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Ruinous base remains
The surviving fabric is recorded as the ruinous remains of the smock mill base.
Site overview
Staplehurst Mill was a smock corn mill at Staplehurst. It was built in 1805 and worked into the 1880s. The mill burnt down on 22 June 1911, leaving its base.
Modern windmill records identify the survival as ruinous remains of the smock mill base. The site is therefore not a complete windmill survival, but the remaining base preserves the footprint and lower fabric of a nineteenth-century Kent smock mill. Its recorded history provides a clear sequence from construction and working use to fire loss and reduced survival.
Map
Map markers and directions links are provided for location reference only and do not indicate public access or permission to enter a site.
No site photograph is currently available. Images will be added as field visits are carried out.
History
Staplehurst Mill was built in 1805 as a smock corn mill. It stood west of Staplehurst and belonged to the village's nineteenth-century wind-powered corn-milling landscape. An earlier windmill site at Staplehurst is recorded in the eighteenth century, but the surviving remains relate to the later smock mill.
The mill worked until the 1880s. On 22 June 1911 it burnt down, leaving the base. Later windmill records identify the site as the ruinous remains of a smock mill base, and twentieth-century photographic material records the reduced survival. Although the cap, smock body, sails, fantail, and working machinery have gone, the remains preserve the site and lower structure of the former mill. Staplehurst Mill is therefore a reduced but physical survival of a former Kent smock corn mill.
Timeline
1769
Earlier windmill site recorded
An earlier windmill site west of Staplehurst church was recorded in 1769.
1805
Smock mill built
Staplehurst Mill was built as a smock corn mill.
1880–1889
Working use ended
The smock mill worked until the 1880s.
1911
Mill burnt down
Staplehurst Mill burnt down on 22 June 1911, leaving the base.
Sources and records
Windmill World site entry
List of windmills in Kent
Mills Archive site record
Staplehurst Archive photograph index
Kent windmill reference works
List of windmills in Kent
Mills Archive site record
Staplehurst Archive photograph index
Kent windmill reference works