Norwich Road Mill was built in 1836 by millwright James Hardy of Toftwood, commissioned by Michael Hardy, who already had a smock mill at Bittering and wanted a second operation. James Hardy knew his trade: the result was a five-storey tower mill with a boat-shaped cap turned by a fantail — the small secondary wheel that keeps the main sails automatically facing the wind. The tower stands 42 feet to the curb. The four double Patent sails could catch even the modest breezes of the Norfolk interior.

Inside, a nine-foot diameter cast iron great spur wheel with wooden cogs transmitted power through the upright shaft. The crown wheel, which carried the drive from an auxiliary engine added later, was made of wood. This was practical engineering: expensive cast iron where strength mattered, cheaper wood where it would do.

Michael Hardy worked the mill himself at first, then advertised it to let in 1837. His financial difficulties led to an auction at the King's Arms Inn on 16 February 1844, where William Fendick bought it for £650 — and gave the mill the name by which it is still known locally.

The Fendick family ran the mill for sixty years across three generations. William Fendick died in 1863, and his widow Sarah kept the business going until 1871, when their son William took over. He added a steam engine for days when the wind failed, ran the mill until his own death in 1904, and passed it to his son William Jr. The sails were still turning; the tradition held.

William Jr. sold the mill in 1909 to Charles Robert Gray and Arthur James Milk — names that passed into the mill's official record with a solemnity that feels slightly comic in retrospect. Gray died in 1922. By then the original sails had been removed, and the steam engine swapped for a paraffin engine. Milk died in 1926. The firm continued under a new name — Robert Gray Ltd — and worked the mill by engine until 1937. After that, silence.

The mill spent decades in various states of neglect and partial use. In 1983 the Girl Guides and Toc H were given permission to use it as a meeting room on summer weeks — a practical arrangement that at least kept people coming and going. Vandalism in 1984 prompted Breckland District Council to fund repairs and survey the restoration possibilities. John Lawn produced a report, undertook a restoration, and the mill was formally opened to the public on 14 September 1987.

But restoration is not a one-time event. In January 2004, a gale took half a sail. The cost of full restoration was estimated at £600,000. A Heritage Lottery Fund application was submitted and rejected. By February 2010, without enough money to repair and reinstall the sails, the mill was boarded up.

A new group of trustees formed in 2011, found funding, and got the work done. By summer 2013, Dereham Windmill had reopened as a Community Exhibition Centre, with changing monthly exhibitions and open days through the week. The sails turn again. The mill, which has spent most of its life on the edge of one crisis or another, has for now found its footing.