Potton Windmill

 

 

 This photograph of the mill was taken in 1931 and shows some damage from a storm in January 1928 - it was taken as part of a survey of windmills in the county carried out by Bedfordshire Historical Record Society [Ref.Z50/91/60]

The earliest mention of the mill in any document at Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service is in 1808 when Thomas Waters of Wrestlingworth sold it, together with two lots of ground, for £400 to James Ingle of Potton, miller. Ingle mortgaged the mill and ground to Sarah Munn in 1812 for £400 and in 1818 conveyed 5 acres of arable to her in Windmill Field, the deed noting that the mill itself was to be conveyed to Thomas Mortlock and Frederick Cheetham Mortlock of Cambridge, bankers.

The deeds to the land in Windmill Field mention a conveyance in 1774 from William Hankin of Potton to Charles Franklin of Potton, surgeon, and a feoffment of 1801 from Franklin to James Brewer and Edmund Bumberry immediately followed by a mortgage to Henry Smith of Potton, cornfactor, before Brewer made a feoffment to Thomas Waters in 1807. It is not clear whether the land included the windmill but there is a reasonable chance that it did.

Three more stray deeds in another collection take the story a bit further. In 1833 the mill was owned by Jael Ingle of Cambridge, spinster, who sold it to John Smith of Potton, miller and the immediately lent him £200 on security of it, an acre of land attached to it and a further 2.75 acres allotted to James Ingle at Inclosure. The mill is then described as "corn windmill and roundhouse, barn and other buildings, running and going gears, sails, stones, cloths, rigging, wheels, wire machines and dressing machines" and recites that it was formerly occupied by James Ingle, then John Ingle, deceased, now John Smith.

The final mention of the mill in a document at Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service is in 1849. John Smith had taken out a mortgage for £500 with John Cressy Lloyd of Potton, partly secured on the mill in 1841 and now, eight years later, Lloyd was demanding repayment from Smith's heir following Smith's death.

Potton Windmill March 2007