Post Mill 120M North Of Mill Cottage

Post Mill, 120 metres north of Mill Cottage, Woolpit Road, Drinkstone

This post mill is of outstanding historical significance, representing almost certainly the oldest post mill surviving in England. Dendrochronological dating indicates the main structural timbers are from the mid to late 16th century (1541–73, 1543–74, and 1586–7). The structure was rebuilt in the later 17th century, possibly in 1689 (a date is carved on the mill), incorporating much of the earlier timber framework. Further alterations occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries, including the addition of a roundhouse in the early 19th century.

The timber-framed and weatherboarded buck (the rotating body of the mill) has two storeys and small windows fitted with boarded hatches. An unusual architectural feature is the rear gable, which cants forward. A lean-to open porch is attached to the structure. The single-storey roundhouse is built of flint rubble and red brick with a plain tiled roof. The mill operated with a tailpole wind mechanism until 1940, when a second-hand wheeled carriage was fitted. The present six-bladed fantail was transferred from Woolpit Mill around 1965.

The interior is remarkable for its retention of 16th-century timber and its archaic structural design. The main post is supported by four 16th-century quarter bars that are tenoned into two 18th-century crosstrees, which rest on brick piers. The crowntree does not carry side girts in the conventional manner but is tenoned into full-height vertical posts, an archaic design that now survives elsewhere only at Bourn Mill in Cambridgeshire and in modified form at Six Mile Bottom Mill, Burrough Green, Cambridgeshire.

Much of the original 16th-century oak framing has been reused, including heavy curved braces on the stone floor (thought to be unique in an English post mill), upper, mid, and lower rails, and studding. The studding is halved over the curved braces but bisected by primary braces probably added during the 17th-century rebuild. All 16th-century timbers are well-finished with deep chamfers. A pair of jowled posts in the head, probably originally part of the system for adjusting the single pair of millstones, has also been retained; these timbers produced the mid-16th-century dendrochronological dates. The buck was extended towards the tail in the 18th century, possibly to accommodate tail stones, and extended towards the head in the 19th century.

The top of the main post is reinforced by an iron collar with wings extending under the crowntree. The mill retains intact machinery: two pairs of stones driven by a brakewheel and tailwheel mounted on an oak windshaft. The windshaft has been extended by a heavy iron casting integral with the poll end. The brakewheel originated as a compass-arm wheel in the 17th century; the tailwheel appears to have similar origins. Their wooden cogs were replaced with iron teeth in the 19th century, when iron stone nuts and quants were also fitted. Nineteenth-century centrifugal governors control the tentering to each pair of stones, although the head stones retain hand tentering by a lighter staff, an unusual and archaic survival in the area. A chain-driven sack hoist is present. The interior contains numerous carvings and inscriptions, particularly on an 18th-century meal bin associated with the head stones. The roundhouse has a brick-paved sunk floor.

The mill last operated with two cloth-spread and two spring-shutter sails. The latter pair, the last spring sails in Suffolk, were removed in 1995 and are stored on site.

Historically, the earliest documentary reference to a mill on this site dates to 1616. Robert Craske is recorded as miller in 1639. The mill was worked by the Clover family from 1774 until the 1970s. The survival of much of the 16th-century post mill in its original context, coupled with the absence of major rebuilding since the later 17th century, makes this building of exceptional significance. It forms part of a very important group of mill-related buildings, including an engine-driven smock mill and Mill Cottage. The mill plot has been designated a Conservation Area.