Great Dunham Tower Mill Great Dunham · Norfolk · England

Great Dunham towermill was built around 1840 to replace an earlier smock mill. It was a five-storey corn windmill with four double-shuttered patent sails, each with eight bays of three shutters and one bay of two shutters. The sails drove two pairs of 4 ft French burr stones. The mill had a boat-shaped cap, a tall narrow iron gallery, a six-bladed fan and two opposite doors at ground-floor level.

The mill was advertised for sale in September 1841 as a windmill working two pairs of stones, together with a dwelling house, barn, stable, outbuildings and six acres of land. Christiana Long was recorded as corn miller in White's 1845, and Arthur Copeland was recorded in White's 1854. In 1860 the mill was again advertised, both by private contract and by auction. The auction notice described a capital brick tower windmill with four floors, driving two pairs of four-foot stones, together with a brick and tiled dwelling house, barn, stables and six acres of arable and pasture land.

During the later nineteenth century the site was adapted for auxiliary power. Norfolk Mills records that an eight-horsepower horizontal steam engine with a Cornish boiler and shaft worked in a building alongside the windmill and powered another two pairs of French burr stones. George Girling was listed as miller and baker in the 1860s and 1870s. The mill was shown as Windmill (Corn) on the 1883 Ordnance Survey map. In 1889 the property was advertised as a windmill, steam mill, residence, bake office, stable, yards, outbuildings and six acres of land. Ernest Critoph was listed as miller by wind and steam in the 1890s and disposed of his business in 1899.

The mill continued to appear in early twentieth-century directory entries. Augustus Roe was listed as a wind and steam miller in 1900, 1904 and 1912, and Charles Mothersole was recorded as wind and steam miller in 1908. By 1926 the mill was derelict. A photograph around 1934 showed the tower with some upper wooden supports and windshaft still in place, but by 1937 a Karl Wood painting showed it as an empty shell. By 1949 the tower had been reduced to a stump.

By 1970 all that remained was a derelict, roofless, single-storey windmill base about eight feet high and nineteen feet in diameter, then being used as an aviary. The house and other outbuildings remained nearby, while the bake office was in ruins. By about 2018 the single-storey section had been fitted with an octagonal conical tiled roof.