Shipley Windmill
Local highlightA big white smock mill in the Sussex Weald, owned for nearly half a century by the writer Hilaire Belloc
King’s Mill at Shipley is a smock mill, the kind with a tall weatherboarded body and a cap on top that turns the sails into the wind. Horsham millwrights Grist and Steele built it in 1879 on a brick base, reusing timbers from the older post mill it replaced, and it ground corn until 1926. Hilaire Belloc, the writer, bought the mill with his house next door in 1906 and owned both until his death in 1953; after that the mill was restored as his memorial and opened to visitors in 1958. It is one of the largest smock mills left in England, and television viewers may know it as Jonathan Creek’s home in the BBC series. The mill has been closed to visitors since 2009, but you can see it from the lanes around Shipley. Knepp Castle and the rewilded Knepp estate are just to the southeast, and Billingshurst station is about 6km northwest.
