Site overview
West Mill was a tower corn mill at Billinghay in North Kesteven. Specialist mill records identify the site as a wind-powered tower mill with a corn-milling function. The county windmill list records West Mill as a tower mill dating from 1844, demolished in the 1960s.
It had six sails, placing it among the more distinctive Lincolnshire multi-sailed tower mills. Historic photographs in the Muggeridge Collection show the west mill from the front and side. Later photographic registers record the tower stump in 1977 and later views of the surviving stump.
The site forms part of Billinghay's wider windmill landscape, alongside East Mill and a recorded smock mill.
Map
History
West Mill was the western tower mill at Billinghay, one of several windmills associated with the village. The Lincolnshire windmill list records it as a tower mill dating from 1844. Specialist mill records identify the mill as a wind-powered corn mill, and Windmill World records that it had six sails. This six-sailed arrangement places it within the strong Lincolnshire tradition of large, multi-sailed tower mills.
The mill survived into the period of historic photography. Muggeridge Collection photographs record Billinghay West Mill from the front and side, preserving its later external appearance. The county list records the mill as demolished in the 1960s, while later photographic registers record the stump of the tower in 1977 and further views of the reduced tower in the 2000s.
West Mill is best understood as a later nineteenth-century replacement or addition within Billinghay's established milling landscape. Its surviving record preserves the essential phases of its history: construction as a tower corn mill, use with six sails, twentieth-century decline, demolition of the main mill structure, and survival as a reduced stump.
Timeline
Tower mill built
Mill demolished
Tower stump photographed
Sources and records
Mills Archive site record
Muggeridge Collection photographs
Guy Blythman Windmill Photographic Register
List of windmills in Lincolnshire