Mills owned by the National Trust 🌍

As one of the largest landowners in the UK, it's not surprising that the National Trust owns a number of windmills and watermills.

The windmills include each of the three types of post, smock, and tower mill. Amongst them are

the post mill at Pitstone, Buckinghamshire
the last remaining thatched tower mill at High Ham, Somerset
the last windmill on the Isle of Wight, at Bembridge
a small drainage smock mill at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire

Unfortunately, of these only the pumping mill is in full working order.

The National Trust watermills fare much better, in terms of being in working order. The Trust has an ongoing programme of mill restoration, which in the past often involved the millwright Martin Watts, and a good number of the mills can produce flour.

The Trust also has examples of water-powered factories, such as the large mill at Quarry Bank, which has been open since 1978, and spade and foundry mills.

In 2016, Martin Watts and his wife Sue collaborated to produce a publication for the Mills Archive called From Quern to Computer: The history of flour milling and in chapter 15 on "Windmills and watermills: Preservation and restoration", they wrote

In the early 1930s, Shalford Mill near Guildford, Surrey was saved from demolition by Ferguson's Gang, an idiosyncratic conservation group. They persuaded the mill's owner to donate the building to the National Trust, promising to raise money for its restoration. The National Trust, founded in 1895, was to play an increasingly significant role in mill preservation. Other early acquisitions include Winchester City Mill in 1929, Bourne Mill, Colchester, Essex in 1936 and Houghton Mill, Cambridgeshire in 1939. Today the National Trust owns more than 50 mills, many of which have been restored and are open to the public.

The emphasis is mine, though unfortunately they didn't actually list the 50 mills they knew of. After a great deal of research, this page now lists close to 50 mills of some form that the Trust own, though I don't know how that matches the (more than) 50 on the Watt's list.

An old version of the National Trust website used to hold a list of their industrial heritage properties, including mills, and they even added a page that listed more mills.

Details can be found below of most National Trust mills that are open to the public. Note unfortunately this list includes a number of properties that are nominally open, but which have in fact been closed off to public access for a number of years. I am aware of no current public access to:

High Ham windmill, Somerset
Park mill, Shugborough

National Trust mills not open to the public

The Trust also owns a number of mill properties that are not necessarily publicly accessible (some being leased as residences), including:

Windmills

Blakeney windmill which has been used as accommodation for NT staff and volunteers
Broadclyst windmill - yes the Trust own both the windmill and the watermill in the same village. I believe the cottage by the windmill is tenanted, making the mill inaccessible.
Burnham Overy Staithe windmill - used to be available for group holidays, but as the Trust neglected maintenance of the mill, these have now ceased.
Lundy Island which has possible fragments of a windmill tower - the island is leased to the Landmark Trust and can be visited
Staunton Harold. The reservoir and windmill are actually owned by Severn Trent water, but are managed by the National Trust, who run the car parking. The windmill tower was unsuccessfully partly converted into an observation tower in the 1960s. I'm not aware of any regular access to the interior.
Springhill, Northern Ireland. The estate here includes a windmill tower, later converted into a folly.
Foel Fawr (aka Foel Felin Wynt). This National Trust owned hillside is crowned with an empty tower of a windmill.
Orford Ness, which doesn't have a real windmill, does however have a mock mill - a tower which was used for wartime radar experiments, constructed to look like a windmill tower, common in that area of the country.

Watermills

Burnham Overy, Norfolk
Blicking watermill, Norfolk
Boar Mill, Corfe Castle, Dorset - which the National Trust restored for possible future opening, but that has just resulted in the cottage being available as a holiday let.
Flatford Mill, Suffolk, which is leased to the Field Studies Council.
Allerford Mill on the Holnicote Estate, Somerset
A mill at Castle Ward, County Down, Northern Ireland
The sawmill at Erdigg, Wales
The sawmill at Florence Court, Northern Ireland
The mill at Kedleston Hall
Corn mill, Cemlyn, Isle of Anglesey

Water powered pumps on National Trust properties

There are a number of water-powered pumps to be found on NT estates.

Stourhead has 2 waterwheel driven waterpumps which formed the estate water supply, both once restored but now seemingly neglected again, and viewable outside the gated gardens.

Mill artifacts and minor remains on National Trust properties

Some "countryside" properties of the National Trust also have (sometimes minor) mill remains on them.

