A Windmill in the Forest.
It was in this century that the Abbot got into trouble for erecting a windmill in the Forest. Though, so far as I know, all memory of the mill’s existence has passed away, we are still able to say where it stood. In 1739 the hill near The Warren (Mr. McKenzie’s) was still known as Mill Hill and as such it appears in Chapman’s map in 1772. That there was in the parish a water-mill, belonging to P. de Valoines, we know from Domesday Book, and evidence of its existence is still to be seen about Loughton Bridge. Needless to say that there were quarrels about the water with the great de Veres, Earls of Oxford, who then owned Wolston Hall, and had a mill there; but these disputes were amicably arranged in 1273, after a bit of a riot, when certain men came to the Abbot’s bridge and mill-pond, broke both down, and carried off the timber of the bridge. The bridge was then called ‘Hynekesford Bridge,’ a name which never re-appears.