Site overview
Black Mill, also known as Sober Hall Windmill, is a former tower corn mill at Ingleby Barwick. The brick-built tower dates from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and was originally part of the Sober Hall Farm complex. The mill is recorded as a corn mill with an associated horse engine and granary.
By the late twentieth century it had become a roofed shell, but it still retained threshing machinery. The wider Sober Hall farm complex was restored around 2001 and adapted for private residential use. The surviving mill is now a converted tower within the modern residential landscape of Ingleby Barwick.
Map
History
Black Mill stood at Sober Hall Farm, Ingleby Barwick, and is also known as Sober Hall Windmill. The surviving structure is a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century brick-built tower windmill. It formed part of the Sober Hall Farm complex, which included a farmhouse, granary, barn, horse engine, windmill, and byres.
The mill was a corn mill, with an associated horse engine providing an alternative power arrangement within the farm group. By the twentieth century the mill had lost its complete working form. Photographic records from 1935 show the tower only, roofed with a conical roof. Later records describe it as a shell in 1992, and local accounts note that it remained a ruin into the 1990s while still containing threshing machinery.
The Sober Hall farm complex was restored around 2001 and converted into private residential use. Black Mill now survives as a converted former tower corn mill, incorporated into the altered farmstead and surrounded by the modern housing development of Ingleby Barwick. Its survival preserves the principal remnant of a wind-powered corn mill once attached to Sober Hall Farm.
Timeline
Corn mill recorded
Roofed tower photographed
Tower shell recorded
Farm complex restored
Sources and records
Windmill World site entry
Mills Archive site record
Hidden Teesside article
Picture Stockton Archive article
North East Mills list
Windmill Photographic Register