Staunton Harold Tower Windmill Staunton Harold · Leicestershire · England

Tower Windmill stands above Staunton Harold Reservoir, near Melbourne. It is also recorded in specialist mill sources as Melbourne windmill, a tower corn mill associated with the Melbourne estate landscape. Its present setting is dominated by the reservoir, but the structure originated before the water landscape that now surrounds it.

The mill was built in 1798 by Lord Melbourne at a cost of £250 to mill grain. It was a tower windmill, with a domed top that carried the sails and could revolve to take advantage of the wind direction. The sails transmitted power through gearing to the millstones. This arrangement made the mill a working grain mill rather than a decorative landscape tower.

By the late nineteenth century the windmill had become derelict. Early twentieth-century photographic material records the old windmill before its later reservoir-side adaptation. When Staunton Harold Reservoir was being constructed in the 1960s, a plan was developed to convert the derelict windmill into an observation platform overlooking the new water body. The building was altered during that scheme, but the structure was found unsuitable and the conversion was never completed.

The former windmill remains a visible landmark in the Staunton Harold landscape. National Trust visitor information for Staunton Harold identifies it as Tower Windmill and records its 1798 construction and unsuccessful 1960s alteration. The site now preserves the masonry survival of a late eighteenth-century estate corn mill and a later, incomplete attempt to reuse it as a reservoir viewpoint.