Part-restored smock mill at Soham, formerly a Fenland drainage mill converted for corn milling.
Northfield Mill at Soham is also known as Shade Mill and Townsend Mill. Windmill World records it as a complete, part-restored smock corn mill. Archaeology Data Service material describes Shade Mill as an early eighteenth-century drainage mill, moved to its present site in 1839 and converted to a corn mill.
A Cambridgeshire windmills survey records that the mill went out of use around 1932 and identifies it as the only full-sized Fenland drainage mill surviving substantially complete. The same survey describes a small hexagonal smock mill with a yellow brick base, an ogee cap, surviving fantail mechanism and extensive internal machinery, including two pairs of stones, a wooden brake wheel, wallower and iron windshaft. Later survey evidence records poor condition but also temporary repairs between 2009 and 2012 to address leaks.
Northfield Mill stands at Soham and is also recorded as Shade Mill and Townsend Mill. Windmill World uses the name Northfield Mill, with Shade Mill as an alternative, and describes it as a complete, part-restored smock corn mill. Archaeology Data Service material records Shade Mill as a smock mill built in the early eighteenth century as a drainage mill, moved to its present site in 1839 and converted to a corn mill.
A Cambridgeshire windmills survey gives a closely related account, stating that it was moved and converted into a corn mill about 150 years before the survey and went out of use around 1932. The survey describes it as a small hexagonal mill with a yellow brick base, vertical weatherboarding over horizontal boarding, and a small ogee cap with a large finial. It formerly carried clockwise patent sails and an eight-bladed fantail.
Surviving technical details recorded in the survey include the spider that controlled the missing sails, part of one stock, the fan frame and fantail mechanism, a worm gear working against the exterior rack, two pairs of under-driven stones, a pulley for external engine drive, a square wooden upright shaft with an iron joint, a wooden brake wheel with iron teeth, an all-wooden wallower and an iron windshaft. The survey records that the mill had stood derelict for fifty years but survived relatively well, with earlier repair and re-weatherboarding work by P. P. Johnson and Chris Wilson of Over. Later condition notes describe the mill as poor, with temporary repairs carried out in 2009-2012 to deal with leaks.
The building remains one of the most technically significant surviving Fenland windmill structures because of its drainage origin and retained machinery.