Chesterton Windmill
windmill in Chesterton, Warwickshire, England, UK
Chesterton Windmill is a 17th-century cylindric stone tower windmill with an arched base, located outside the village of Chesterton, Warwickshire. It is a Grade I listed building and a striking landmark in south-east Warwickshire.
History
The windmill is one of Warwickshire's most famous landmarks. It stands on a hilltop overlooking the village of Chesterton, near the Roman Fosse Way and about five miles (8 km) south-east of Warwick. It was built around 1632–1633, probably by Sir Edward Peyto, who was Lord of the Chesterton Manor House. At this time, John Stone, a pupil of Inigo Jones, was in Chesterton designing the new Manor House and he probably helped with the windmill as well. Sir Edward was a mathematician and astrologer and probably his own architect for the windmill, but although claims have been made that the tower was originally built as an observatory, the estate accounts now at Warwick Record Office show that it has always been a windmill, making it the earliest tower mill in England to retain any of its working parts.
Construction
It is built of hard local limestone, with sandstone detailing, on a shallow platform of 71 feet 9 inches (21.87 m) in diameter. The mill tower with a cap height of 36 feet (11 m), unique worldwide in structure and mechanics, is supported on six semicircular arches, on piers, the outer faces of which are arcs of circles radiating from a common centre. A sandstone string course surmounts the six arches and runs round the tower, below the windows.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q665560. Authority coordinates are 52.231, -1.491. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1632 and 1633.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chesterton Windmill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.