Chalton Windmill Chalton · Hampshire · England

Chalton Windmill occupies the summit of Windmill Hill, a prominent chalk hill above Chalton and Clanfield. The site has one of the longest recorded windmill histories in Hampshire. A mill was mentioned here in 1289, when it was valued at 40 shillings a year. Later maps continued to mark the windmill site: John Norden's map of 1607, John Speed's map of 1611, Joan Blaeu's map of 1645, and John Ogilby's map of 1675 all recorded a windmill in this landscape.

The earlier mill was probably a post mill, but the surviving structure is an early nineteenth-century brick tower mill. It was built as a corn mill and stood four storeys high. Its working equipment included four patent sails carried on a cast-iron windshaft, with the cap turned by a fantail. The millstones were driven overdrift. Sale particulars quoted in specialist mill records described a substantially brick-built tower on Chalton Downs with patent sweeps, three pairs of stones, and two flour-dressing machines.

By the twentieth century the mill had ceased working and had fallen into decay. In the 1950s it was threatened with demolition, but local protection helped secure the structure. Around 1978 permission was given for the mill to be incorporated into a new house, and the converted building later received a Certificate of Merit from the Petersfield Society. The tower now survives as part of a private residence, preserving the form of the former wind-powered corn mill on one of Hampshire's best-known windmill hills.