page_title: Mostert's Mill
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Mostert's Mill / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard showing Mostert's Mill, Mowbray, Cape Town in the 1900s
context_page_description: Mostert's Mill is a historic windmill in Mowbray, Cape Town, South Africa. It was built in 1796 and is the oldest surviving and only complete windmill in South Africa.
context_section_description: Mostert's Mill is a three storey tower mill. The tower is 7.94 metres (26 ft 1 in) in diameter externally at ground level and is 6.68 metres (21 ft 11 in) high. It is constructed of random stone for the first 2.28 metres (7 ft 6 in) and then unbaked bricks above. The walls are 1.15 metres (3 ft 9 in) thick at ground level, giving the mill an internal diameter of 5.64 metres (18 ft 6 in).
  The cap is of a truncated cone shape and is covered by thatch. The mill has four common sails and is winded by a tailpole. The four, modern, common sails follow the Dutch tradition, as there was no surviving sail to copy when Bremer restored the mill in 1935. Those fitted at the 1935 restoration were 6.00 metres (19 ft 8 in) long and 1.75 metres (5 ft 9 in) wide, fitted with a windboard on the leading edge. Such a feature was not to be found on other South African windmills. The sails, which have a span of 14.45 metres (47 ft 5 in), were carried on a teak windshaft. This was fitted with a cast iron poll end in 1935, because the terminus of the wooden shaft had rotted. Contemporary South African windmills all had wooden windshafts, apart from one of the Salt River windmills, which had an iron cross. A replacement windshaft made of iroko was fitted in 1995. The windshaft carries a clasp arm brake wheel, which has a diameter of 770 millimetres (2 ft 6 in) and has 47 cogs. It drove the single pair of millstones, via a lantern pinion stone nut, which has 16 staves. The millstones comprise the original runner stone and a non-original bedstone. The latter is a Cullen stone installed in 1935 and came from a windmill at Leens, Groningen, Netherlands.
caption: Mostert's Mill in the 1900s, showing the original wooden poll end on the windshaft
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