High Salvington windmill, Sussex

High Salvington windmill is located on a hill outside Worthing, West Sussex. The hill is west of the Findon Valley and the hill on the other side of the valley is where Cissbury Ring is located.

The windmill is a post mill, built around 1756. It ceased working in 1897. After Worthing council bought it to save it as an example of a Sussex post mill, in 1976 a restoration trust began to restore it to full working order. Now all the machinery has been reinstalled and stone-ground flour is milled regularly. 

The black mill is quite an impressive site. Currently 2 of the sails are being restored.

It is the first post mill I have visited, as all the others around the London area have been tower aka smock mills.  The day I went there was also a craft fair so the place was quite busy.

These photos show the entrance with the stairs. The long white beam is used for turning the mill -

The ground floor section is called the roundhouse. We then went up the stairs to the main workings of the mill. The huge oak post -

In a post mill, the whole body of the mill turns around the central post. This post is supported by four quarter bars in the roundhouse.

The 3 m diameter brake wheel with 136 teeth -

This is a replica of the Glynde Wind Pump. lt is a restored, small hollow post-mill wind pump originally rescued from Glynde in 1988. It is modeled after a design used to pump water from trenches in northern France during the First World War. In Sussex it was probably used to irrigate fields.

The mill is open for tours on 2 Sundays a month from April to September.

See the website of High Salvington windmill.

See more on Wikipedia post mills and on the Sussex mills group.