Windmills of my mind

 Gilbert's Mill on Farm 1875. In 1905 Medway Hospital was built on the site.
The road next to it is still called Windmill Road.

Wednesday, August 12, 1846

On Saturday afternoon, a frightful accident occured to a woman named Elizabeth Cole, the wife of a labourer employed in Chatham Dockyard. This poor woman resided with her family on Chatham Hill, and she had been out for the last few days gleaning in the corn fields around her immediate neighbourhood, and having cleaned the wheat she took it on the day in question to Mr Gilbert's Mill to be ground. The woman then went for the purpose of desiring the miller to withdraw the bran from the flour, and instead of taking the path leading up to the mill. She walked crossways on the higher ground, and just as she came up, the mill being at work, one of the swifts struck her on the neck, and she fell to the ground. She bled profusely and died almost instantly. Her left jaw was dislocated, and nearly every one of her teeth were knocked out. She was 46 years old and left 10 children.

From the Morning Post.

Star Mill. View from Darland Banks.

The last working windmill in the neighbourhood of Luton was the Star Mill (Darland Mill, Upper Chatham Mill or Austin's Mill). It was a wooden smock mill on a single story brick base and was situated at the top of the Darland Banks at the end of Star Mill Lane. It was owned by the War Department but was sold to the Brompton, Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester Waterworks Company when they bought the land to build their reservoirs. The last millers, Messrs R. and F. Pain, continued grinding corn until, rotten and unsafe with only two of its sails still in place, the mill had to be knocked down in 1925.

From  'The Windmills of Luton'

Delce Mill, Glovers Mill.

“Delce Mill was owned by a Mr Glover, who lived in Mill House in Burritt Street opposite the mill and was similar to, but smaller than, the mill house on New Road at the top of Star Hill  (See below) which became the Good Companions Club. The mill was built by the Dutch and worked until the outbreak of the Second World War, two new sails having been fitted in the 1930s.

Friday's Mill, sometimes known as Stedman's Mill, stood at the top of Star Hill, near St. Catherines Almshouses. 

Field's Mill, which together with Killick's Mill, formed a pair of windmills that stood on Broom Hill overlooking Strood. It burnt down in 1875.

Upchurch windmill postcard

Wakeley's Mill, Horsham Lane Upchurch. Built 1819. A Kentish Tower Mill destroyed totally by fire 1910.

Then and now of windmill in Ordnance St, Chatham.