Bocking Windmill Bocking · Essex · England

Bocking Windmill is a post corn mill on Church Street, Bocking. Although an earlier date of about 1680 has often been associated with the structure, the mill has been in Church Street since 1721. It was built by Joseph Nash of Wethersfield, who bought the site from Robert Straight. Between 1774 and 1829 it was owned and worked by members of the Brown family. After the death of John Brown, the mill passed to John English Tabor because of a debt owed to him.

In 1829 John English Tabor dismantled the mill and moved it about 200 yards up the hill to its present position, opposite The Bull public house. The move was accompanied by substantial modernisation, including the tall brick piers and the two-storey roundhouse. The listed structure is a weatherboarded post mill with sails, a tailpole, sack hoist, and surviving internal machinery. The working arrangement included two pairs of stones driven by wind and an additional pair driven by auxiliary power.

Bocking Windmill continued working into the twentieth century, increasingly depending on animal-feed work as country corn milling declined. Henry Hawkins, the last miller, later worked at Crittalls but still worked the mill occasionally. In 1929 Edward Tabor presented the windmill to Bocking Parish Council. It was then in full working order and became the first Essex mill to be taken into public ownership as a historic monument.

The mill later fell into disrepair. In 1962–63 it was restored through public subscription and support from Braintree and Bocking Urban District Council, and it reopened in 1964. The Friends of Bocking Windmill were formed to help preserve and open the mill. In 1989 the Friends and Braintree District Council collaborated on further restoration projects. Braintree District Council became responsible for opening the mill in 2017, with the Friends continuing as volunteers, and millwright Bill Griffiths repainted the exterior and undertook further repairs in 2019. Bocking Windmill remains a Grade I listed post mill with much of its original machinery still in place.