Barkestone Mill Barkestone-le-Vale · Leicestershire · England

Barkestone Mill was one of the windmills of the Vale of Belvoir and stood within a landscape where several mills were built or rebuilt during the canal age. The Grantham Canal opened new opportunities for waterborne transport, and a number of Vale mills were placed close enough to the canal to benefit from the movement of grain, flour, fuel, and agricultural produce.

The mill at Barkestone-le-Vale was advertised in 1839 as a newly erected six-storey brick tower mill. Its equipment included patent sails and a fantail, giving it the form of a substantial nineteenth-century corn mill rather than an earlier open-trestle post mill. The tower stood at The Green, where later photographs and property records continued to associate the surviving building with the old village windmill.

The mill remained active into the later nineteenth century and was still operational in 1895. By 1905, auxiliary power had become part of the working arrangement, with a 12 horsepower steam engine used to drive the mill. This change reflects the site’s final working phase, when wind power was supplemented or superseded by more dependable mechanical power. Barkestone Mill had ceased functioning by 1927.

After milling ended, the windmill fabric survived within private property. The old mill had fallen out of use by the beginning of the twentieth century, but major works in the early 1980s restored and adapted the structure. The present survival is therefore that of a converted tower mill rather than a complete working windmill. Its historic value lies in the retained tower fabric and its continued visibility as part of Barkestone-le-Vale’s former milling landscape.