Stanford Windill is a Grade II listed tower mill

Tower mill

A tower mill is a type of windmill which consists of a brick or stone tower, on top of which sits a roof or cap which can be turned to bring the sails into the wind....

 in Stanford

Stanford, Kent

Stanford is a village in Kent, England close to Ashford, and within the Parish of Stanford. It has been divided by the M20 into Stanford North and Stanford South. There is a windmill to the north of the M20 and west of Stone Street. The parish church is All Saints.-External links:*...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 that was built in 1857. It stands on Kennett Lane in Stanford.

History

Stanford mill was built in 1857 by the Ashford

Ashford, Kent

Ashford is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. In 2005 it was voted the fourth best place to live in the United Kingdom. It lies on the Great Stour river, the M20 motorway, and the South Eastern Main Line and High Speed 1 railways. Its agricultural market is one of the most...

 millwright

Millwright

A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman engaged with the construction and maintenance of machinery.Early millwrights were specialist carpenters who erected machines used in agriculture, food processing and processing lumber and paper...

 John Hill.The tower of the mill was cracked when a bomb was dropped nearby during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. A single cylinderparaffin

Paraffin

In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...

 engine was fitted between the wars.. This was replaced by a Ruston & Hornsby engine in 1936.. The mill had a new pair of sails in 1925, 1930 and 1936. It worked by wind until 1946, in which year the shutters were removed from the sails. The sails and cap roof were removed in 1961, and a corrugated asbestos roof built on the cap frame. Milling continued by engine until 1969, with the paraffin engine being replaced by an electric motor. Some of the milling furniture was used in the restoration of Draper's Mill, Margate

Margate

-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....

 in the 1970s.

Description

Stanford mill is a five storey tower mill which formerly had a Kentish type cap. It had four patent sails

Windmill sail

Windmills are powered by their sails. Sails are found in different designs, from primitive common sails to the advanced patent sails.-Jib sails:...

 carried on a cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

 windshaft. The mill was winded by a fantail

Windmill fantail

A Fantail is a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill, and which turns the cap automatically to bring it into the wind. The fantail was patented in 1745 by Edmund Lee, a blacksmith working at Brockmill Forge near Wigan, England, and perfected on mills...

 and there was a stage at first floor level. The mill drove four pairs of millstone

Millstone

Millstones or mill stones are used in windmills and watermills, including tide mills, for grinding wheat or other grains.The type of stone most suitable for making millstones is a siliceous rock called burrstone , an open-textured, porous but tough, fine-grained sandstone, or a silicified,...

s, two steel mills and two roller mills. The Brake wheel is a composite one, with iron arms and a wooden rim. This drives a cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

Wallower. The Great Spur Wheel is also of cast iron. The mill drives to the millstones is overdrift.

Millers

• J Fox 1862
• Thomas Rolfe 1878
• Henry Taylor 1913 - 1929
• G R Holt 1929 - 1946
• H Beresford Lye 1946 - 1959
• M Hancock & Son 1959 - 1969

References for above:-

External links

• Windmill World page on the mill.