Broadclyst Old Windmill Broadclyst · Devon · England

Old Windmill stands on Elbury Lane at Broadclyst. The tower was built in 1786 by Sam Flood, a baker, and is one of the best recorded surviving windmill towers in Devon. It is a round red sandstone tower, stuccoed externally and now roofed with a slate conical roof. The original windmill cap and working gear have gone, but the tower retains its clear milling form.

A stone inscription on the south side records the building of the mill in 1786 and includes the phrase “Vive le Ingenie”. The mill was associated with Samuel Flood, who also leased Clyston Watermill. In 1808 the windmill was described with two pairs of stones and a bolting mill, indicating its corn-milling equipment. Local mill history also records the path made by the donkey said to have turned the machinery on windless days, preserving a detail of auxiliary working practice within the building’s story.

The windmill’s working life ended in the early nineteenth century. A lease was offered for sale in 1814 when the miller was bankrupt, and Samuel Flood was declared bankrupt in 1815. The mill fell out of use around that time. The building then entered a long post-milling phase. In about 1870 it was converted into flats to house people made homeless after a serious fire in Broadclyst. Three floors and a chimney were added during this conversion, while the sails and machinery were removed.

Old Windmill was listed at Grade II on 11 November 1952. Later surveys record the tower as standing as a shell, then as a stuccoed four-floor structure with cap and gear missing. It forms a group with the former miller’s cottage, now Windmill Cottage. The surviving tower preserves the form of an eighteenth-century Devon tower mill together with later evidence of domestic conversion and community reuse.