THE pair of windmills at Clayton, known today simply as Jack and Jill, are prominent local landmarks that enjoy magnificent views across the Sussex Downs. Ever since they ceased operating commercially soon after 1900, the windmills and their associated sheds and cottages have been occupied by people drawn to their unusual architecture and this dramatic location.
Another chapter in this century of domestic occupation has just begun with the completion of a project by Featherstone Young Architects (FYA), begun in 2016, to modernise and expand a house at the site.
A windmill is first documented at Clayton in a lease of September 1765. This describes a mill ‘lately erected’ by the son of 6th Viscount Montagu, which was given on a 99- year lease to one Edward Oram of Clayton. Through the research of Martin Brunnarius, published in the journal of the Sussex Industrial Archaeological Society (1980), we know that Duncton Mill—as it became known— was operated by Oram for the next 20 years. It was a post mill, that is to say, the structure and mechanism was supported and rotated to face the wind on a central, supporting post. In this case, the ground floor of the timber mill was skirted in brick.
In the 1840s, the tenant miller of Duncton Mill, James Mitchell, also purchased a post mill that had been overtaken by the growth of nearby Brighton; new buildings had literally taken the wind from its sails. According to the testimony of an old shepherd in 1915, the frame of the mill, complete with its 18ftlong central post, was dragged five miles to Clayton on a great sledge; the horses initially harnessed to it proved unreliable, so were substituted by steadier and more reliable oxen. In its new location just below Duncton Mill, the new mill—the future Jill —was modernised and set to work.
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