Winchelsea, where the windmill blew down in the Great Storm of 1987, and the National Trust decided not to reinstate the mill, so that all that now remains are 3 of the piers that supported the trestle, together with a millstone and information board.
Ironbridge Gorge museums. When the National Trust took over the Ironbridge Gorge museums in 2026, they inherited a number of mill related artifacts. The ones I am aware of are:
- a green painted set of edge runners in the inaccessible display area above the shop at Blist's Hill
- a farm grinder by Corbett and Son's displayed, with additional interpretation boards at the Museum of Iron
- a dismantled waterwheel outside the Enginuity museum
Pitstone Green Museum. The National Trust own Pitstone Green Farm, but some of it is leased to this independently operated farm museum. Signs at the museum state that the exhibits are mostly owned by the museum, not the Trust. However, since the (electrically driven) sets of millstones on their hurst frames in the barn were a feature of the farm before the museum existed, I would assume they count as farm property, not museum property. One set of millstones is however "portable", and currently housed in a grain silo away from the infrastructure that drives the other stones, so may have been acquired later by the museum, and hence owned by them.
Mottisfont House. There is a millstone at the bridge over the river on the main driveway. Given the appearance of waterworks within the river here, this looks to be a watermill site, though there is no information provided on this.
Snowshill Manor has an impressive model windmill based whirligig, that consists of swarms of soldiers in bright red uniforms on a post mill. There are in fact multiple models - the original is on show inside in the "Hundred Wheels" museum area to preserve it, whilst a replica is sometimes installed outside in the original location.
Corfe Castle has an area called the Old Mill Picnic Area, on the Corfe river. There are some ruinous buildings here, which I think must be West Mill, but nothing that currently resembles a mill.
Sullington Warren. The windmill burnt down in 1911, but the iron windshaft remains on site, mounted on short pillars by the Sandgate Preservation Society in 1978.
The mill site at Hogford, on the Kingston Lacy Estate in Dorset was used for milling from the twelfth to the early eighteenth century. Whilst now deserted, it is preserved under pasture as part of an area of identified field monuments.
Greys Court has a donkey wheel, which is closely related to mill like equipment.

Garden millstones at National Trust properties

There are many millstones to be found as garden features in National Trust owned gardens, though the provenance of which mill these came from is not always known.

Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Information provided by a garden guide volunteer (who is knowledgable about mills):
There is a millstone in the Herb Garden, inserted beneath the Marble Bowl and supporting lions in the early 1970s, under the direction of Nigel Nicolson, youngest son of Vita Sackville-West. Also a millstone in "Sissinghurst Crescent" at the western end of the "Moat Walk", possibly inserted in the brickwork floor in the 1930s. Origins of both millstones currently unknown.
West Green House Garden. One peak stone, and two complete and one incomplete french burr stones in the long brick paved avenue. A further french burr stone is found in the paving outside the gates of the walled garden, and what looks like a concrete fake to make up the pair to balance the pattern here.
Bateman's, Burwash. As well as the working mill on the grounds, there are a high number of millstones in the garden paving, both in the gardens by the cafe, and in the garden areas by the pond.
Smallhythe Place A millstone was discovered on this property and presented to the adjacent church, where it is now used as a base below the present font when it was installed as a replacement in 1952.

Bibliography

Watermills and Windmills - A National Trust Pocketbook, Published 1986
J Kenneth Major

Watermills and Windmills - A National Trust Pocketbook, J Kenneth Major, 1986. ISBN 0-7117-0176-8
Corn Watermills of the National Trust in England, published 2019
Nigel Harris

