A Windmill Tour of Sussex: Across the Downs and the Weald
High on the crest of the South Downs above the village of Clayton, two windmills stand a few hundred paces apart. Jill, a white timber post mill, was hauled up here from Brighton in 1852; Jack, a dark brick tower mill, rose beside her in 1866. Together they form one of the most recognisable skylines in southern England, visible for miles across the Weald spread out below. They are also the natural starting point for a tour of Sussex, a county that once looked to the wind for its daily bread and still keeps a remarkable number of its historic windmills, many of them lovingly restored and several still able to grind flour.
A county made for wind
The geography of Sussex explains why the county became such good windmill country. Along the coast runs the long chalk ridge of the South Downs, an open, treeless upland where the wind blows steadily off the English Channel. Inland lies the Weald, a lower, once heavily wooded landscape of clay and sandstone stretching towards Kent and Surrey. The chalk of the Downs holds little surface water, so where other regions built watermills on their rivers, the downland villages raised windmills on their hilltops instead. In the Weald, millers set their mills on whatever local rise would catch a breeze above the trees. Demand was never in doubt: Sussex grew corn, and the fast-expanding coastal towns, Brighton above all, needed flour in ever greater quantities through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The decline, when it came, was the same story as everywhere in England. Steam-driven roller mills at the ports, railways and cheap imported grain undercut the village miller in the late nineteenth century, and one by one the sails stopped. What is unusual about Sussex is how much survived, and how determinedly local volunteers have brought it back to life.
Jack and Jill above Clayton
Jill is the more welcoming of the Clayton pair. She is a post mill, the oldest windmill design used in Europe: the entire timber body, machinery and all, pivots on a massive central post so the miller can turn the whole structure to face the wind. Built in Brighton, she was dragged across the Downs to Clayton in 1852, by tradition with teams of oxen and horses doing the pulling. Restored over many years by a devoted volunteer team, she now turns her sails and grinds flour on summer open days, and the smell of fresh meal inside a working mill is something no photograph can convey. Jack, the brick tower mill of 1866, is the taller and darker of the two; he is privately owned and admired from the outside. The pair stand almost on the South Downs Way itself, so walkers on the national trail pass right beneath the sails, with the whole Weald unrolling to the north.
Post mills: the old-timers of the Weald
Sussex was famously post-mill country, and the Weald is where the type shows its age most proudly. On the edge of Ashdown Forest stands Nutley Mill, a small open-trestle post mill whose supporting timberwork is completely exposed to the weather rather than enclosed in a roundhouse. It is counted among the oldest working mills of its kind in Britain, rescued from dereliction by volunteers in the twentieth century, and on open days its sails still turn against the forest sky. At Rotherfield, the post mill on Argos Hill keeps watch over the high Weald, and another stands at Cross-in-Hand near Heathfield. South of the forest, Oldland Mill at Keymer tells one of the great volunteer stories of Sussex: a ruinous post mill patiently rebuilt over decades until it could grind grain once more. Watch for the details that make post mills so engaging, the tail pole used to swing the body round, the ladder that rises and falls with it, and the brick roundhouse that many mills gained to protect the trestle and store sacks.
Halnaker: the mill in the poem
North-east of Chichester, a brick tower mill crowns the bare summit of Halnaker Hill. A mill has stood on this hilltop for centuries, serving the surrounding manor, and the present tower is one of the oldest mill structures in Sussex. Around the turn of the twentieth century it fell out of use and into decay, and it was this ruin that moved Hilaire Belloc to write his melancholy poem about Ha'nacker Mill, in which the broken sails become an image of a rural England passing away. The mill was later restored outwardly as a landmark, and although it is an empty shell without machinery, the walk up to it is among the loveliest short climbs in the county. The lane from Halnaker village passes through a famous tunnel of overarching trees before opening onto the hilltop, where the reward is a huge view over the coastal plain, the spire of Chichester Cathedral and the glittering line of the sea.
Shipley: the writer's own mill
Belloc's connection with Sussex mills went far beyond poetry. In 1906 he bought King's Land, a rambling house at Shipley in the low Weald, and with it came the windmill next door: a big smock mill of 1879, its octagonal timber tower tapering like the linen smock that gave the type its name, crowned by a cap that turns to face the wind. It is the largest smock mill in Sussex and one of the most handsome in the country. Belloc lived at King's Land until his death in 1953, and the mill was restored in his memory, a rare case of a windmill serving as a writer's monument. Television viewers of a certain age will also recognise it as the home of the fictional magician's assistant in the series Jonathan Creek. Opening arrangements have varied over the years, so check locally before travelling, but even from the lane the mill is a magnificent sight.
Mills within sight of the sea
The coastal strip has its own string of survivors. On the cliff-top green at Rottingdean, east of Brighton, the black smock mill known as Beacon Mill was a landmark for sailors in the Channel; a woodcut of it by the artist William Nicholson later became one of the most famous devices in British publishing. At West Blatchington in Hove, a curious smock mill rises directly out of a range of barn roofs, an arrangement striking enough that John Constable sketched the mill in 1825; today it houses a milling museum. Above Worthing, the restored post mill at High Salvington opens on summer afternoons, run entirely by volunteers. Further east the tower mills take over: Polegate Mill, a tall red-brick tower of 1817 near Eastbourne with a milling museum at its foot, and the tower mill at Stone Cross a little to the north, capped with its distinctive dome.
Planning your tour
A Sussex mill tour rewards a little planning. Nearly all the mills are cared for by volunteers, which means limited opening, typically Sunday and bank holiday afternoons between spring and autumn, and everything depends on the goodwill of the people who give up their weekends to keep the sails turning. National Mills Weekend each May is the best single moment, when mills across the county open together. The Sussex Mills Group draws the threads together and is the place to check dates. Walkers can build a fine day around the South Downs Way, taking in Jack and Jill and the ridge towards Ditchling Beacon, while drivers exploring the Weald should allow time for narrow lanes. Remember that several mills, Jack at Clayton and the post mill at Cross-in-Hand among them, are private homes or private property, to be enjoyed respectfully from public paths.
Explore on the map
Every mill mentioned here, from Jill's white weatherboarding above Clayton to the brick tower on Halnaker Hill, is plotted on our interactive map, alongside hundreds of other windmills across England and the rest of the world. Zoom in on the stretch of country between Chichester and Eastbourne and you can trace your own route along the Downs and through the Weald, then use the map on the day to navigate from sail to sail. Few counties reward windmill hunting so generously as Sussex.