The pub is a rambling building dating mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries, with a choice of bars and since 1993 has been converted into a small but successful hotel in a next-door house called Holly Lodge. Its location on the edge of the common makes it an extremely popular place on a warm sunny weekend, with visitors spilling out onto the common.
The exact location of the original windmill is now obscure and to confuse matters, there are also references to two windmills. The miller, Thomas Crenshaw, is noted in the parish records in 1665 as also being an alehouse keeper, but milling must have gradually become less important and beer more so, and by 1789, the Windmill is noted as ‘a very genteel and good accustomed house, many years in the possession of Mrs Simmonds’. (A Companion from London to Brighthelmston – J Edwards). In 1815, it was described by the Epicure’s Almanack as ‘that pleasant house’ with ‘dinners dressed to order and excellent ordinaries are provided on Sunday’s’. It became a staging post for coaches, although Windmill Lane was still a rural track until 1840.
The Windmill is pictured in J.F.Herring’s Return from the Derby, showing a lively crowd of racegoers in front of the inn, and it seems that it must have been a regular stopping point on Derby Day. The Windmill has been a Young’s house since 1848.
