Kibworth Harcourt Mill Kibworth Harcourt · Leicestershire · England

Kibworth Harcourt Mill is one of the most important surviving post mills in the Midlands. A windmill is recorded at Kibworth on the estate of Merton College Oxford by 1635, and the present mill preserves substantial early fabric. The main post bears the name Daniel Hutchinson and the date 1711, and most of the surviving mill fabric dates from 1711 or earlier. Later timber analysis has also shown that some elements belong to different phases, with evidence for reuse and rebuilding within the working life of the structure.

The mill is a post mill, the early form of windmill in which the whole timber body turns on a central post so that the sails can face the wind. At Kibworth the trestle is enclosed within a red brick roundhouse with small buttresses, doors, and boarded windows. Above it stands the timber-framed and weatherboarded mill body, reached by a long external stair. Internally the mill retains close-studded framing, chamfered timbers, wooden machinery, and two sets of millstones. The interior also preserves a dense record of historic marks, including millers' graffiti, dated inscriptions, and apotropaic symbols.

Kibworth Harcourt Mill worked as a flour mill until 1912. After milling ceased the building declined, and by the 1930s it had become derelict. Merton College Oxford, the historic owner, asked the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to take the mill into its care in 1936. Twentieth-century conservation preserved the mill when many other Leicestershire post mills had already disappeared.

A major repair campaign began in 2021. The work repaired the oak trestle, renewed sections of weatherboarding, repaired the brick roundhouse in lime mortar, conserved the machinery, and fitted new sails. The completed repairs returned the mill to a much fuller external form, with a white body, sails, black sheeted roofs, a roundhouse, and curved tail pole. Kibworth Harcourt Mill is now the only surviving post mill in Leicestershire and remains both a Grade II* listed building and a scheduled monument.