Mashbury Smock Mill Mashbury · Essex · England

Mashbury Smock Mill stood at Mashbury and worked as a wind-powered corn mill. The surviving structure is the base of the former smock mill. Windmill World identifies the site as a small smock mill whose base is used as a garage, and the Mills Archive records the site as Smock mill, Mashbury.

The Essex comparative windmill survey records the surviving base as a nineteenth-century brick and timber smock-mill base. The upper part of the mill was destroyed by fire on 28 November 1896. The surviving base later served as a small garage and store, with an enlarged opening where the original mill doorway once faced east. It was re-roofed in 1975.

By the time of the 2011 field survey, the building was in very good external and internal condition. The brickwork had been repointed using lime mortar, the interior had been dry lined, and an electricity supply with strip lighting had been installed. The survey also recorded that the main horizontal beam which once carried the stone floor was heavily charred on its upper face from the fire that destroyed the upper smock. Sockets in the beam preserved evidence of former structural connections. A pair of millstones and a set of stone furniture from Mashbury Mill were recorded in Colchester Museum stores.

Mashbury Smock Mill now survives as a small adapted base rather than a complete mill, but the remaining fabric preserves physical evidence of its former construction, fire damage and later reuse.