A Windmill Tour of Kent: Smock and Post Mills in the Garden of England
Climb the hill out of Cranbrook, in the heart of the Kentish Weald, and a white wooden giant rises above the rooftops: Union Mill, a smock mill built in 1814 and generally reckoned the tallest of its kind in England. It is only the most imposing member of a remarkable family. Kent once turned the wind into flour on a scale few English counties could match, and dozens of its mills still stand today, restored, cared for and in several cases actually grinding. This tour follows the two great Kentish types, the smock mill and the post mill, from the Weald to the Thanet coast.
The county of windmills
Kent has long been called the Garden of England, but it could just as fairly be called the county of windmills. The reasons are written into the landscape. The county grew grain in quantity on the chalk of the North Downs, in the Weald and on the marshland fringes, and it sat next to the largest flour market in the world: London. Windmills are recorded in England from the late twelfth century, and by the height of the corn trade in the nineteenth century several hundred mills had worked at one time or another across Kent. Almost every sizeable village had its mill, often standing on a green or a windy ridge where it doubled as a landmark for travellers and, near the coast, for sailors. Local language reflects that deep familiarity: in Kent and neighbouring Sussex the sails of a windmill are traditionally called sweeps, a word you will still hear from the volunteers who show visitors around today. When steam power and then the great roller mills of the ports undercut wind milling, most counties let their mills rot or pulled them down. Kent, unusually, kept a large share of its best ones, thanks to early preservation efforts by local councils, trusts and determined individuals.
Post mills: the medieval idea that refused to die
The post mill is the oldest form of European windmill, and its principle is disarmingly simple: the entire wooden body of the mill, machinery and all, balances on a single massive upright post and is turned bodily to face the wind. The post is braced by a trestle of crosstrees and quarterbars, which in many mills was left proudly open to the weather rather than enclosed in a roundhouse. It is a medieval design, yet Kent went on building post mills into the Victorian age. The most celebrated survivor is at Chillenden, between Canterbury and Sandwich: an open-trestle post mill built as late as 1868, making it one of the last of its type ever raised in England. Its story also shows how fragile these timber structures are. In 2003 a storm blew the old mill over, and what stands today is a careful reconstruction on the same spot, keeping the distinctive silhouette on its low ridge. Elsewhere in the county, the black-weatherboarded post mill at Rolvenden watches over the road through the village, and Stocks Mill at Wittersham, an eighteenth-century post mill on the Isle of Oxney, shows the type in its older, more weathered dignity. Standing beside one, you understand the appeal: a whole building that a single miller could push around to face the weather.
The smock mill, a Kentish signature
If the post mill is the medieval survivor, the smock mill is the true Kentish signature. A smock mill is a timber tower, usually octagonal, that tapers as it rises and is clad in overlapping weatherboards; only the cap at the top rotates, carrying the sweeps into the wind, while the body stays fixed. The name comes from the garment: with its sloping white sides the mill was thought to resemble a countryman in his linen smock. The type suited Kent perfectly. The Weald had centuries of skilled carpentry behind it, timber was cheaper than brick or stone for a tall structure, and a wooden tower could be built high enough to catch clean wind above trees and rooftops. Many Kentish smock mills stand on a brick base of one or more storeys, which gave storage space and extra height. Where other counties often tarred their smock mills black, Kent developed a taste for painting them white, which is why so many of the county's mills gleam against the sky. Firms of local millwrights, most famously Holman's of Canterbury, built and maintained these towers for generations, and their craftsmanship is a large part of why so many are still standing.
Union Mill, Cranbrook: the tallest of them all
Every tour of Kentish mills sooner or later arrives at Cranbrook. Union Mill was built in 1814 for Henry Dobell, and it was conceived on a grand scale from the start, a soaring white smock tower on a brick base that dominates the little Wealden town below. Dobell did not enjoy it for long; he went bankrupt within a few years, and tradition holds that the mill takes its name from the union of creditors who then ran it. Whatever the truth of the name, the mill passed into the hands of the Russell family, who worked it for generations, and it has been restored so thoroughly that it survives in working order, its sweeps turning on open days. Seen from the churchyard or the surrounding lanes, it is an astonishing object, often described as the finest smock mill in the country as well as the tallest. If you only have time for one Kentish windmill, this is the one.
A coast-and-downs circuit of east Kent
East Kent offers the densest cluster of rewarding mills. Herne Mill, above the village of Herne near Herne Bay, is a smock mill dating from 1789 and one of the oldest of the type left in the county, long cared for by dedicated volunteers. On the old Isle of Thanet, Draper's Mill at Margate is a fine smock mill associated with the Holman millwrighting firm of Canterbury; it was saved from demolition in the twentieth century and restored, and it opens to visitors in the summer months. At Sarre, beside the road that once crossed the Wantsum Channel to Thanet, the smock mill has been restored to working order and has ground flour again in modern times, giving you the rare chance to see and smell a Kentish mill doing its job. A few miles on, White Mill on the edge of Sandwich is an eighteenth-century smock mill preserved with its machinery as the centrepiece of a rural heritage museum. Strung together, these four make a comfortable day's circuit through orchard and marsh country, with Canterbury conveniently in the middle.
The Victorian latecomers
One of the surprises of Kentish mill history is how late the county went on building in wood and wind. Davison's Mill at Stelling Minnis, high on the downs south of Canterbury, is a smock mill of 1866 and among the last windmills built in Kent; remarkably, it went on working commercially deep into the twentieth century. Willesborough Windmill, on the edge of Ashford, followed in 1869, a big white smock mill that now stands restored amid the modern town, open to visitors and run by volunteers. And Chillenden's post mill of 1868 belongs to the same Indian summer. By then steam mills were already spreading and the industrial roller mills of the ports would soon follow, so these late mills were built against the tide of history. That they were built at all says something about the stubborn economics of country milling, and about how deeply the windmill was woven into Kentish rural life.
Planning your own tour
A practical word for anyone tempted to follow this route. Most preserved Kentish mills are run by trusts or volunteer groups and open on a limited calendar, typically summer Sunday afternoons and national heritage open days, so check opening arrangements before travelling. Distances are short: the Weald mills around Cranbrook and Rolvenden group naturally into one day, the east Kent circuit around Canterbury, Herne, Sarre, Sandwich and Margate into another. Do not overlook the oddities either, such as the six-sided smock mill on the cricket green at Meopham in the west of the county, a reminder that not every millwright stuck to the octagon. Bring shoes fit for steep ladders, since climbing through the floors of a working mill, past the stones and the great wooden gearing, is the whole point.
Explore on the map
Every mill mentioned here, and many more Kentish survivors besides, can be found on our interactive map. Zoom in on the county to trace your own route between smock towers and post mills, from the Weald to the white cliffs, and use the markers to jump straight to each mill's details. Kent rewards slow travel, and the map is the best place to start planning it.