Sheerness Great Mill Sheerness · Kent · England

Great Mill at Sheerness, also known as Ride's Mill, originated in an ambitious early nineteenth-century smock mill project. The brick base was first begun but remained unfinished for about two years before Thomas Webb, owner of Little Mill in Sheerness, bought the structure and financed its completion. James Humphrey of Cranbrook completed the white smock mill in 1813. Its design was based on Union Mill at Cranbrook, which Humphrey had also built, and the two mills had closely related machinery.

The mill was built as a smock corn mill and became one of the principal windmills of Sheerness. It had three pairs of millstones and stood on a substantial brick base. The working mill was demolished in 1924, leaving the octagonal brick base standing. That base survived empty for many years, preserving the lower fabric of the historic mill after the loss of the smock body, cap, sails, fantail, and working machinery.

A planning application in 2006 led to the rebuilding of the structure in a form resembling the original smock mill, although with modern steel structural components and residential use. The development included accommodation within the rebuilt smock and associated extensions. Great Mill remains protected as a Grade II listed structure and is now best understood as a historic mill base with a modern reconstructed smock-form building above it.