Cottonfield's Mill Easton · Dorset · England

Cottonfield's Mill is the northern of the two Portland windmills south of Easton. The pair stands between Easton and Weston on the Isle of Portland, within a landscape of fields, lanes and quarry ground. Cottonfield's Mill is the northern tower, while Top Growland's Mill stands to the south. Together they are the only historic windmill remains in Dorset to survive as standing towers.

The Portland windmills are among the earliest documented tower-mill survivals in Britain. A windmill on Portland was recorded in the Land Revenue Accounts of 1608, and two mills appeared on William Simplon’s map of 1626. They were also shown on the Hutchins map of 1710 as prominent local landmarks. Their exact construction date is unclear, but the towers are generally understood as early seventeenth-century or earlier stone tower mills built by local craftsmen.

Cottonfield's Mill worked as a corn windmill. The Portland mills were traditionally operated by the Pearce family, part of a local milling tradition that also appears in Portland documentary records. The towers were short, cylindrical stone structures with conical caps and manually winded sail assemblies. Their timber machinery and sails were progressively lost after working use ended.

The mills ceased working in the 1890s, when mass-produced flour and improved rail and road links reduced the need for local wind-powered milling. Cottonfield's Mill survived as a stone shell, and twentieth-century records describe the continuing loss of timber components. The tower was listed at Grade II in September 1978. More recent specialist records describe Cottonfield's Mill as a cylindrical stone tower undergoing residential conversion. The tower remains a rare physical survival of Dorset wind milling and a defining historic feature of the Easton and Weston landscape on Portland.