Doolittle Mill Kensworth · Bedfordshire · England

Doolittle Mill, formerly Horsham Mill, is one of Bedfordshire's most distinctive surviving mill sites. Bedfordshire Archives records that it was in the civil parish of Totternhoe until 1985, when it was transferred to Eaton Bray. Historic England identifies the building as Doolittle Mill and describes it as formerly known as Horsham Mill, built sometime between 1815 and 1825.

Bedfordshire Archives notes earlier milling in the vicinity, including four mills recorded in Totternhoe in Domesday Book, and a 1708 will in which Richard Gadbury devised a windmill and separately referred to a millhouse and watermill. A 1769 will described Horsamills, otherwise Do-Little Mills, and an earlier windmill is shown about 60 yards north of Doe Little Mill on Thomas Jefferys' 1765 map. The present combined mill was first mapped at its current site in 1826 as Dolittle Windmill.

J. Steele Elliott described it in 1931 as a remarkable combination building for both wind and water power, each working independently. The watermill was driven by an overshot wheel within the building and occupied the two lower storeys at two different levels, while the windmill worked machinery in the upper two floors. The windmill originally ran two pairs of four-foot stones.

Its sails were two of double-shutter and two of single-shutter form. A communicating passage connected one windmill floor with the attic floor of the house. The mill was also later worked with steam power.

The Buckmaster family is strongly associated with the site: Richard Buckmaster appears in a Chancery suit deposition in 1539, Richard Buckmaster held a mill at Totternhoe in 1610, Christopher Buckmaster was a miller with freehold in 1820 and at least until 1830, and nineteenth-century estate maps record Christopher Buckmaster as owner and occupier. Wind power ended after a westerly gale blew the complete mill head, with sails, into the mill pond. Historic England states that the mill is now cut off at the fourth floor after the sails blew down around 1868 to 1890.

The 1926 rating valuation recorded the mill as owned and occupied by the Misses Buckmaster, with land, a water wheel out of order, an engine described as no good, and a five-floor brick and tiled mill with two stones of three feet diameter. The former Department of the Environment listed Doolittle Mill at Grade II* in September 1980. Bedfordshire HER material describes the overshot wheel driving gear on the two lower floors and the windmill above driving two pairs of stones on the second floor.

Windmill World records Doolittle as a corn tower mill which also used water power and was undergoing restoration.