1696
Possible windmill construction date
Ballantrae Windmill is associated with a probable construction date around 1696.
Site overview
Ballantrae Windmill stands on Mill Hill above Ballantrae. It was a vaulted tower windmill, probably built in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The mill was used for meal grinding and had fallen into ruin by the end of the eighteenth century.
Map
Map markers and directions links are provided for location reference only and do not indicate public access or permission to enter a site.
No site photograph is currently available. Images will be added as field visits are carried out.
History
Ballantrae Windmill is a ruined vaulted tower windmill on Mill Hill above Ballantrae in South Ayrshire. The structure was probably built in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century and is sometimes associated with a construction date around 1696. It was a meal mill and was one of the early Scottish vaulted tower windmills.
The surviving rubble tower has a vaulted basement, opposed doorways, small upper openings and remnants of the internal floor arrangement, but the windcap, sails and machinery have gone. The windmill was shown on mid-eighteenth-century mapping and was depicted with sails on later eighteenth-century mapping. By 1799 it was ruinous.
The site remains an important example of an early Scottish windmill form, but no complete ownership sequence, machinery inventory, or precise final working date has been established from the sources checked.
Timeline
1747
Windmill shown on eighteenth-century mapping
Ballantrae Windmill was shown on mid-eighteenth-century mapping.
1799
Windmill recorded as ruinous
Ballantrae Windmill had fallen into ruin by 1799.
Sources and records
Historic Environment Scotland listed building record; Trove / Canmore place record; Scottish Windmills: An Outline and Inventory; Historic Ordnance Survey mapping; Mills Archive site record