Stansted Mountfitchet Windmill Stansted Mountfitchet · Essex · England

Stansted Mountfitchet Windmill was built in 1787 for Joseph Lindsell. Lindsell and his wife also built associated milling buildings, including a malthouse, mill house, granary, and bakehouse. The mill was a five-storey red-brick tower mill built for corn milling, originally fitted with common sails on a wooden windshaft, a hand-winded cap, a stage, and an attached roundhouse below stage level. It was originally arranged as an underdrift mill.

Joseph Lindsell sold the mill in 1807 to Henry Chaplin, who mortgaged it to Robert Sworder in 1808. After Chaplin's death in 1844, the mill was offered for sale by auction in 1846. During the later 1840s the sails were repeatedly renewed or replaced, with spring sails and then patent sails fitted. Edward Hicks, William Randall Dixon, and other tenants worked the mill during a period of frequent repair and technical change.

A major modernisation followed in 1860 and 1862. A cast-iron windshaft was fitted, the cap frame was repaired, and a fantail was added. In 1862 millwright Fyson of Soham remodelled the internal machinery, converting the mill from underdrift to overdrift. The stage and roundhouse were removed at this time. By 1870 the mill had four double patent sails. It last worked commercially in 1910, crushing oats.

The tower required strengthening with three iron bands in 1930. Lord Blyth bought and restored the mill in 1929, rebuilt the wooden cap, and presented the windmill to the parish in 1934. From the 1940s to 1963 it served as a Scout hut. It was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1952 and opened to the public in 1964. Restoration work followed in 1966, and major repairs in 1984–85 by Millwrights International allowed the cap and sails to turn. The mill was struck by lightning during an open day in 2003. Stansted Mountfitchet Windmill remains a Grade II* listed tower mill and scheduled monument, preserving a major late eighteenth-century wind-powered corn mill within the village.