Quick facts on the Paola demolished windmill
There was a windmill recorded at Paola (Pawla / Raħal Ġdid) but it no longer survives: the Paola windmill is listed in specialist inventories as demolished and I could not find a preserved plan, photograph or detailed archival narrative in the usual public sources.
What the documentary record actually says
The Paola windmill appears in national lists of Maltese windmills simply as “Paola — demolished.” That entry is repeated in reference inventories (e.g. the Wikipedia list of Maltese windmills and specialist windmill summaries). No date of construction, no surviving photograph and no catalogued Arkivji item are shown on those public pages.
Bottom line: there is a recorded historical mill at Paola, but the basic public catalogues only record that it was demolished.
Why there’s so little published detail
Three reasons explain the gap in public sources:
1. Many Paola / urban mills disappeared early. Paola grew rapidly from the late 19th century as a workers’ town for the Grand Harbour docks; urban expansion and redevelopment commonly removed older agricultural building fabric (mills inside growing towns were often demolished or adapted early).
2. Documentation bias. Better-documented mills tend to be those that survive (Xarolla, Ta’ Kola, Ta’ Ġnien Xibla) or those that were restored. Demolished rural or urban mills rarely generated conservation reports, so fewer scans/photos or catalogue entries survive online.
3. Archival material exists but is not digitised. Notarial deeds, old parish maps, 19th-century Ordnance Survey sheets or the 1932 antiques list often contain the only contemporary references — and many of those are not fully searchable online.
Probable dates, type and construction
Because the Paola mill is not documented online, we infer its likely form and date from Maltese practice and from regional patterns:
Probable type: almost certainly a tower (cylindrical) windmill — that is the overwhelmingly common Maltese form from the 17th–19th centuries (stone cylindrical tower rising from a low base). Most mills recorded in the same inventories are tower mills. (This is an evidence-based inference rather than a documented fact specific to Paola.)
Likely date range: many surviving Maltese mills date to the Cottoner (c.1670s), Carafa (1680s) or Manoel (1720s) foundations — or to later 18th/19th-century private builds. Paola was founded in 1626 and expanded greatly in the 19th century; a Paola mill could therefore be from any time between the late 17th and the 19th century. No public source gives a precise construction date for the Paola mill.
Typical construction details (what would have been under the cap): local globigerina limestone masonry; lime mortar; thick load-bearing walls; a wooden rotating cap on a curb; horizontal windshaft with timber sails (4–8 vanes); inside — timber floors, wooden gearing and at least one pair of millstones (runner + bedstone). These are the standard technical features for Maltese tower mills and are the default reconstruction when specific plans are missing.
Use and operational life — general pattern
Maltese tower mills were used mainly for grinding grain (wheat, barley) and served a local hinterland; in Paola’s case the mill would have served the local community and nearby agricultural lands until steam/industrial milling rendered small windmills uneconomic. Many such mills were used well into the 19th century and were progressively dismantled or converted in the late 19th / early 20th centuries. For Paola we lack a specific last-working date.
Probable reasons for demolition
We don't have a recorded demolition order/date online, but the most likely causes (historically documented elsewhere in Malta) are:
Urban development / roadworks / infill as Paola expanded.
Loss of economic use and subsequent neglect, followed by demolition to reuse stone for other building work.
Wartime damage or removal (some mills were damaged or removed in WWII but this is not documented specifically for Paola).
Those are reasons commonly recorded for other demolished Maltese mills; for Paola the exact cause remains to be established from archives.