Soham Mere Mill Soham · Cambridgeshire · England

Soham Mere Mill stood in the drainage landscape of Soham Mere and Soham Lode. It was built by Hunts of Soham at a cost of £1,000 and combined two functions: it could grind grain and pump water. This made it both a corn mill and a drainage mill, linking ordinary milling with the management of water in the fenland landscape.

The mill's working arrangement required the sails to be turned manually into the wind. A family lived in the mill so that changes in wind direction could be dealt with at any time, including at night. The mill therefore had a directly practical role in both milling and drainage work on Soham Lode.

Twentieth-century photographs preserve its later appearance. A Cambridge Antiquarian Society photographic record made by Douglas Gavin Reid in about 1929 shows the mill shortly before demolition work. Other photographic registers record it as a smock windpump, including views in working order, disused with two sails, and derelict with two sails. The mill was demolished during the twentieth century, but the documented record preserves its unusual dual role in Soham's wind-powered fenland landscape.