Site of post-medieval windmill and mound, Toothill (EHER 4261)

This is the site of a post-medieval windmill mound and mill. The mill was built in 1787 and significantly damaged by lightning in 1879. This location is marked 'Windmill (flour)' on the first edition 6-inch Ordnance Survey map (1881), and the mill was still extant in 1933. However, the mound had been destroyed by 1975, and archaeological trial trenching in 2017 revealed no traces of this either.

Site of mill mound. Now destroyed, according to OS 1975. <1> <2> Mill mound still extant in 1928. <3> Toot Hill is marked on <4>, though the mill is not. The site is labelled 'Windmill (flour)' on <5>, and a house associated with the mill is clearly marked. The mill house remains extant. Name mentioned in 1611. <6> Possibly on the site of a medieval moot, see EHER 4260. 2017. Trial trenching. No archaeological remains of significance were identified. No features associated with the postulated hundred moot-hill (EHER 4260) or the post-medieval mill mound (EHER 4261) were encountered. Historic Ordnance Survey mapping show that the mound was located just east of the development area in the position now occupied by ‘Mill Place’ with possible mill-related buildings beyond. Some evidence for post-medieval to modern agricultural activity in the form of disturbed subsoil, a plough mark and a ceramic field drain, was recorded. Ordnance Survey maps from the 1870s through to the 1970s depict a roadside pond of diminishing size close to the Mill Lane/Toot Hill Road junction. However, localised brick rubble noted in the overburden at the south-east end of the trench may constitute the very edge of the pond backfill. <7> NRHE data transfer: The mill mound has now been destroyed, but according to local tradition it stood south-west of Mill Cottage at TL 5154 0258. <8> According to an illustration in the Buildings File the mill was extant in 1933 but in poor repair having been struck by lightning in 1829. <9> The Mills Archive states that the windmill was in fact struck by lightning in June 1879. It also notes that this mill was built by Isaac Taylor in 1787, and that by 1935 it was in a dilapidated state. <10>