Parys Mountain Windmill Parys Mountain · Isle of Anglesey · Wales

Parys Mountain Windmill stands in an isolated position near the highest point of Parys Mountain, south of Amlwch and north-east of the remains of the Parys Mines. Its purpose was industrial rather than agricultural. It was built to serve the copper-mining complex, where underground workings required pumping and lifting power.

Copper had been extracted from Parys Mountain from the Bronze Age onwards, but the site expanded dramatically after a rich deposit was discovered in 1768. During the later eighteenth century the Parys and Mona mines became the largest producers of copper in the world. As mining developed, deeper shafts were sunk and drainage became increasingly important. Pumping was first carried out by hand and then by steam engine, but steam engines depended on coal. The windmill was built in 1878 by Captain Hughes to supplement the power from the nearby steam engine operating the pump at Cairn's shaft. It could pump water, raise ore, and assist with transporting miners in the shaft.

The mill was an unusual five-sailed tower windmill, the only Anglesey mill known to have been built with five sails. It was connected to the same pumping gear as the steam engine and worked when wind conditions allowed. In 1901 a mining treatise reported that the windmill was working well at pumping. By this date deep mining had ended and copper was being recovered through precipitation by pumping mine water into ponds. The mine finally closed in 1904, bringing the windmill's working life to an end.

The surviving structure is a late nineteenth-century tapering circular tower of rubble masonry. It has three storeys, opposing ground-floor doorways, upper-storey windows, and cambered brick heads to most openings. The tower is almost complete, though with damage to the upper structure and holes at lower levels. No machinery remains. By 1929 the windmill was an empty capless shell, and it remains a conspicuous feature of the Parys Mountain mining landscape. It was listed at Grade II in 1951 as a complete windmill tower of special industrial interest and as part of the copper-mining complex.