Warton Post Mill Warton · Lancashire · England

Warton Post Mill was a sunk post mill at the end of Mill Lane, Warton. It is one of the most unusual Lancashire windmill sites because its history includes repeated movement before its final position on the Fylde. The mill is thought to have been built in Lincolnshire around 1695, before being moved to Rufford in Lancashire in the early or mid eighteenth century and then moved again to Warton in 1771.

The mill worked as a post corn mill and last worked by wind around 1895. It then deteriorated, and the remaining structure stood in a degraded state in the twentieth century. The survival of the substructure made the site significant as an example of a sunk post mill, a form in which the main post and supporting timbers were set into the ground rather than carried on an above-ground trestle.

In June 1999 the substructure was excavated by Chorley Archaeological Society. The buried cross-trees, lower ends of the main post, and quarterbars were found to be rotten. In September 1999 three of the quarterbars were destroyed by vandals. The mill was then dismantled and stored away from the original site. The mill had been listed at Grade II in 1996, but it was removed from the National Heritage List for England in 2019 because the building no longer met the criteria for listing. The site is now remembered through the Warton Post Mill name, the former Mill Lane location, and surviving associated objects such as the millstone and old anvil preserved at the former smithy.