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Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield

windmill in Great Bardfield, Essex, England, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ5559174
Source-derived summary

Gibraltar Mill is a grade II listed Tower mill at Great Bardfield, Essex, England which has been converted to residential use.

History

The first date at which a windmill is definitely known to have been standing here is 1707. A date of 1680 is given by some sources, but no mill was marked on Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1678. It cannot be proved or disproved that a mill was standing here in 1680. The most likely date of erection of Gibraltar Mill is 1704. A possible scenario being an earlier mill having been blown down in the Great Storm of 1703 and the present mill replacing it. By 1754, the mill had been converted to a cottage. The mill was put back to work as a windmill by 1806, when it was insured for £300, having only been insured for £50 in 1800. The mill was worked in conjunction with the nearby Great Bardfield Watermill at various times. A new cast iron windshaft was fitted in 1877, replacing the former wooden one.

Editorial summary

“Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield” enters the record as windmill in Great Bardfield, Essex, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gibraltar, Mill and Great can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1707, 1680, 1678, 1704—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Gibraltar, Mill and Great.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Gibraltar, Mill and Great provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5559174. Authority coordinates are 51.950, 0.443. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1707, 1680, 1678 and 1704.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield primary sources, Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield archive and Gibraltar research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.