Billingford Tower Mill Billingford · Norfolk · England

Billingford Tower Mill stands near Billingford, close to Diss, and is also known as Billingford-Pyrleston Tower Mill. The site had an earlier post mill, shown on William Faden's 1797 map of Norfolk. That post mill was blown over and destroyed in 1859.

The present tower mill was built in 1860 at a cost of £1,300. It is a five-storey red-brick tower mill with a boat-shaped cap, fantail and four double-patent sails on a cast-iron windshaft. Its machinery included two pairs of stones driven overdrift, with a third pair on a hurst frame on the ground floor that could be driven by engine. The brake wheel carries a tablet inscribed W. Skinner 1860. Steam power and later an oil engine supplemented the wind-powered machinery.

Billingford had a long sequence of millers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Arthur Daines was the last miller. He used wind power until 1956, by which time the mill was down to two sails. After further wind damage, he reverted to auxiliary power and ceased working the mill in 1959. Billingford is therefore recorded as the last wind-powered mill to work commercially in Norfolk.

After milling ceased, the mill was sold to Mr Valiant and restored for preservation, although the surrounding mill buildings were demolished. The mill is protected as a Grade II* listed building and has remained an important Norfolk Windmills Trust preservation site. New sails were installed in 2020, continuing the long conservation history of one of Norfolk's most important tower mills.