Waltham on the Wolds Old Mill Waltham on the Wolds · Leicestershire · England

The Old Mill at Waltham on the Wolds preserves the site of successive windmills on Mill Lane. An older post mill stood there before the present masonry tower. That post mill was demolished in 1868 and was replaced by the tower mill that survives today.

The present mill is dated 1868. It was built as a red-brick tower mill in English garden wall bond, with a battered circular tower rising through five stages. The listed fabric includes paired doorways and small window openings with stone lintels. Its original roof carried a cast-iron ball finial dated 1868, a feature later replaced when the present fibreglass domed roof was fitted.

The mill’s working history after construction is less fully documented than its surviving fabric, but the tower’s form and location preserve the transition from the earlier post mill to the later brick tower mill. The site also illustrates the common later life of many rural windmills: after milling ceased, the tower remained and was adapted into domestic use. The bottom stage has twentieth-century inserted windows, and a twentieth-century porch links the former mill to an adjoining cottage, although the cottage itself is excluded from the special architectural interest of the listing.

The Old Mill was listed at Grade II on 11 September 1979. It survives as a converted former tower mill, retaining the main nineteenth-century circular tower and its place within the historic village-edge milling landscape of Waltham on the Wolds.