My thanks to Jon Sass for all of his help and guidance with this mill. It was first recorded in 1803 as a “recently erected windmill”, equipped to produce whiting and French barley. By 1829 it was also advertised as a corn mill with three pairs of stones besides the barley mill and edge runners for whiting on the ground floor. Whiting manufacture continued until at least 1859 when it reverted to purely corn milling in the upper floors, corn milling ceased in the 1950s. The mill was powered by six patents sails until the early 1870s and there after auxiliary power using town gas. The derelict premises were converted to a pub/restaurant and during the conversion all traces of the original equipment on the ground floor was concreted over and so lost. Originally it is believed the mill used a set of Suttons sails prior to being changed to the more conventional patent sails.

The first drawings below show the mill with the Sutton sails. It was rumoured that the sails, patented in 1800 were designed for Kingsforth mill. The patent drawings are un-dimensioned but show a cap that possibly could have been Kingsforth and so all the proportions I’ve used are relative to the diameter of the cap.

Eventually the Suttons sails were replaced with conventional Patent sails

As existing 2019