Stisted Mill

Water mill, now a house. Dating from the 18th century, extended in the 19th century and converted to residential use in 1977. The building is timber framed and weatherboarded, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. It has a rectangular plan facing south-east, with one storey and lofts across 2 floors.

A single-storey 19th-century extension extends to the left, roofed in slate, with a double garage beyond featuring a corrugated iron lean-to roof. The main building's ground floor contains one window of 25 fixed lights, one 20th-century 6-light sash, and three 20th-century casements. The left extension has one window of 16 lights. Additional windows include one 20th-century casement below a lucam, two more in gabled dormers, one small 20th-century light in a gabled hoist, and one 20th-century casement in a gabled lucam mounted on straight brackets with weatherboarded sides. A 20th-century door opens to the front elevation. Vehicle doors are located in the left extension and beyond.

The main building features a gambrel roof enclosing 2 floors. The left extension has a roof of low pitch. Two 20th-century stacks and one metal flue sit in the rear pitch of the main roof, neither rising above the ridge. The rear elevation displays three ground-floor windows of 25, 25 and 24 lights respectively, alongside three 20th-century casements. Three 9-light casements sit in gabled dormers, and two 20th-century in-pitch roof lights are installed. A French window opens to the rear.

Many windows are accurate replicas made in 1977 from existing 18th and 19th-century originals. The timber frame features transverse beams on grown knees secured by forelocks, primary straight bracing in walls, and a fully jointed main frame. Internal evidence indicates the mill was extended to the right in the 18th century. The house now occupies the right part of the main building and right extension, whilst the left end has been partitioned off containing the mill machinery.

The mill machinery remains substantially intact. It comprised a pair of fulling stocks and corn-grinding equipment, documented as operational in 1775. The stone floor sits unusually low, forcing the pit wheel above floor level, preventing conventional accommodation of wallower and spur wheel beneath. To overcome this, the stones are overdriven—a technique more common in windmills and unparalleled on Essex rivers. Stone spindles (known locally as quants) descend from the spur wheel on the stone floor into stone maces, their square shape agitating the shoe without requiring a damsel. Below the stones, additional spindles raise and lower them on conventional bridge trees. The mill may once have accommodated a crown wheel on the stone floor (as at Codham), though the present crown wheel is positioned on the floor above, driving two lay shafts engineered for various now-vanished machines.

The breast-shot wheel has cast-iron rims and hubs with wooden spokes, mounted on an iron wheelshaft carrying the iron pitwheel engaging the iron wallower. The wooden paddles of the wheel were replaced by iron in 1920. The wheel continued turning the stones until the end of the Second World War and worked the sack hoist until 1960, when the mill's final years saw an oil engine drive a hammer mill. Notably, the mill has no by-valve; sluice control required a walk upstream. The machinery includes two pairs of French stones and a wooden upright shaft.

The 19th-century extension to the left formerly housed a steam engine and ancillary machinery, now missing except for the overhead shafting. A chimney visible in a photograph from around 1910 was demolished shortly afterwards.