Downfield Mill Soham · Cambridgeshire · England

Downfield Mill stands on Windmill Close in Soham and is one of the important surviving windmills of the town. The site has a complex structural history. It began as a timber-framed smock windmill built in 1726. In 1860 the mill was raised, and after storm damage in 1889 it was substantially rebuilt as the tower mill that survives today.

The listed structure is a four-storey tarred brick tower mill. Its cap was rebuilt in metal sheeting but retains the original ogee form. The mill has a renewed fantail and sails, and for many years it worked with two sails before later restoration returned it to four. Internally, most of the machinery belongs to the nineteenth-century rebuilding, but timber from the 1726 mill survives, including part of the main shaft. The result is a building that preserves both early smock-mill fabric and later tower-mill engineering.

The mill was restored in 1975 and recorded as a working mill. In the early twenty-first century its condition deteriorated, with the cap, sails, and fantail requiring repair or replacement. It was included on the Heritage at Risk Register in 2009, and a programme of works was prepared with English Heritage grant aid. A later restoration in 2014–2015 renewed its external working form and gave the mill four sails. Downfield Mill is protected as a Grade II* listed building and remains one of Soham's key surviving windmill structures.