Willingdon Post Mill
One of the mounds at the top of the hill is the site of the Old Willingdon/Jevington Mill. This area is also an important cross roads between the parishes of Eastbourne, Willingdon and Jevington
The Mill
We don’t know exactly when this mill was built – we know there was a mill on site here in the 16th century as there are records of a terrible accident involving a labourer John Dyggons who was caught in one of the sails and was killed. The first known miller was John Gallad in the 17th Century.
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The mill was damaged by storms in February 1769 the Sussex Advertiser reported: ‘Last Tuesday, 3am, at Lewes and about 20 miles away, a terrible tempest of thunder, lightning and rain... Willingdon Mill had the doors & windows carried a great distance’
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In December 1787 it was on the route of a group of smugglers who were apprehended by Messrs Mandy, Baker & West, Revenue Officers, with 7 Light Dragoons. They seized 119 Casks of Brandy and Geneva and 19 horses.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Nicholas Chapman was the miller here and had committed to providing 6 sacks of flour daily in the time of invasion but didn’t have his own supply of wheat. A couple of years later, the mill site was of the 14 sites chosen for Sussex beacons – a warning system of a series of fires which to be lit in the case of invasion.
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The mill was destroyed by a huge storm on 3rd March 1817 – newspapers reported that the whole of the mill, with the exception of the brickwork of the round house was carried away by the fury of the gale to a considerable distance from its site and shattered into a thousand piece. The mill stones were unbroken and what is remarkable, a cat, the only living creature on the premises at that time, was extricated from some fragments of timber, alive and unhurt.
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Just down from the hilltop here is an old road or droveway, used for thousands of years. It leads to a junction with paths continuing towards Eastbourne (Old Town), the Willingdon Levels/Shinewater and Jevington. This path was probably the road travelled by those going to and from Willingdon Mill, worn by centuries of traffic carrying corn up and flour down the hill. In the painting above by Lady Sophia Burrell you can see the continuation of this droveway going down the hill into Willingdon.
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Polegate Mill
Polegate Windmill, a Grade II* listed tower mill replaced the Willingdon Post Mill when it was destroyed in 1817.
