Windmill

TL 51 NE AYTHORPE RODING GUNNERS GREEN

2/83, WINDMILL 23.2.67 II*

Post mill, late C18 with C19 alterations, restored 1975-82. Timber-framed buck, weatherboarded, rotating on timber post; roundhouse of red brick with boarded roof, The mill consists of a timber-framed buck incorporating jowled corner posts, mounted on an oak post about which it can be turned to face the wind. The main access steps to the buck are carried on cast iron wheels which run on a circular track of granite. A six-bladed fantail is mounted on a frame above the steps and is geared to the wheels to turn the mill into the wind. The 4 sails are of the double-shuttered patent type, and revolve anti-clockwise. They carry a half-set of wooden-framed canvas- covered shutters which can be set and adjusted from the lower floor of the buck. The mill drove 2 pairs of french burr millstones, 1.22 metres in diameter, on the first floor of the buck. In addition there is one pair of french stones 1.37 metres in diameter on a cast iron hoisting in the roundhouse to take drive from a portable steam engine. The brake wheel and wallower are wooden and the spurwheel and stone nuts are cast iron, all wood-cogged. Two pairs of centrifugal governors control the millstone adjustment. There is a bolter-type flour dresser in the rear of the millstone floor. The date of building is not known but is probably circa 1770. Like most English mills this one has been modernized during its working life, and incorporates most of the improvements in windmill development over that period. It last worked commercially in the early 1930s. By 1975 it was in need of major repair, which was completed in 1982, when it was restored to working order. It is the largest remaining post mill in Essex. There is a set of measured drawings and photographs by Messrs. Hunt and Sancholls, 1967, in the NMR, and additional information is held by Essex County Council Planning Dept. and Essex Record Office.

Listing NGR: TL5903415159