Messing Maypole Mill Messing · Essex · England

Messing Maypole Mill is a tower corn mill at Tiptree. Before the creation of the civil parish of Tiptree in 1934, the site lay in the parish of Tolleshunt Knights. The mill was built in 1775 by Colchester millwright John Matchett at a cost of £315, excluding the brickwork. Matchett also rebuilt a post mill about 190 yards south-west of the tower mill, and the recorded sum may have included that work.

The mill was a massively built brick tower mill. The listing describes it as a five-storeyed red-brick tower mill with a weatherboarded cap, while technical descriptions record a four-storey tower with a domed cap. Stones built into the structure preserve dated inscriptions, including TGE 1775 and GDER 1836, with two bricks said to carry the inscriptions WS 1774 and ET 1774. As built, the mill had four common sails on a wooden windshaft, a stage at first-floor level, and hand winding. In its later working form it carried four double patent sails on a cast-iron windshaft and was winded by fantail.

The internal machinery included a ten-foot wooden brake wheel, wooden wallower, long wooden upright shaft, great spur wheel, and three pairs of stones. The millers associated with the site included Thomas Green, James Peake, George D. Ransom, Mrs Ransom, Henry Cattermole, and Frederick King. Power was later provided by steam and then by electricity.

The mill had lost its sails and fantail before its residential conversion. A 1949 photograph recorded it as Tiptree Windmill, also known as Messing Maypole Mill. In 1969 the tower and adjoining mill house were converted into a residence. Later heritage records describe the windshaft and box still in position on the cap, with a domestic door inserted at ground level and windows adapted for residential use. The Grade II listed tower remains a prominent private landmark and a substantial survival of Tiptree's wind-powered corn-milling history.