Maud Foster Windmill

Maud Foster Windmill is a seven-storey, five sail windmill located by the Maud Foster Drain in Skirbeck, Boston, Lincolnshire, from which she is named. She is one of the largest operating windmills in England being 80ft tall to the cap ball.The tower mill and adjoining granary is grade I listed building. The mill was built in 1819 for Isaac and Thomas Reckitt of Wainfleet. It was repaired and restored in 1988.HistoryThe 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 Reckitt's great grandson, Basil arranged for two Reckitt family charitable trusts to finance essential repairs by Thompsons of Alford and, in the same year, the mill was listed as being of exceptional interest.