Maud Foster Windmill

The tower mill was erected on Willoughby Road on the east side of John Rennie's Maud Foster Drain for Thomas and Isaac Reckitt by the Hull millwrights Norman and Smithson in 1819. Corn for the mill was brought in by barge along the drain. The original drawings and accounts survive, telling us that it cost £1826-10s-6d. The Reckitt brothers were millers, corn factors and bakers until poor harvests in the years up to 1833 led to the mill being sold. Isaac Reckitt moved to Nottingham and then to Hull where he set up Reckitt & Sons. The Ostler family bought the mill in 1914 and ran the business, known as Ostler's Mill, until 1948 when it closed and the mill fell into disrepair. In 1953 Isaac…

The seven-stage mill tower is constructed in gault brick and has Yorkshire sash windows with segmental heads on each level. It is topped with an ogee cap made of white painted timber and canvas and has five sails and a fan tail. At the third floor level is a wooden cantilevered balcony on timber brackets. The mill is accessed by a pair of planked doors up three stone steps. The three-storey granary is built in red brick and has a hipped pantile roof with dog-toothed eaves. The granary has four bays, the second bay occupied by planked taking-in doors and the other three by Yorkshire sash windows with brick segmental heads. Above the taking-in doors is a timber-planked and gabled lucam on…