Site overview

Spaldwick tower mill is recorded by Windmill World as a very ruinous tower mill at Spaldwick. The Windmill Photographic Register gives a fuller condition sequence: National Monuments Record photographs show it derelict with remains of a fantail but with sails and cap roof gone; an A. C. Smith photograph from May 1974 shows a ruined stump of the tower; and University of Kent material from 1933 and 1935 records a derelict mill with windshaft, brake wheel and part of the fan surviving. Mills Archive material includes a sketch record of the derelict tower.

Local photographic material describes Spaldwick Mill as a brick-built tower mill with an ogee wooden cap, sails missing and broken fantail. The consulted sources do not identify a construction date, builder, millers, final working date or designation status.

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

Spaldwick tower mill is a former windmill at Spaldwick in Huntingdonshire, now Cambridgeshire. Windmill World identifies the site as Spaldwick tower mill and describes it as very ruinous. The Windmill Photographic Register provides the clearest surviving structural evidence.

It records National Monuments Record photographs of the mill as derelict, with remains of the fantail but with sails and the cap roof gone. It also records an A. C. Smith photograph from May 1974 showing a ruined stump of the tower, and University of Kent photographs from August 1933 and August 1935 showing the derelict mill with windshaft, brake wheel and part of the fan surviving. Mills Archive material includes a digital image record titled Spaldwick derelict tower, Hunts.

A local photographic description records Spaldwick Mill as a brick-built tower mill with an ogee wooden cap, sails missing and fantail broken. No consulted source gives a secure construction date, owner, builder, millwright, working millers, machinery inventory beyond the photographic evidence, or final date of milling. The documented history is therefore principally one of visible decline: a brick tower mill, derelict by the early twentieth century with some cap and internal wind machinery still traceable, later reduced to a very ruinous stump.

Timeline

1922

Derelict mill with cap recorded

The Windmill Photographic Register records a 1922 image of the mill derelict with cap and remains of fantail.
1933–1935

Windshaft and brake wheel recorded

University of Kent photographs record the derelict mill with windshaft, brake wheel and part of the fan in 1933 and 1935.
1974

Ruined tower stump photographed

The Windmill Photographic Register records an A. C. Smith photograph of the ruined stump of the tower in May 1974.

Sources and records

Windmill World entry for Spaldwick windmill
Windmill Photographic Register entry for Spaldwick tower mill
Mills Archive record for Spaldwick derelict tower
Old Spaldwick photographic record