1870
Windmill built
Borstal Hill Mill was built around 1870.
Site overview
Borstal Hill Mill was a wind-powered corn mill at Borstal, Rochester. It was built around 1870 and stood within the Rochester windmill landscape, alongside better-recorded mills at Star Hill, Delce, and other nearby sites. Kent windmill lists record Borstal Hill Mill as demolished in 1885.
No standing windmill structure remains, and the site is now represented by documentary record rather than surviving cap, sails, body, windshaft, stones, or machinery.
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
Borstal Hill Mill was a wind-powered mill at Borstal, on the west side of Rochester. It was built around 1870, during the later period of windmill construction in Kent. The mill stood within a wider Rochester milling landscape that included several post and smock mills at Star Hill, Delce, and other locations.
Its working life appears to have been short. The mill was demolished in 1885, leaving no complete windmill structure. The available record identifies the site as a former Rochester windmill but does not preserve a detailed working chronology.
Borstal Hill Mill is therefore a site-only windmill record. Its importance lies in recording a short-lived nineteenth-century wind-powered corn mill associated with Borstal and Rochester, now lost as a standing structure.
Timeline
1885
Mill demolished
Borstal Hill Mill was demolished in 1885.
Sources and records
List of windmills in Kent
Mills Archive catalogue references
Rochester windmill records
Mills Archive catalogue references
Rochester windmill records