Harby Windmill Remains Harby · Leicestershire · England

Harby Windmill is one of the surviving windmill structures of the Vale of Belvoir. The village had several windmills during the nineteenth century, reflecting its agricultural setting and its position close to the Grantham Canal. Within that local milling landscape, the windmill on Colston Lane survives as a reduced tower rather than a complete working mill.

The structure is recorded as the remains of Harby Windmill and is protected as a Grade II listed building. It represents the masonry survival of a tower mill, the form that increasingly replaced earlier timber post mills in many parts of the Midlands during the nineteenth century. The surviving remains are associated with the west side of Harby, near the canal, distinct from the former tower windmill to the north of the village that was later converted to private residential use.

The tower was partly taken down during the Second World War. That truncation removed the upper working elements of the mill and left the reduced structure visible today. A historic image of the Harby windmill dating from around 1925 shows the mill before this later reduction, and the list of Leicestershire windmills records the tower’s Second World War truncation.

The present site is therefore a remnant of Harby’s wind-powered corn-milling history rather than a restored mill. Its significance lies in the retained listed tower fabric, the survival of the mill site on Colston Lane, and the connection with a village landscape that once contained multiple windmills serving the agricultural Vale of Belvoir.