Hawridge Windmill Hawridge · Buckinghamshire · England

Hawridge Windmill stands at Hawridge, close to Cholesbury, and is also known in sources as Cholesbury Windmill or Hawridge Mill. The present building occupies a site associated with earlier windmills shown on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maps. In 1863 the Norwich Wind and Steam Company built a smock wind and steam mill on the site, including a steam engine and an engine house with a tall chimney.

The smock mill had a two-storey square brick base, a narrow eight-sided tarred timber tower, four double-shuttered sails and a six-bladed fantail. It was sold more than once but was not successful, and was demolished in 1883. The present tower mill was built in the same year by Hillsdon of Tring for about £300 and is described as one of the last tower mills of its kind built in England.

A grain store was added shortly afterwards and the tall chimney from the earlier steam mill was taken down in 1884. The mill worked as a corn mill, with two pairs of stones driven by wind and auxiliary steam power. Daniel Dwight is recorded as the first miller of the new tower mill.

Thomas Robinson took over in 1891 and remained in charge until the mill ceased operation in 1912. In 1913 the building became a private residence and was used as a studio by the writer Gilbert Cannan; its later cultural associations include artists and writers connected with the early twentieth-century literary and artistic circle around Cholesbury. The mill tower is a four-storey brick structure, externally rendered or painted at different periods.

Its sails deteriorated after conversion, and one blew off in a gale in the 1950s. In 1968 the then occupier restored the exterior with replacement dummy sails and spars. Sources record that the original cap survives and that the supporting rollers, rack, alignment wheels and windshaft are preserved within the cap.

The building remains a private residence and is listed as a historic windmill structure.