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Base converted to house
The surviving base of the former smock mill was converted into a house.
Site overview
Darnley's Mill was a smock corn mill at Cobham. It was built in 1852 and was struck by lightning before being destroyed by fire in 1903. The working smock mill has gone, but its base survived and was converted to residential use.
Photographic and archive records identify the remaining structure as the base of the former mill, altered as a house with a pointed roof and domestic features. The site is therefore a reduced but recognisable survival of Cobham's nineteenth-century wind-powered corn-milling history.
Map
Map markers and directions links are provided for location reference only and do not indicate public access or permission to enter a site.
No site photograph is currently available. Images will be added as field visits are carried out.
History
Darnley's Mill was a smock corn mill at Cobham. It was built in 1852, on a site separate from the earlier Cobham Hall post mill recorded on historic maps. The mill formed part of the nineteenth-century milling landscape around Cobham and worked as a wind-powered corn mill.
The mill suffered lightning damage and was later destroyed by fire in 1903. After the loss of the smock tower, cap, sails, and machinery, the base remained. The surviving base was subsequently converted into a house. Archive image records describe the converted mill base with a pointed roof, chimneys, weather vane, and ivy on the walls, showing how the former industrial structure was adapted for domestic use.
Darnley's Mill now survives through its converted base rather than as a complete working windmill. Its significance lies in the retained lower structure of a mid-nineteenth-century smock mill and in the continued legibility of a former windmill site within Cobham.
Timeline
1852
Smock mill built
Darnley's Mill was built in 1852 as a smock corn mill at Cobham.
1903
Mill destroyed by fire
The smock mill was struck by lightning and burnt down in 1903.
Sources and records
Windmill World site entry
Windmill World Kent windmills list
List of windmills in Kent
Mills Archive catalogue entry: Darnley's Mill, Cobham
Lincolnshire Museums image record: Mill base, Cobham, Kent
Windmill World Kent windmills list
List of windmills in Kent
Mills Archive catalogue entry: Darnley's Mill, Cobham
Lincolnshire Museums image record: Mill base, Cobham, Kent