Monument record MDR10150 - Windmill (site of), Derby Road, Ilkeston

Situated a few yards to the north of the A609 leading from Ilkeston to Derby, this post mill was about 1 mile from the town centre, close to the Nutbrook Canal. It has been suggested that this windmill was originally located at Hungar Hill, but no written evidence to support this has been found. The mill does not appear on either Greenwood's map of 1824/5 or the first edition of the Ordnance Survey on 1836, but is shown on the 1876 Ordnance map published in 1896, as a working mill, suggesting it was erected about the middle of the century. By the 1905/6 revision of the OS, published in 1908, it had become the 'Old Windmill'. It continued to appear in this form until the mid 1930s when it disappeared. An advertisement in 'The Miller' of June 1885 advises: "To be sold - a good Post Mill at Ilkeston, Derbyshire, to be removed off premises, with four spring sails, one pair French and one pair grey stones, spur gear etc.". It was not sold and removed, however, since a photograph at about the turn of the century shows the windmill as a complete post mill with a porch extension at the rear, complete with a brick roundhouse which has external buttresses. The four spring sails are shown in place. Another photograph of the mill taken about 10 years later shows that, whilst the buck, roundhouse and ladder are still complete, the sails have gone. In the early 1920s a further photograph shows that it has lost the ladder and that the roof of both the buck and the porch were obviously badly damaged. A sale catalogue of 1920 offers two enclosures of grass with buildings, namely a stable and the remains of an old windmill. The catalogue states that the site of the windmill would make an excellent site on which to erect a residence. Presumably the mill was sold and subsequently demolished. (1)