Cottingham windmill, Northamptonshire

Cottingham #1698

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NGR: SP849901

(52.50237,-0.7500)

OS map + aerial, OS 6in historical, Google Maps aerial, Dual Google & Bing maps, OpenStreetMap geograph

Map/aerial photo of the area around the mill

tower mill - house converted

Although a mill is recorded in Cottingham in the Doomesday Book, this in all probability refers to a water mill. By 1536, when Peterborough Abbey was disolved and its abbot, John Chambers became "warden of Cotingeham", the parish is recorded to have 3 mills - one horse drawn, one watermill and one windmill. This may well have been on the same site as the present mill, since there is evidence of a mill mound - normally only constructed to raise the height of early post mills.

The 1720 enclosure awards map does indeed show a mill on the present site, noting the owner of the enclosure as John Aldwincle. The existing tower mill probably dates from the late 18th century, and for most of the 19th century it ran with 2 pairs of stones, with the Aldwinckle family still active as millers, at least in neighbouring Middleton. Sometime towards the end of the 19th century the mill lost its sails (and cap?), perhaps as result of a storm in 1895, and the last recorded miller was George Atkins in the Kelly's Directory of 1903.

In 1934 the property, described as 4 storey mill with workings inside, sold at auction for £5. Various plans followed to mount a water tank on the tower, but there is no record of one actually being installed. The millstones were removed prior to 1955, when Charlie Lawson (who ran a radio repairers) bought the tower for £25, and reduced its height to 3 floors. After making it waterproof, it was used mainly for storage of radios.

Having survived a plan to demolish it it 1972, in 1983 a planning application was submitted to turn "the old windmill ruins" into a house, and in 1986 the then owners, the Clarke family, began work on the conversion, which was completed in July 1996.

Cottingham, 2000 © Ray Clarke

Entry in Mills Archive database - #1698

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