Bragg's Mill Ashdon · Essex · England

Bragg's Mill is a post corn mill at Ashdon. It is also known as William Bragg's Mill, Bartlow Hamlet Mill, Stevington End Mill, and Ashdon Windmill, but the Bragg name reflects its association with John Bragg, the last commercial operator. The mill was built in 1757 by William Haylock, a carpenter of Ashdon. It was originally an open trestle post mill, with the timber body and machinery carried on the central post and supporting trestle rather than enclosed within a roundhouse.

In 1813 the mill was advertised for sale with two pairs of millstones. Around 1815 the body was extended at the tail, creating space for bolting equipment, and around 1820 a single-storey roundhouse was added. The surviving mill is 34 feet high to the roof and carries four patent sails on a wooden windshaft with a cast-iron poll end. Two sails are double-shuttered and two single-shuttered. The machinery drove two pairs of stones arranged head and tail, and the mill was winded by tailpole.

The mill worked until about 1912. By the early 1930s it was in poor structural condition and was being propped after failure of the left side girt. Photographic records through the mid twentieth century show the mill in derelict or repaired states, with surviving machinery including the brake wheel, windshaft, sack hoist drive, stone floor, tail wheel, post, crosstrees, quarterbars, and internal framing. Renovation took place in the late 1950s, but by 1974 the mill was again derelict and further repairs were carried out. The sails were removed in the 1990s.

A village meeting in April 1999 agreed that the mill should be restored, including the return of sails. The Ashdon Windmill Trust was formed and registered as a charity, and the mill was gifted to the village by the Thurlow Estate in 2000 with an associated funding pledge. The Essex Environment Trust awarded a grant in 2001, and restoration began in March 2002 under millwright Vincent Pargeter. The mill frame was straightened and the body was reclad in new weatherboarding. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant followed in 2004, and new sails were fitted on 5 July 2006. Bragg's Mill remains a restored Grade II listed post mill and one of Ashdon's principal historic landmarks.