It was the Romans who invented the watermill; windmills did not appear in Britain until around the 12th century. Watermills and windmills flourished from the medieval periodinto the 19th century when they began to be replaced by steam and, later, oil-powered engines.

In England, the earliest windmills were post mills - so called because the whole structure was built on an enormous vertical timber post around which it rotated. The design of windmills was constrained by the need for the structure holding the sails to be able to be turned to face into the wind. This was not only to enable them to operate with greatest efficiency but because a windmill with the wind behind it is in great danger of having its sails blown off.

Post mills were superseded by smock mills which had a fixed building under a rotating cap which carried the sails - undoubtedly an improvement in terms of working and storage areas - but still mostly constructed of timber. Working windmills generated a fine flour dust which was all too easily ignited if the rotating stones accidentally met and sent out a shower of sparks. For this and other reasons, windmills of stone and brick were preferable and largely replaced post mills and smock mills during the 18th and 19th centuries. The new tower mills represented the height of technology and engineering of their time and were ubiquitous in the landscape of eastern England until well into the 20th century.