Moulin de Sannois, Historical windmill in Sannois, France

The Moulin de Sannois is a post mill: a rectangular wooden house of weathered horizontal planks with a small square window and a grey shingled gable roof, set on a round masonry base with a low conical roof. Four wooden sails are mounted on a thick vertical shaft at the front left, and a wooden stair with railing climbs at the rear right to a door beneath a projecting upper section. The whole body pivots on a central oak beam six metres long, cut from a three-hundred-year-old tree; the mill weighs over forty tonnes.

François Roger, a vine-grower from Franconville, erected the mill in 1759 and it ground grain until 1866. The town bought it in 1939; the hilltop site was protected in 1934 and the mill listed as a monument historique on 12 May 1975. The December 1999 storm broke one sail and damaged the rouet, and a working restoration followed in 2008.

The mill's alternate name, moulin de Montrouillet, comes from the butte du mont Trouillet it stands on. Nearby, the former millers' dwelling was restored in 1994 and is called the Maison du Meunier. A third Sannois mill, built around 1789, became a country wine merchant's from 1895 and, as the moulin de la Galette, one of the area's guinguettes.

The mill stands at the top of the butte du mont Trouillet, above the Montmorency and Seine valleys, at 26 rue des Moulins. It is reached by bus, and individuals may visit on the first Sunday of each month, groups by appointment. The site is a hilltop, so the approach is uphill.

The mill's central pivot is a single oak beam six metres long, cut from a tree about three hundred years old; the whole structure weighs over forty tonnes. Maurice Utrillo painted the Sannois mills during his stay in the town in 1912 and 1913.