Vale Mill Locking · Somerset · England

Locking windmill, identified in the Mills Archive as Vale Mill, was a tower corn mill at Locking. It was one of the Somerset tower mills that worked by wind alone until sometime before 1910. The last millers were Thomas Quick, father and son, who had milled at Vale Mill from at least 1870.

The mill retained a visually typical Somerset tower-mill form, with a parallel-sided tower, gable cap and chain winding. The cap was covered with corrugated iron, probably replacing thatch towards the end of the nineteenth century. Four common sails drove two pairs of 4-foot French Burr stones, underdriven by spur gearing on a pitch-pine upright shaft.

Unlike many Somerset windmills, it was not gutted, reused or demolished after it stopped working, but remained intact except for the loss of sails until 1962. In 1960 it was sold at auction with two acres of adjoining land. On 28 July 1962 the mill was gutted by fire.

The tower then stood derelict until the late 1960s, when it was incorporated into a new dwelling. The surviving fabric is a truncated tower built into a large house, forming a semicircular feature at the right end of the front and containing two circular rooms. It has been heavily altered with wide 1960s windows, and several millstones survive in the garden.