Syners Hill Lesser Mill Broseley · Shropshire · England

Syners Hill was one of Broseley's windmill sites in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The land was held under a lease granted by George Forester to Charles Jones for 99 years from 25 March 1758. After Jones's death, the leasehold interest passed to Joseph Cartwright, who sold the remainder of the lease to Leonard Jennings on 5 July 1775. Jennings, a Broseley miller and original shareholder in the Iron Bridge, developed wind corn mills on the site.

The first of the two known Syners Hill tower mills was the larger mill, built in 1778 from designs prepared by Benjamin Cartwright of Wombourne. The lesser mill followed a few years later. The recorded dimensions of Mr Jennings's lesser windmill gave an internal diameter of 16 feet at the base and 10½ feet at the top. The sails were to be 30 feet long, and the millstones were to be 5 feet in diameter. The tower appears to have been less fully specified in Cartwright's notes than the machinery, suggesting that local builders may have been responsible for the brickwork while Cartwright fitted the millwork. Work was under way by September 1782, and an account entry on 22 February 1783 recorded payment for the new mill.

The Syners Hill mills remained in use after Leonard Jennings's death around September 1799. In 1801 they were occupied by William Lewis and were recorded with storehouses, a miller's house and two crofts of land. The 1838 tithe apportionment recorded the Syners Hill windmill plot as including a windmill, malt-house and meadow, owned by Lord Forester and occupied by Jeremiah Ashwood. The exact final working date has not been identified in the consulted material, but the lesser mill survived after its working life as a truncated tower stump. By 2010 the stump was still standing close to Mill Lane on Syners Hill.