Stevington Windmill Stevington · Bedfordshire · England

Stevington Windmill is the most complete surviving windmill in Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire Archives records that the former Department of Environment listed it in May 1952 as Grade II*, noting a two-storey timber-framed body with pitch pine weatherboarding, a gambrel corrugated iron roof, four common sails, and completely restored internal machinery in workable order. One of the crosstrees carries an incised date of 1770, which is taken to refer to the construction date, while the same timber also bears the date 1921 and the name P. Keech, recording a later restoration.

The earliest known paper reference is an advertisement in the Northampton Mercury of 11 April 1785 seeking a man who understood grinding and dressing stones at a windmill in Stevington, with application to Mr Richard Poole. Deeds from 1797 to 1951 trace the mill and Mill Close through a sequence of owners and mortgagees. In 1811 Richard Poole devised Mill Close and the windmill standing on it to his wife for life and then to their son William.

William Poole mortgaged the mill and field in 1825 and 1828 and assigned them to trustees in 1832 for the benefit of creditors. The mill later passed through Francis Green and Thomas Abbott Green before being conveyed in 1849 to Edmund Favell of Stevington, miller. Favell sold it to William Raban in 1868.

The Raban family remained associated with the mill until 1917, when Jane Raban conveyed it to Alfred Raban, who immediately conveyed it to George Field. A 1926 rating valuation described the building as an old sail windmill owned and occupied by G. Field, with one pair of stones used sometimes. J. Steele Elliott described the post mill in 1931 as still working intermittently.

It had been considerably repaired about 1900 and, before that, had stood open below, with its supporting beams resting on four masonry pillars. The base is of local limestone and measures 23 feet overall. The main post is unusually massive, 27 inches square at the base, tapering to 22 inches and circular at the top.

The brake-wheel is eight feet in diameter, and the mill works one pair of four-foot-six-inch stones in the top floor. Bedfordshire County Council bought the mill and Mill Close in 1951 as part of Festival of Britain celebrations and restored the mill to full working order, using Clayson & Son of Harrold. Four new sails and a stock were fitted in 1958 by E. Hole & Son; the stock was replaced in 1974; four new sails, a new stock, and four new clamps were fitted in 1985; the sails and broken back stock were removed in 1996; and an agreement to restore the mill to full working order was reached in 1998.

The sails were finally restored in 2004. Since local government reorganisation in 2009, the mill has been owned by Bedford Borough Council.