It stands on a hilltop overlooking the village of Chesterton, near the Roman Fosse Way and about five miles (8 km) south-east of Warwick.

At this time John Stone, a pupil of Inigo Jones, was in Chesterton designing the new Manor House and he probably helped with the windmill as well.

Sir Edward was a mathematician and astrologer and probably his own architect for the windmill, but although claims have been made that the tower was originally built as an observatory, the estate accounts now at Warwick Record Office show that it has always been a windmill,[2] making it the earliest tower mill in England to retain any of its working parts.

It is built of hard local limestone, with sandstone detailing, on a shallow platform of 71 feet 9 inches (21.87 m) in diameter.

The mill tower with a cap height of 36 feet (11 m), unique worldwide in structure and mechanics, is supported on six semicircular arches, on piers, the outer faces of which are arcs of circles radiating from a common centre.

A three-light window set in the roof on the opposite side to the sails, has a small plaque above it with the letters "E. P. 1632".

The space inside the arches, until 1930, used to have a wooden structure to store the grain, and an open timber staircase to reach the milling floors.

The Arnold family, whose place of origin is disputed but may have been either Leamington[4] or further down the Fosse Way, near Ilchester in Somerset, emigrated to Rhode Island in 1635 where Benedict became governor in 1663.