Stock Windmill

About

Stock Windmill is a Grade II*-listed tower mill, built around 1804. Popular and complete with several floors of machinery, at open days mill guides explain how grain was converted into flour.

The mill has four patent sails, a boat-shaped cap, a six-bladed fantail and three pairs of overdrift (operated from above) millstones. It is in working order and is worked occasionally, turning 360 degrees to catch changing winds. You can visit all five floors, and there is room for picnics on the mill’s grounds.

Built in the heyday of wheat farming and high corn prices, there were once three mills on this site, run by the village baker.

A steam engine was added to the mill in 1902. The mill used wind power up until and 1930, then ran for a further six years using an internal combustion engine.

Essex County Council bought the mill in 1945. Repairs began in 1991, part-funded by English Heritage and involving Friends of Stock Tower Mill, restoring the mill to working order.