Bluebell Hill Mill

Site overview

Bluebell Hill Mill was a smock corn mill on the North Downs at Blue Bell Hill. Modern windmill records identify the site as a former smock mill, with part of the base wall surviving as a garden feature. Photographic archive records also associate the site with a smock mill at Bluebell Hill, Rochester.

The recorded survival is therefore a very reduced remnant rather than a complete mill, converted mill, or standing base. The surviving wall fabric preserves a small physical trace of a former Kent wind-powered corn mill in the Blue Bell Hill landscape.

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

Bluebell Hill Mill was a smock corn mill at Blue Bell Hill. The mill stood in the North Downs landscape between the Medway towns and the Maidstone area, where elevated ground gave windmills exposed working sites. Modern windmill records identify it as a smock corn mill, and archive records preserve photographic material relating to Bluebell Hill Mill.

The surviving fabric is modest. Windmill records describe part of the base wall as surviving as a garden feature. The cap, smock body, sails, fantail, and machinery have gone, leaving a small structural trace rather than a recognisable complete mill. Bluebell Hill Mill is therefore recorded as a reduced survival: the working smock mill has disappeared, but part of its base wall remains to mark the former wind-powered corn-milling site.

Timeline

—

Smock corn mill recorded

Bluebell Hill Mill is recorded as a wind-powered smock corn mill.

—

Base wall survives

Part of the former mill base wall survives as a garden feature.

Sources and records

Windmill World site entry
Mills Archive site record
University of Kent Muggeridge Collection record
List of windmills in Kent
Geograph windmills gazetteer