Portal:Wind power

The Ben Darrah Water Tank and Well House near Shoshone, Idaho, United States, were built in c. 1916 by stonemason Bill Darrah. They were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983; the listing included two contributing buildings on 1.3 acres (0.53 ha).

The water tank is round, constructed of rock walls about 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and 14 feet (4.3 m) in diameter. It is covered by a concrete-coated wood plank cover. It is one of Bill Darrah's earlier water tank works, and was built for his brother Ben Darrah's upper ranch. (Full article...)

Moulin de Craca is a windmill in Plouézec, Côtes-d'Armor, France. First working in 1844 it was restored from 1995. It is popular amongst both locals and tourists because of its location on top of a cliff overlooking Port Lazo.

Every August the Plouézec-Ballinamore twinning committee organises Noz Ar Vilin Fest Noz around the windmill. There is a selection of Breton and Irish music and dancing, as well as local cuisine and drinks. Amongst the specialities are Moules-Frites (Mussels and chips), Crêpes, Galettes, Breton cider, and Chouchen. (Full article...)

The Wendhausen Windmill (German: Windmühle Wendhausen) is a tower mill located in Wendhausen, a town within the municipality of Lehre, Lower Saxony, Germany. Built in 1837, it is the only five-sailed windmill in Germany still in operation. (Full article...)

Gudhjem Windmill (Danish: Gudhjem Mølle) is located in the village of Gudhjem on the Danish island of Bornholm. With a sail span of 24 metres (79 ft), the Dutch mill is the largest windmill in Denmark. It served from 1893 to 1962 when it was taken out of commission. (Full article...)

The Montefiore Windmill is a landmark windmill in Jerusalem. Designed as a flour mill, it was built in 1857 on a slope opposite the western city walls of Jerusalem, where three years later the new Jewish neighbourhood of Mishkenot Sha'ananim was erected, both by the efforts of British Jewish banker and philanthropist Moses Montefiore. Jerusalem at the time was part of Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Today the windmill serves as a small museum dedicated to the achievements of Montefiore. It was restored in 2012 with a new cap and sails in the style of the originals. The mill can turn in the wind. (Full article...)

The Xarolla Windmill at Żurrieq, Malta is one of the windmills constructed by the Order of St. John in the villages and towns of Malta. It was built in the 18th century and is presently one of the most preserved windmills in Malta. The windmill is an agri-tourism attraction and is found in a complex of agricultural buildings such as a farmhouse, a chapel, catacombs and others. The windmill is also used as an art studio.

In 1674 Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner built five windmills around Malta, one of which was tax-Xarolla. Tax-Xarolla Windmill was built by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena in 1724. Sometimes after 1998, this was restored to its original working order. It is now the only functioning windmill on the islands of Malta. This is a valuable witness of local culture and heritage; it still has parts of the original mechanisms and can still grind the wheat. In the year 2000, this building was passed over to be administered by the Żurrieq Local Council and is intended to serve also as a cultural centre. The sails were extensively damaged in a gale on 18 March 2022. (Full article...)

Elphin Windmill is a fully restored 18th-century tower mill in Elphin, County Roscommon, viewed as a rare piece of Irish industrial architectural heritage, and possibly the oldest operational windmill in Ireland. (Full article...)

Dobson's Mill is a tower windmill for grinding wheat and corn. It stands in the High Street in the town of Burgh le Marsh, near Skegness in Lincolnshire, England. The mill was, prior to damage by Storm Ciara on 9 February 2020, open to the public as a tourist attraction and is a Grade I listed building. The mill site also houses the Burgh-le-Marsh Heritage Centre.

The windmill was built and fitted out by Sam Oxley, an Alford millwright, in the early 1800s for the Jessop family, who baked bread on the same site. It was completed by 1844. Dobson was the name of the last miller. (Full article...)

Vinegar Hill Windmill or Templeshannon Windmill is a tower mill on Vinegar Hill, Enniscorthy, County Wexford. (Full article...)

The Old Mill (Shenton's Mill) is a restored tower mill located on Mill Point in South Perth, Western Australia. Today, restored to its original 1830s condition, it is one of Perth's best known historic landmarks and serves as a sightseeing attraction. (Full article...)

The smock mill is a type of windmill that consists of a sloping, horizontally weatherboarded, thatched, or shingled tower, usually with six or eight sides. It is topped with a roof or cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind. This type of windmill got its name from its resemblance to smocks worn by farmers in an earlier period. (Full article...)

Mostert's Mill (Afrikaans: Mostert se Meul) is a historic windmill in Mowbray, Cape Town, South Africa. It was built in 1796 and is the oldest surviving complete windmill in South Africa. It was almost completely destroyed by a wildfire on 18 April 2021 but was fully restored by April 2024 and is once more operational and used to grind wheat into whole meal, using the power of the wind. The oldest windmill in South Africa is the De Nieuwe Molen mill in Cape Town, built in 1782. (Full article...)

The Windmills of Corvo (Portuguese: Moinhos de vento do Corvo/Moinhos de vento da Ponta Negra) is a group of windmills located in the municipality of Vila do Corvo, island of Corvo, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. (Full article...)

