The Round Hill Society

by Andrew Partington from The Round Hill Reporter June 2001

Tower Mill, otherwise known as Round Hill Mill or Cutress’s Mill, was one of the largest windmills in the country. [Click on photo]


This picture of the Belton Rd Windmill is from a newspaper cutting sent to us by Mr H Ansell of Ditchling Road. It shows the mill in 1888. The houses behind are in Princes Road
Situated at the top of Round Hill Road & Belton Road, it was built in 1834 and changed hands several times before being bought by the Cutress family in 1879.

Sale of Freehold Building Land on 5th June 1912

[Thank you to Sally Bunkham for the plan]

Just under a year before the windmill was demolished, a sale of Freehold Building Land known as THE TOWER MILL ESTATE was held at the Old Ship Hotel in Brighton.

The plan drawn up by architect and surveyor W. H. Nash of 42 Ship Street Brighton shows what was presumably Tower Mill Cottage, above which is a stable and coach house and a single shed.

Removal of the last sweep of the windmill prior to demolition was scheduled for 1st April 1913.

The large footprint of the windmill (sixty feet high with a wide base for storage of sacks of corn) is evidenced in the number of building plots it takes up.

There appears to be a greater number of plots on this plan than the ten houses actually built. 4 houses were added on the west side and 6 on the east side of Belton Road.The mill was dismantled in 1913 and many of it's 50,000 bricks were used in the construction of 10 new houses, which remain on the site in Belton Road today.

The mill may be long gone but is not forgotten, since it is still featured on the many shopfronts and bags of Forfars bakeries.

Here’s an old picture of St Peter’s Church.

In the background you can see the windmill on top of the Round Hill before the houses were built.