I was standing inside a very old post mill only half an hours drive from my home in Essex and had never heard about until I found a slip of paper in my local library, 'Visit Bocking Windmill '. A selection of days were given when the windmill would be open to the public throughout the year , so here I was, camera at the ready and lots if interesting feats of yesteryear engineering to photograph this my very first visit to a post mill.

A keen photographer from a very early age I had an interest in any building or relic from our past history but had never thought of windmills before, however, my hour or so spent at this post mill was by far one of the most enjoyable visits anywhere.

Bocking Windmill stands along side Church Street, Bocking, near Braintree. A splendid view of it can be seen from the Braintree to Sudbury road were its brilliant white sails and buck stand out majestically upon the distant horizon. Built it is thought about 1680 one hundred yards further down the hill then it is now and moved lock stock and grain sack to is present site at a later date. It is approachable via a driveway between the modern day residences that now cast their shadows over Church Street, once a muddy track with its horse drawn traffic of those very early days. Apparently the moving of windmills or parts of them was a common practice, the reuse of their parts still is, also for some unknown reason windmills are always called she and not it.

The sails or swipes as they are called in some counties span sixty feet from tip to tip and are about six feet wide, one pair would catch the wind by draping them with cloth (common sails) and the other pair with adjustable shutters (spring sails) similar to venetian blinds, however, these were not invented until 1772 by Andrew Meikle an engineer in Scotland, so most early post mills, smock mills and tower mills would have had all sails of the common type until this date.

Before my visit to Bocking I think I would have described a windmill as a tall building with sails on it, now I would say 'A windmill is rather like a gigantic clock in reverse, were as the internal gears in a clock turn the hands, the sails of a windmill turn the internal gears of the mill, and the position of the turn key on the clock would be where the really heavy grindstones would rumble around and grind the corn'. Well not necessarily corn, I will say more about this later, all windmills, post mills, smock mills and tower mills would all use what is called a gear train between the sails and the stones .

The large round brick building beneath the Buck called the Round House was not part of the mills main structure, if it was removed it would only expose the true base structure of the mill a mass of very heavy timber beams supporting the centre pole that held the Buck skyward so the sails could catch as much wind as possible, even on a relatively calm day, not unlike pointing a finger upwards and putting a cup on it upside down. The main function of the round house was to protect this framework of timbers and also as a store for grain and the Millers equipment to keep the windmill in working order.

I felt even more insecure in this shed on a pole when I was told by one of the volunteers that acted as both restorer and guide to the windmill that two sets of grindstones were used for grinding flour and grist (animal feed). That equaled four stones each one four feet in diameter (1219.2 mm) weighing about one ton (tonne) each and to reduce the weight within the buck one stone from each set had been removed. These now stand up against the brickwork of the roundhouse.

I was reassured that it was very safe and reminded of how long it had been standing there, almost immediately I felt a lot safer. I asked why the buck didn't rock from side to side like when one changed their position, .... like in a small boat. Apparently this is because the there is a tight fitting hole with a metal bearing in the lower flooring that the large centre beam passes through so the bottom of the buck can not move in any direction other then around it.

The central pole made of oak at Bocking starts off at about thirty inches square (76.2 mm) at its base. All the thick beams within the mill and for the trestle structure in the round house are also made of solid oak. 'There can't be many oak trees left in England nowadays that could yield such huge timbers'.

The Round House at Bocking is two storeys high, it was once only one, but the mill was jacked up later and the brickwork extended to give an extra floor to house an additional set of stones that were driven by a steam engine sited outside via a pulley wheel that protruded though the bricks.

Mission accomplished I descended to wide wooden steps from the rear of the buck to ground level. Extending from the bottom of the buck and protruding through the steps at a high level was a long pole called a tail pole its function was for the miller to turn the buck so that the sails would face into the wind, a weather vain would be used to determine the winds direction ........some tower mills also had poles as I was to find out very much later.