Whitstable windmill

Image: © Penny Mayes Taken: 1 Apr 2006

Near the top of Borstal Hill, the road south out of Whitstable to the A299. It belonged (along with the adjacent miller's cottage) to Henry Irving's son in the early 20th century. His son, artist and writer Laurence Irving, converted the first floor to a studio with stunning views over the Swale and Thames Estuary. The family sold the place in the 1960s when it became an hotel and restaurant. Laurence Irving described it thus in his "The Precarious Crust" (1971) "No windmill can have been more magnificently situated; though its sails would never turn again it lived on to serve as a charted landmark that gave the local seamen bearings on their fishing ground. To the north of Whitstable Borstal Hill rose steeply from sea level to a height of some 200 feet, its shoulders sloping gently to the east and west. It commanded a superb view of the approaches to London River. On a clear day the coast of Essex, the opposite shore of the estuary, could be seen and lost to sight in mid-horizon. To the westward lay the Isle of Sheppey, separated from the marshes of the mainland by the broad reaches of the river Swale flowing eastward to mingle its muddy water with the sea-salted Thames in Whitstable bay. Over this delta landscape the sun set in splendour through the industrial haze of London."

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