References to a mill in Little Baddow, known as Huskards Mill or similar, date back to at least the Middle Ages. The original mill was a corn mill while a second mill for fulling cloth was added later. Although, there does not seem to have been a cloth trade in Little Baddow associated with the fulling mill, there were several Essex cloth towns (like Braintree or Coggeshall) to which it could have been linked.
In Elizabethan times, John Hawes ran both Little Baddow and Huskards mills, when he was fined 2s by Quarter Sessions in 1573 because he “by penning of his waters above his mark hath and doth damage to all the Queen’s tenants and farmers of the honour of Bewleigh in drowning the meadows and low grounds and for not drawing up his gates upon rage of waters in the hay time and also hath marred a certain highway or lane leading from Baddow bridge unto the mill called Huskardes mill which the said miller is to repair and amend for the avoidance of further inconvenience”.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century one of the mills was converted to a paper mill. This mill, operated by John Livermore, was perhaps the first in Essex to pulp rags to make paper. The paper mill continued until about 1830 when it reverted to milling corn. At that time, the increased acreage of arable land in the parish following the enclosure of the commons in 1811 presumably provided enough grain to keep several mills operating in the area. The mill was sold in 1898 and the new owners used it for the manufacturing of carbon rods which formed the beams of the first electric searchlights. In 1905, the mill was destroyed by fire in 1905 and never rebuilt.
William Calcraft, a journeyman papermaker came from Lincolnshire in 1759 to work in the mill as did his son in later years. His grandson, William Ong Calcraft (1800-1879), born in Little Baddow, became famous as one of Britain’s most prolific hangmen.