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.