Dunstable Windmill Totternhoe · Bedfordshire · England

The windmill on West Street, Dunstable, represents the later phase of a long-established milling site. Bedfordshire HER material records that there had been a mill on or near the site since at least 1221, while the present tower mill was built in 1839 for Richard Gutteridge. The tower was built of local Caddington grey brick and was substantial in scale, standing around 58 feet high, with a base diameter of about 28 feet and walling up to 3 feet 6 inches thick at ground level.

It contained five floors and was finished with a domed copper-sheathed cap. The mill had four double-shuttered patent sails, an eight-bladed fantail, and three pairs of stones, although two pairs were sufficient when driven by sail power. The mill passed from Richard Gutteridge to Joseph and Matthew Gutteridge in 1845, then to Richard Radwell in 1869, William Thomas Bransom by 1898, and later to Frederick Simmons and his son Frank Simmons.

The sails were removed in 1908, when the mill ceased to operate as a wind-powered mill and mechanical power was adopted. HER records describe the installation of a gas plant and later use of steam or engine power, with milling continuing into the early twentieth century and ending before the Second World War. During the war the copper-topped tower was used as an observation point by the Home Guard.

Frank Simmons later sold the building for use by the Sea Cadets. The Dunstable Sea Cadet unit was formed in 1942, and the windmill became its headquarters after the war. In 1948 it was commissioned as Training Ship Lionel Preston, giving the former mill a new institutional use.

The building was listed at Grade II on 25 October 1951. Historic England describes it as a brick sloping tower with domed cap, dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, without sails and with single-storey additional buildings at the rear. Later records note water ingress and deterioration of internal timbers, but the building survives as a distinctive former tower mill in Dunstable.