Old Buckenham Windmill is a tower flour mill which stands in the village of Old Buckenham, Norfolk, England. It is a Grade II* listed building, notable for being the largest diameter windmill in the country.

The tower was built in 1818 of brick in five storeys and is 8 meters (26.5 feet) in diameter at the base. The cap was boat shaped and extended to the rear. At 7.3 meters (24 feet) in diameter, it was the largest known cap in the country, requiring five truck wheels and 17 centring wheels to carry the weight. Originally fitted with eight plain sails, it was converted to use four patent sails. There were five pairs of French stones on the second floor but milling at the mill ceased in 1926 and the stones were broken up. (Full article...)

Myreagre Mølle (Myreagre Windmill) is a whitewashed tower mill located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) east of Aakirkeby on the Danish island of Bornholm. Built in 1865, it remained in service until 1970. (Full article...)

Ta' Kola Windmill, Maltese: Il-Mitħna ta' Kola, is a windmill in the village of Xagħra, on the island of Gozo in the Maltese archipelago. It was built in 1725 by the Fondazione Vilhena of Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena, and was rebuilt in the 1780s. It became a museum in 1992.

Like many other Maltese windmills, it has a round central tower surrounded by a number of rooms. The sails and milling machinery have been restored, as have the miller's living-quarters. The museum also contains a large collection of traditional tools, mostly for wood- and iron-working. (Full article...)

A fantail is a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill, and which turns the cap automatically to bring it into the wind. The fantail was patented in 1745 by Edmund Lee, a blacksmith working at Brockmill Forge near Wigan, England, and was perfected on mills around Leeds and Hull towards the end of the 18th century. Fantails are found on all types of traditional windmills and are especially useful where changes in wind direction are frequent. They are more common in England, Denmark and Germany than in other parts of Europe, and are little-known on windmills elsewhere except where English millwrighting traditions were in evidence.

The rotating fantail turns the cap of the windmill via a system of gearing to a toothed rack around the top of the mill tower, or to wheels running on the ground in the case of a post mill. It does so until the fantail sails are oriented parallel to the wind, whereby the wind can no longer move them. When the fantail is oriented parallel to the wind, the main sails are in the optimal perpendicular orientation and produce maximum power. (Full article...)

The Old Windmill is a heritage-listed tower mill in Observatory Park adjacent to Wickham Park at 226 Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built in the 1820s by convict labour in the Moreton Bay penal settlement and is the oldest surviving building in Queensland. It is also known as Brisbane Observatory and Windmill Tower. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. Today it is the centrepiece of Observatory Park and a lookout over parts of the Brisbane CBD. (Full article...)

Ringle Crouch Green Mill is a smock mill in Sandhurst, Kent, England, that was demolished to base level in 1945, and now has a new smock tower built on it as residential accommodation and an electricity generator. (Full article...)

Pedersker Kirkemølle is a Dutch windmill located in the little village of Pedersker on the Danish island of Bornholm. It functioned until 1969. (Full article...)

Boyd's Windmill, also known as Boyd's Wind Grist Mill, is a historic smock mill at Paradise Valley Park on Prospect Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island. John Peterson built the windmill at the corner of Mill Lane and West Main Rd. in Portsmouth, Rhode Island in 1810, and William Boyd purchased it in 1815. It originally had four common sails, but four more were added by the family. The mill is a timber-frame structure, octagonal in shape, and about 30 feet (9.1 m) tall, with a rotating cap powered by eight vanes with canvas sheets. The grindstones in the middle of the mill are Fall River granite; the upper one, which is connected to the power mechanisms, rotates six times for each turn of the mill's main shaft. In 1916 Benjamin Boyd removed the original vanes and powered the mill using a gasoline engine. It is one of only two historic windmills (out of what was estimated to be more than thirty) to survive on Aquidneck Island.

Boyd's Mill features prominently on the town seal of Middletown. (Full article...)

The Alexander & Anna Schwartz Farm, located at 57 E. Rd. 70 in Dighton, Kansas, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

It includes three buildings (a house built c.1928, a barn, and a smokehouse/cellar) and an Aermotor windmill. The house is built of structural hollow clay tile, also known as structural terra cotta. (Full article...)

Davidson Windmill is a historic windmill in Lakeside, Wisconsin, United States. The windmill was built in 1900 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The grist mill was built by Jacob Davidson in 1904 and operated until 1926. (Full article...)

Maud Foster Windmill is a seven-storey, five sail windmill located by the Maud Foster Drain in Skirbeck, Boston, Lincolnshire, from which she is named. She is one of the largest operating windmills in England being 80 feet (24.38 m) tall to the cap ball.

The tower mill and adjoining granary is grade I listed building. The mill was built in 1819 for Isaac and Thomas Reckitt of Wainfleet. It was repaired and restored in 1988. (Full article...)

Greenhill Windmill is a traditional masonry tower windmill, built in 1856 at Greenhill Farm near Kyneton, Victoria, Australia.

Joseph Hall (1804-21 August 1871) and William Hoad purchased thirty hectares of farm land located on Metcalfe Road, Green Hill, at the original Crown sales in 1855. The following year they erected the windmill, using bluestone quarried on their property. (Full article...)