posts and beams are pine, and the cap is oak-framed. The mill has timber and iron machinery throughout.

The main smock tower is octagonal in plan and rises over four floors: the dust floor, stone floor, meal floor, and bagging and weighing office and shop. Ancillary buildings adjoin each side of the base, comprising a brick engine house, a brick and flint workshop, a timber-framed weatherboarded lean-to on a brick plinth, and a cart shed.

The mill is accessed by a short flight of brick steps to the west elevation of the loading bay through an original timber plank and batten door with cast iron strap hinges. A pair of replacement doors above timber steps are located on the south elevation, and a door opening infilled with weatherboard is positioned in the east elevation. The doors and floor are at cart height to facilitate loading of grain and unloading of flour. Fenestration comprises timber-framed multi-pane casement windows to the south and east elevations.

At first floor level is a reefing stage with a painted timber handrail, accessed from timber stable-style doors on both north and south sides with cast iron strap hinges and decorative timber hoods on brackets. The tower has four-over-eight timber sliding sash windows on the first and second floors of the east and west elevations, and one on the ground floor of the south-west elevation. Single casement windows are positioned on the third floor of the north and south elevations. The mill is topped by a rotating wagon roof cap with four ten-bay double-shuttered patent sweeps, currently without shutters as of May 2025 pending adjustment and refitting.

The cart shed, adjacent to the western boundary with the former bakehouse, has brick side walls, a tarred weatherboard rear (north) wall, and a pair of tarred timber doors to the front with cast iron strap hinges. Its roof is clad with corrugated metal sheeting.

The workshop, positioned between the brick base of the tower and the cart shed, includes sections of flint construction on its south and west elevations. The rear (north) wall is tarred weatherboard, and the front has three half-glazed timber doors. Its roof has a gentle pitch with original wide timber planks to the front slope and corrugated metal sheeting to the rear. A door in the north-east corner leads to the mid-19th-century engine house, which contains a working 1920 Crossley Brothers GE117 gas engine brought to the windmill in 1998. This engine, previously in use at the Mason Pearson Brothers hairbrush factory in Old Ford, London, has a 6 foot 6 inch flywheel and is connected by a belt drive system allowing it to turn the millstones without wind. The engine is fitted on existing engine beds. The engine house is constructed of yellow brick with timber doors to the west elevation and a casement window to the north.

Internally, the ground floor areas, formerly housing the loading bay, weighing office, and shop, now serve as museum and display space. The interior incorporates exposed timber framing throughout, including some reused timbers. A blocked doorway to the east previously led to the now demolished boiler house. A door to the north opens to the octagonal open-plan base of the tower with exposed timber-framing of the tower above and a steep flight of timber steps positioned within the western side. Three chutes drop from the ceiling for graded flour from the late-20th-century flour dressing machine on the floor above.

The first floor contains the meal floor where the underside of the millstones are visible through ceiling openings. Timber chutes carry ground grain to the perimeter for sacking. Tentering gears and centrifugal governors hang from the ceiling.

The second floor, known as the stone floor, has two pairs of Derbyshire Peak stones for grinding animal food and one pair of French Burr stones for flour, all contained within octagonal vats. Octagonal iron quants and cast-iron stone nuts with timber teeth run between each pair of stones and the cast iron great spur wheel. A square forged-iron upright shaft with chamfered edges rises from the great spur wheel through the third-floor ceiling, connecting to the cast iron wallower wheel located on the fourth floor, the dust floor.

The windmill has a cast iron windshaft and a brake wheel with a cast iron hub incorporating timber elements of an older brake wheel, showing sawn-off remains of timber spokes. The brake wheel likely pre-dates the mill and was plausibly salvaged from Westbrook Mill nearby, which was offered for sale for demolition in 1842. Below the wallower is a timber tire that can engage the sack hoist for winching grain from the ground floor. The frame of the cap has embedded metal wheels allowing it to rotate with the wind on a circular metal curb around the top of the smock tower.

Original machinery within the mill includes the windshaft, brake wheel hub and spokes, wallower, upright shaft, great spur wheel, sack hoist mechanism, parts of the tentering gear system, fantail gearing and shafts, worm wheel, the iron rack and elm curb, and the three pairs of millstones.