Mileham Tower Mill Mileham · Norfolk · England

Mileham towermill was built at the end of a long track to the south-west of Mileham. Norfolk Mills records it as a four-storey tarred red-brick tower, thirty-eight feet high, with twenty-one-inch-thick walls and a twenty-four-foot diameter base. Two opposite doors were set into the base on the east and west sides, with a further door on the south side of the meal floor. Four double-shuttered sails, each with seven bays of three shutters, powered four pairs of stones. The upright shaft was a graft shaft made of both wood and iron.

The working history is closely tied to the Tilney family. Reuben Tilney moved to the Mileham postmill and towermill in 1853 after William Critoph bought Yaxham smock mill, where Tilney had previously worked. Thomas Smithdale's records show that in July 1860 a new windshaft and tail gudgeon were quoted for Mr Tilney, and in 1865 a pair of millstones and items for a steam engine were booked to him. After Reuben Tilney's death in 1877, his millwright stock, including wheels, nuts, curbing, mill sails, sail racks, ten millstones, smut and flour mills and other equipment, was advertised for sale.

In 1881 the brick tower windmill and the postmill were advertised together by private contract. The notice described a powerful, well-appointed brick tower windmill driving four pairs of stones, a post windmill driving two pairs of stones, a brick, stone and tile dwelling house, bake office, stables, outbuildings, garden and about two acres of pasture, then occupied by Benjamin Stringer. Later millers included Henry Steggles, Alfred Tilney and John Wilkin. Ordnance Survey mapping in 1891 and 1904 recorded the windmills as corn mills.

Geraldine Neale, daughter of John Wilkin, later wrote that a sail broke in a gale in 1904 and that a similar occurrence finally put the mill out of commission. Another account reported that the mill ceased working in 1924 and was dismantled soon after. By 1926 the mill was derelict with a bare stock and the remains of three skeletal sails. A 1934 photograph still showed stocks, three broken sails and fanstage, while a 1937 Karl Wood painting showed the tower as an empty shell. The tower shell remained in 1936, 1949 and 1970, when it retained a few floor beams and a millstone on the floor.