A pub on Clapham Common since at least 1665, named for a vanished windmill, painted as a coaching inn, and now a 42-room hotel
The Windmill on Clapham Common holds fifteen hundred and twenty-five reviews and a 4.5 – a strong, convincing score on a large sample – and it is a genuine treasure and a fitting place to open the Clapham survey: a Grade II listed pub that has stood on the Common since at least 1665, named for a windmill long vanished, painted as a coaching inn, and now grown into a substantial pub-hotel.
Since 1665
A pub has stood on this spot on Clapham Common since at least 1665 – a genuinely ancient pedigree, reaching back to the reign of Charles II, the year before the Great Fire of London. It was originally “Ye Olde Windmill Inn,” and the parish records of 1665 note a man named Thomas Crenshaw as both the miller and the alehouse keeper – a man who both ground the corn and poured the ale, which tells you exactly how the pub got its name.
For an actual windmill once stood nearby, on or beside the site, in the days when Clapham was open farmland on the edge of London. The miller kept an alehouse alongside his mill, and as milling declined and drinking endured, the alehouse outlived the mill. The windmill itself is long gone – nobody now knows exactly where it stood – but its name survives on the pub, a fossil of the vanished rural landscape of Clapham, when this was farmland and a mill turned in the wind where the traffic now roars.
The coaching inn
By the eighteenth century the Windmill was a well-established and respectable house – described in 1789 as “a very genteel and good accustomed house” – and in the early nineteenth century it became a coaching inn, a staging post on the routes in and out of London. We explored the coaching inn at the Hayden in the Kensington survey: the essential institution of the pre-railway age, providing fresh horses, meals and beds for travellers on the road.
The Windmill’s coaching days were captured for posterity by the artist James Pollard, who painted the scene of the London-to-Clapham coach arriving at the inn in 1836 – a lively picture of the stagecoach and its passengers pulling up at the Windmill. The pub also appears in a print showing crowds of racegoers stopping there on Derby Day, for it was a regular stopping point on the way to and from the races. These paintings preserve the Windmill in its heyday as a bustling coaching inn, when the arrival of the coach was the great event of the day.
Young’s since 1848
Since 1848, the Windmill has belonged to Young’s Brewery – the famous Wandsworth brewer, one of the great London brewing names, whose pubs are a beloved fixture across south-west London. Nearly two centuries under one brewery is a mark of stability and continuity rare even in this survey. Young’s has cared for the Windmill through the railway age that killed off coaching, through the growth of Clapham from village to suburb, and into the present day.
The pub-hotel today
The Windmill today is a substantial and handsome pub-hotel – a large, sprawling, landmark building with a Georgian facade, distinct drinking areas, a conservatory restaurant, a beer garden, and forty-two boutique bedrooms above, each individually styled. It has a genuine “whispering gallery” effect in one of its rooms, said to rival St Paul’s Cathedral. It has, in short, grown from a miller’s alehouse into a grand pub-hotel, while keeping its ancient name and its Georgian charm. A strong 4.5 across fifteen hundred people marks it as a genuinely good and well-loved landmark.
The pub
A strong, well-regarded landmark pub-hotel doing a good 4.5 across a large and real sample, on Clapham Common since 1665, named for a vanished windmill, painted as a coaching inn, and a Young’s house for nearly two centuries.
Verdict
Historic, handsome, strongly rated, and steeped in genuine history – a coaching inn on Clapham Common since 1665, named for a mill that ground the corn where the traffic now runs.
Have a pint, take a room if the evening runs long, and raise a glass to Thomas Crenshaw – the miller and alehouse keeper of 1665 who ground the corn, poured the ale, and gave the Windmill its name.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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