Alford Windmill

Built as a seven-storeyed windmill in 1837 by the well-known local millwright John Oxley the mill belonged to a group of four windmills and is the sole survivor today. At the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century Alford featured a four-sailed mill, Wallace's or Station Mill, now a stump; a five-sailed windmill, Hoyles's Windmill, today's Alford Mill; and a six-sailer, the six-storeyed Myers's Windmill, built in 1827 with six left-handed sails, and also called the Alford Mill dismantled in 1973. The last commercial operators of the windmill were the Hoyles family. Purchased by Harry Hoyles, a local farmer and land owner, in the early 20th century, the business of milling and…

Alford Windmill is a seven-storeyed Lincolnshire type tower windmill with a stage featuring a slender, tapering brick tower, tarred to keep the moisture out, covered with a white onion-shaped (ogee) cap with fan-stage, huge fantail, and white sails. She has five patent-shutter sails and originally three, later on four, pairs of stones (two pairs of grey or peak stones (cut from rock found in the Peak District) and two French "quartzite" stones).

The mill provides a flywheel at the mill's base connected by pulley to a town gas driven engine in the adjacent shed. This engine makes the mill independent of wind if it is insufficient to drive the sailcross. In its heyday Alford Mill was capable of grinding 4 to 5 tonnes of corn a day.