Great Crosby Windmill Great Crosby · Merseyside · England

The supplied coordinates correspond to Great Crosby Windmill on Moor Lane. Local and conservation-area sources state that an earlier windmill existed at Crosby before the present tower, with the older mill believed to have medieval origins and shown as a post mill in an early eighteenth-century view. The present brick tower windmill was commissioned in 1813 by William Blundell, the local landowner, after enclosure and estate changes made the original mill less accessible.

William Murray of Chester-le-Street was employed as the millwright. Work began in May 1813 and was completed the following year. The new tower had five storeys above the ground floor and an external platform around the second floor.

It used four cloth-covered sails and a fantail to keep the sails facing the wind. In the flat landscape it also became a useful landmark for ships on the Mersey. In 1821 a miller's house and stable were added.

Steam power was introduced in 1870, allowing milling to continue when wind was unavailable. Steam was later replaced by gas and then by electricity in the 1920s. The sails remained until 1932, when they were removed because they had become unsafe.

During the Second World War the mill was used as a look-out post. It was registered as a Grade II listed building in 1952. Milling continued into the late 1960s or early 1970s, after which the building was decommissioned and converted into a private residence in 1972.

Later sources describe the windmill as renovated and still surviving as a private house.