Instow Old Windmill Instow · Devon · England

The Old Windmill stands on Rectory Lane at Instow, on high ground overlooking the Taw and Torridge estuary. It is protected as a Grade II listed building and survives as the roofless circular stump of a former windmill.

The windmill may date from the seventeenth century. The surviving fabric is finely dressed stone rubble, circular in plan, with the walls reduced in height to about 4 metres. Earlier measured descriptions record the circular tower remains as about 10 feet high, with walls 3 feet thick and an internal diameter of about 12 feet at the base. The walls are pierced at intervals by putlog holes, while the larger openings and elevated position overlooking the estuary have also been linked with later landmark or navigational use.

Instow had more than one windmill site. The surviving Rectory Lane tower is the visible remnant now known as The Old Windmill, while another windmill once stood south of Instow Quay and has left no visible remains. The tithe apportionment named the surviving site as Windmill Hill, and the 1903 six-inch Ordnance Survey map marked it as Old Windmill.

The ruin was listed in 1986. Late twentieth-century surveys recorded the stump as surviving, with windows and a doorway still visible, though the masonry was gradually deteriorating. The North Devon Buildings at Risk survey later noted loose masonry in places and signs of pointing and consolidation around the doorway and base. The Old Windmill now survives as a reduced but distinctive estuary-side windmill ruin within Instow.