Corn Watermills of the National Trust in England, Nigel Harris, 2019. ISBN 978-0955150166
Contains descriptions of
- Acorn Bank Mill, Temple Sowerby, Cumbria
- Bourne Mill, Colchester, Essex
- Clyston Mill, Broadclyst, Devon
- Coleshill Mill, Buscot and Coleshill Estates, Oxfordshire
- Cotehele Mill, St Dominick, Saltash, Cornwall
- Dunster Working Mill, Somerset
- Fountains Abbey Mill, Studley Royal, North Yorkshire
- Houghton Mill, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
- Knowles Mill, Bewdley, Worcestershire
- Lode Mill, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
- Manor Mill, Branscombe, Devon
- Nether Alderley Mill, Macclesfield, Cheshire
- Park Mill at Bateman's, Burwash, East Sussex
- Piles Mill, Holnicote Estate, Allerford, Somerset
- Shalford Mill, Surrey
- Shugborough Park Farm Mill, Staffordshire
- Stainsby Mill, Hardwick Estate, Derbyshire
- White Mill, Shapwick, Sturminster Marshall, Dorset
- Winchester City Mill, Hampshire
"Miller's Tale" article in the Autumn 2004 issue of the National Trust Magazine, covering the NT watermills of Bourne Mill, Quarry Bank, Cotehele Mill, Flatford Mill, and Houghton Mill. Illustrated with photos by Andrew Montgomery.
Industrial Archaeology Review, Volume 18, Issue 1 (1995). A special edition of this journal, containing a collection of papers on industrial archaeology relating to National Trust properties. Papers include:
- Power Development at the northern end of Quarry Bank Mill, Styal Cheshire, Jeremy Milln
- The survey and consolidation of industrial remains in Cornwall - a progress report, Nicholas Johnson, Nigel Thomas, Peter Herring & Adam Sharpe
- The Archaeology of Industrial Wales, Richard Keen
- Finch Foundry, Devon, Isabel Richardson & Martin Watts
- Patterson's Spade Mill, Northern Ireland, Michael D.A. Coulter
- Watermills on the Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset
  - Hogford Mill, Martin Papworth
  - White Mill, Shapwick, Nancy Grace, Martin Watts & Philip Brebner
- The Industrial Archaeology of Agriculture: Rural Life Collections and the National Trust, David Thackray
Industrial Archaeology Subject Paper, 1st Review, 1985 (an internal National Trust document prepared for the Trust's Properties Committee)
Guidebooks for individual properties, including
- National Trust guidebook for Finch Foundry, published 2010s
  National Trust
  
  National Trust Finch Foundry guidebook, ISBN 9781911384588
- National Trust guidebook for Quarry Bank, published 2021
  National Trust
  
  National Trust Quarry Bank Guidebook, 2021, ISBN 9781911384724
- National Trust guidebook for Dunster Castle and watermill, published 2010s
  National Trust
  
  National Trust Dunster Castle, Watermill and Gardens Guidebook 2022, ISBN 978-1912471737
- National Trust guidebook for Quarry Bank, published 1993
  National Trust
  
  Styal, An illustrated souvenir
- National Trust guidebook for Quarry Bank, published 2007
  National Trust
  
  Quarry Bank Mill and Styal Estate: A Souvenir Guide, 2007, ISBN 1843592584
- National Trust guidebook for Quarry Bank, published 2018
  National Trust
  
  Quarry Bank, 2018, ISBN 9781911384809
- National Trust guidebook for Bateman's Park Mill, published 1990
  National Trust
  
  Bateman's Park Mill guidebook, 1990
- National Trust guidebook for Bembridge windmill, published 1981
  National Trust
  
  Bembridge Windmill, Isle of Wight guidebook, 1981
- National Trust guidebook for Bembridge windmill, published 1980s?
  National Trust
  
  Bembridge Windmill, Isle of Wight guidebook
- National Trust guidebook for Bembridge windmill, published 2000s?
  National Trust
  
  Bembridge Windmill, Isle of Wight guidebook
The National Trust Year Book 1976-77, ISBN 0 905118 04 09; contains a 2 page article by Rex Wailes on Bembridge Windmill, with a couple of photos, and Adrian Peel's sectional drawing of the mill. After an introductory few paragraphs about the machinery in the mill, the middle 1/3rd of the article relates an anecdote when Rex was told that talking to the owner he would "find very difficult". Actually the owner was easy to talk to, and added a donation to the fund. The owner then said about Rex's next appointment with a lady for tea that he would "find her very difficult"! However, since Rex got on well with the lady's parrot, it was not difficult, and also resulted in another large sum being added to the restoration fund. The final paragraph sings the praises of R C Durdin who was effectively clerk of works for the restoration.

National Trust for Scotland

The National Trust for Scotland is a separate organisation, but they also have some mills

National Trust pin badges

The National Trust have produced a series of pin badges including many of their properties, and with the exception of the one for Bembridge windmill (which is a surprisingly poor representation of the mill), those produced for their mill properties are pretty attractive.