Honingham Tower Mill Honingham · Norfolk · England

Honingham towermill was a four-storey tarred red-brick tower mill. It measured thirty-eight feet to the curb and twenty-three feet across at the base, with two ground-floor doors. The Norfolk boat-shaped cap carried a gallery and fantail, while two pairs of patent sails drove two pairs of stones. Later notes recorded substantial surviving internal machinery, including a ten-foot iron brakewheel with wooden cogs, a mixed iron and wood upright shaft, wallower, great spur wheel and windshaft. Harry Apling recorded the tower as underdriven, with a gallery to the cap and a wooden clasp-arm great spur wheel.

The mill appears on Bryant's map of 1826 and Greenwood's map of 1834. White's 1836 directory listed William Lewin as miller. In April and May 1837 the mill was advertised to let with Honingham water corn mills. The advertisement described the water corn mills as driving three pairs of stones with flour apparatus and steam engine attached, and also a brick tower windmill driving two pairs of stones with patent sails. The property included a dwelling house, yards, gardens, stabling, sheds, cottages and about eighteen acres of arable and meadow land. The mills were said to be capable of manufacturing eight lasts of corn per week on average.

Robert Johnson Neeve was recorded as miller in the 1840s and 1850s, followed by Edward Sendall, Stephen Sendall and Stephen Millett. By the 1890s Mrs Emma Millett and Frederick Cullum Millett were recorded as millers and farmers, including wind and water milling. The exact final working date was not identified in the consulted record, but the mill was recorded as derelict by 1926. A Karl Wood painting in 1932 showed the tower with cap, windshaft and fanstage.

By 1971 the sails and cap had gone, but the cap's base frame, gallery, windshaft, brakewheel and some machinery remained. On 14 December 1975 the machinery was removed by John Lawn, millwright, probably being sent to Leicestershire. In January 1980 John Smith, a builder, commissioned architect's drawings of the derelict tower. On 15 April 1980 Broadland District Council granted planning permission for change of use from disused windmill to dwelling and for an extension to form living accommodation. By 1981 conversion was well advanced, with a chalet built beside the tower and access to the tower on the ground and first floors. In 1981 John Smith built a two-bedroom house beside the mill and linked it to the tower by an arched brick hallway.