Heckington Windmill - Eight Sailed Windmills

Eight Sailed Windmills

Heckington Windmill is the last one of around 12 eight-sailed windmills in all England and four in Lincolnshire including

• Skirbeck Mill (Tuxford's Mill), Boston, Lincolnshire
• Holbeach Mill
• Preston Place Mill, Angmering, Sussex (a small multipurpose mill for farming use)
• Old Buckenham tower windmill, Norfolk, still standing as a four-sailed mill after her damage in 1879
• Diss Victoria Road tower mill, in 1880 converted into a four-sailed mill (in 1972 into a residence)
• Leach's tower mill in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, the eight-storeyed now defunct tallest eight-sailer ever built.

These mills were partly converted into four-sailed mills, into residences, were dismantled, or still exist as ruins.

Mediterranean windmills ("sail-windmills") seem to have more sails, but their sails are in fact up to six long poles ('polestocks') forming a wheel-shaped sail-cross of 12 round sailstocks each holding one triangular sail. They don't have shutter-type or lattice-type sails (with canvas sails attached to the lattice blades) as they come with Dutch-type windmills the Heckington Windmill belongs to. Beside this there are a few post mills in Northern and Eastern Europe with six short (~ 15 ft) paddle-shaped sails, and in Finland there are some eight-sailed hollow-post windmills with a similar type of short sails.