Lower Dean Windmill

Site overview

Lower Dean Windmill was a composite mill at Lower Dean, standing east of the road between the B465 and the Shelton to Lower Dean road. Bedfordshire Archives records a windmill at Lower Dean in 1695, when John Neal conveyed the mill to Philip Sikes of Nether Dean, miller, and the mill is shown on Thomas Jefferys' 1765 map of Bedfordshire. The surviving nineteenth-century structure was a wooden post mill carried above a stone-built roundhouse, with an inset stone dated 1834 probably marking the addition of the roundhouse.

It worked two pairs of five-foot stones and had double-shutter sails. The mill ceased working in 1918, with Isaac Shadbolt recorded as its last miller. It stood derelict for many years and collapsed on 20 December 1959.

The two-storey roundhouse survived until about 1969, when it was reduced and roofed for use as a cattle shed.

Map

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History

Lower Dean Windmill was a long-established windmill site in the north of Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire Archives records that John Neal, Lord of the Manor of Lower Dean, conveyed the mill to Philip Sikes of Nether Dean, miller, in 1695. The windmill is also shown on Thomas Jefferys' map of Bedfordshire in 1765.

J. Steele Elliott described the Lower Dean mill in 1931 as standing on the 250-foot contour and as a conspicuous survival of an older milling landscape. The surviving structure was a composite mill: a wooden post mill set above a circular stone-built ground floor or roundhouse. An inset stone in the base was lettered S. B., for Sarah Bradshaw, and dated 1834.

Elliott considered that this date probably recorded the addition of the stone-built roundhouse to enclose what had previously been an open base, rather than the complete replacement of the mill. The stone base measured 20 feet 6 inches across, with 24-inch masonry, and incorporated earlier brick pillars. The wooden mill body above had a sloping roof, a massive 22-inch square vertical main post, cross-beams, curved struts, and a crown-beam 20 inches square.

The brake-wheel was seven feet across and was carried on a 15-inch chamfered oak shaft. A cogwheel of similar size was fixed at the reverse end. The mill had double-shutter sails spanning 45 feet and worked two pairs of five-foot stones.

It was turned by tail-pole, but also had a circular cogged rack around the top of the roundhouse, apparently worked from a fan above through a crank arrangement. The Bradshaw family was closely associated with the mill. Sarah Bradshaw held the property, including the house and two small fields, after the death of her husband William Philip Bradshaw in 1827.

Benjamin Bradshaw was recorded as miller in 1848. The mill later passed to William Poole in 1869, and Isaac Shadbolt owned and worked it until it closed in 1918. The mill then stood derelict for decades.

Windmill World records it as a corn composite mill which collapsed in 1959, with the roundhouse reduced to one storey around 1969 and now ruinous. The local digitised account states that the mill finally collapsed on 20 December 1959 and that the two-storey roundhouse remained until about 1969, when the upper storey was removed and the remainder roofed over for use as a cattle shed.

Timeline

1695