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Storehouse use recorded
The surviving tower is recorded in windmill gazetteers as a former tower mill used as a storehouse.
Site overview
Craggs Row Windmill is a Grade II listed brick tower mill off Moor Lane in Preston. It is Preston's only surviving windmill tower and is associated with the town's older corn-milling landscape before the rise of the cotton industry. The mill was built in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, with local accounts giving 1760 and windmill records recording tower survival from the late nineteenth century.
The sails were removed in the 1880s and flour grinding ended. The tower later had several uses, including overflow prison, piano workshop, garage, wartime cinema, and merchant's storehouse. It survives externally as a capless and sailless tower.
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
Craggs Row Windmill stands off Moor Lane near the centre of Preston. Preston had a significant wind-powered corn-milling landscape before the dominance of cotton manufacture, and Craggs Row is the only surviving tower from that earlier phase. The windmill is also known through the older Singleton Row name, reflecting a street-name change in the area.
The building is a red-brick tower mill. Local accounts give a construction date of 1760, while wider mill records describe it as an early nineteenth-century or late eighteenth-century tower mill. It worked as a flour mill until the sails were removed in the 1880s. After wind-powered grinding ended, the tower was adapted for a sequence of practical uses. It served as overflow prison accommodation, a piano workshop, a garage, a cinema during the Second World War, and a merchant's storage warehouse.
The mill was listed at Grade II in 1950. It now survives without cap or sails, preserving the external tower of Preston's last standing windmill within the urban fabric close to Moor Lane.
Timeline
1760
Tower windmill built
Craggs Row Windmill is locally recorded as a red-brick tower mill built in 1760.
1880–1889
Sails removed
The sails were removed in the 1880s and flour grinding ended.
1939–1945
Wartime cinema use
The former mill was used as a cinema during the Second World War.
1950
Grade II listed
The windmill on Craggs Row was listed at Grade II.
Sources and records
Historic England listed building entry
Lancashire Past article: Craggs Row Windmill
Windmill World site entry
My Lancashire article: Preston's Windmills
Mills Archive site record
List of windmills in Lancashire
Lancashire Past article: Craggs Row Windmill
Windmill World site entry
My Lancashire article: Preston's Windmills
Mills Archive site record
List of windmills in Lancashire