Maldon has a Mill Road and a Mill Lane, and it isn't a great leap of imagination to work out from that we once possessed at least two mills.

A short article in a 1997 edition of Penny Farthing (the newsletter of Maldon District Museum Association) helpfully lists these, and others.

Herbert's Mill was noted in 1826, located at the junction of St. Mary's Lane and Mill Road, close to the present number 31 (now an early 19th Century listed building). The online List of Windmills of Essex describes it as a Smock Mill – a type of windmill where only the roof or cap rotated to bring the sails into the wind. The body would be weatherboarded or shingled with six or eight sides.

Apparently, this mill was purchased for relocation in 1842 by a Mr Whitehead, a miller of Great Totham. It was intended to be re-erected at Stebbing, but broke apart while being loaded onto carts.

Another windmill was listed in 1799 and 1831, located at Mill Lane in Fullbridge (still very close, of course, to current flour mills). The Essex list also refers to this as a smock mill, but the Museum article calls it a post mill (where the whole body of the mill rotates round a single central post).

Two other windmills existed at Heybridge, not to process flour but to pump seawater onto the salt pans owned by the Salt Works.

More information on these can be found on the excellent Goldhanger Past website, which is a rich source of local information. One of these was known as "Barrow-hill Mill", and was located close to the now derelict Mill Beach Pub, on a mound which was once thought to be a burial mound but was more probably a spoil heap from the digging of the mill pond for the Heybridge Tide Mill.

This mill dates back at least to 1703, and lasted long enough (albeit rebuilt in 1830 after a hurricane) to appear in an 1890s sketch and a 1900s photograph (both on the Goldhanger Past website). The other is referred to in an 1825 document, but its location is uncertain.

There are references to possibly a third windmill in Maldon itself, and another in Goldhanger village, while the subject of watermills and tidemills would be a fascinating topic in its own right.

Our lost mills date back to a time when wind and water power, now coming back in favour as sustainable power sources, were the only alternative to human or animal motive power.