Shipley Mill

Shipley Mill is famous for two things. The BBC filmed Jonathan Creek here, and Hilaire Belloc once lived here.

She – apparently windmills are always female – was built in 1879 and is now the youngest and largest windmill left in Sussex. Even back then, costs rose – estimate £800, actual build cost £2,500.

Belloc purchased the mill in 1906, living at nearby Kingsland while renting out the mill. This is where he wrote many of his novels, poems and essays, including ‘Stane Street’. For a while Shipley Mill was known as Belloc's Mill.

He tried to keep the mill in decent repair between the two world wars, but by 1926 her working life was over, due mainly to the importing of cheap foreign grain. On his death in 1953, the mill was in a sorry state. His friends raised the money to restore the characterful old lady, and in 1958 at the opening ceremony, a plaque was put above the entrance commemorating Belloc.

Sadly it’s no longer possible to go inside and look round the mill, but it was still in working order when I went inside a few years ago. It is still, as it always has been, in private ownership.