Church End Mill Great Dunmow · Essex · England

Church End Mill stands on St Edmunds Lane at Great Dunmow. It is also known as Great Dunmow Mill and Tower House, reflecting both its working history and later residential conversion. The mill was built in 1822 by William Redington, a miller from Harlow, for John Fuller. The construction cost was recorded as £564 10s 6d, and the mill incorporated second-hand machinery taken from an earlier smock mill.

The working mill was a brick tower corn mill. Its tower was about 40 feet high to curb level, with a base diameter of about 20 feet, tapering to about 10 feet at the curb. As first built it had four common sails carried on an oak windshaft. The machinery included an elm brake wheel, elm wallower, oak upright shaft, clasp-arm great spur wheel and two pairs of millstones driven by wind. A stage was placed at first-floor level. Later in its working life a steam engine drove a third pair of stones.

In 1840 the mill was modernised with a new cast-iron windshaft and patent sails. On 13 November 1840, less than three months after their installation, the windshaft snapped during a gale and the sails fell onto the outbuildings connected with the mill. The mill remained in John Fuller’s ownership until his death in 1887. Named millers associated with the site include Richard Hitching from 1834 to 1840, Harvey in the 1870s, and William Henry Harvey from 1882 to 1894.

The mill did little trade after 1894 and ceased work around 1902, when the sails were removed. By 1907 it was being used as a studio. During the Second World War the cap had been removed and the tower was used as an observation post. A new cap was fitted in 1974 by the millwright Philip Barrett-Lennard. The mill is now house-converted, with no machinery remaining inside, but the tower and cap preserve the form of a nineteenth-century Essex tower mill within the Great Dunmow townscape.