Ramsey Windmill Ramsey · Essex · England

Ramsey Windmill stands on The Street at Ramsey and is one of Essex's distinctive conserved post mills. The mill was first built at Woodbridge in Suffolk, where it was one of four mills on the Mill Hills shown on the 1838 tithe map. In 1842 Henry Collins, millwright of Woodbridge, moved it to Ramsey. Robert Brooks was the first owner at Ramsey, and the mill remained in the Brooks family for much of its working life.

The mill was built with a three-storey brick roundhouse, following east Suffolk practice. The timber body has a curved gabled roof and carries four double patent sails on a cast-iron windshaft. It was winded by a roof-mounted six-bladed fantail. The machinery included two pairs of overdrift French Burr stones in the breast and a third underdrift pair in the tail.

Ramsey Windmill was sold to R. M. Scott of Ipswich in 1937 and last worked in 1939. The fantail blew off that year. By 1974 the mill was derelict, with major timbers broken and the structure close to collapse. Restoration was then undertaken by the owner, Michael Organ, with assistance from volunteers from the Suffolk Mills Group between 1974 and 1978. The mill is listed at Grade II* and survives as a conserved post mill with its substantial roundhouse, body, sails, windshaft, and machinery arrangement preserved.