1600–1725
Tower windmill built
Balgone Barns, Old Windmill was built as a circular tower windmill, probably in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.
Site overview
Balgone Barns, Old Windmill is the stump of a late seventeenth-century or early eighteenth-century tower mill. The rubble and freestone tower stands on Balgone Barns farm and includes an underground vault extending from the base.
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
Balgone Barns, Old Windmill is a former tower windmill near North Berwick in East Lothian. The surviving stump is of rubble and freestone and stands about 35 feet high and about 15 feet in diameter, with walls about 3 feet thick. An underground vault extends about 20 feet from the base of the tower.
There were two doors, one of which is blocked. The windmill was probably built in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century and is identified as a barley mill. It had ceased to function as a windmill by 1799, when it was shown as a pigeon cot.
The tower was later heightened or adapted for dovecot use. The monument was scheduled on 25 February 1980. No complete ownership sequence, machinery inventory, or precise final working date has been established.
Timeline
1799
Recorded as pigeon cot
The former windmill had ceased to function as a windmill by 1799, when it was recorded as Pigeon Cot.
1980
Scheduled monument designation
Balgone Barns, windmill NW of was scheduled as a monument on 25 February 1980.
Sources and records
Historic Environment Scotland scheduled monument record; Historic Environment Scotland listed building record; Trove / Canmore place record; Scottish Windmills: An Outline and Inventory; East Lothian Historic Environment Record