It's always exciting when a windmill comes up for sale. So much so that we always write about them when they do, and thus the thought came to me this morning that if I had a pound for every story I've written about a windmill for sale, I'd have enough money to buy a windmill next time one comes up for sale.
I had a look back through the Country Life property archive, and it turns out that this would be a bit of an exaggeration. I'd actually have three pounds. Even if you add in windmill stories that our other property writers have done since I started here, it'd still only be about £12.
That said, each one of those windmills was an absolute classic (as you can see here, here and here), which is something they have in common with the latest windmill to come up for sale: Sutton Windmill, near Stalham in Norfolk. Sowerbys quote £1.5 million for this beautiful place.
As a connoisseur of windmills for sale, the first thing that struck me about Sutton Mill is its sheer size. This is one of the tallest surviving windmills in Britain, if not the tallest: nearby Moulton Mill is usually cited as the tallest, but Historic England records Moulton's height at eight storeys, and Sutton Mill's height at nine storeys.
Either way, it's a true local landmark. Stalham is in one of the flattest parts of Britain — this is the heart of the Norfolk Broads National Park — and this fine building, with its proud white sails, means you need never fear getting lost on a post-lunch walk.
Historic England's listing also gives its original construction date of 1789, though it was rebuilt in 1859 following a fire, and repaired again after a lightning strike in 1940 that stopped it working for good.
The milling business's loss turned out to be the property market's gain: the windmill's restoration began in the late 1970s, and it's been continually improved and updated since then. The current owners have carried out a significant restoration project, which included converting the neighbouring granary into the main body of the home.
And the home is really something: six bedrooms, 7,000 square feet of space and full of original features, from wonderful old timber beams to huge inglenook fireplaces and exposed brickwork.
The sense of space is at its height in the huge kitchen / dining / sitting room, which at almost 90 feet long (that's 27 metres for any Gen Z readers) is one of the biggest rooms we've seen in Country Life all year.
There's also a gym, playroom, another sitting room, a second kitchen and a utility room on the ground floor, three bedrooms on the first floor, three more on the second floor, plus two more smaller spaces that could also be used as bedrooms. And all that's before we've mentioned all the floors of the windmill's tower itself, all of which are accessible.
Should you need even more space, there's a charming three-bedroom holiday cottage in the grounds as well. And for those who don't need extra space, Sowerbys have had a quote from a holiday rentals agency suggesting that the cottage could bring in well over £50,000 a year.
They also ran the same sums for the main house itself, suggesting that rental income for the granary could be around £120,000 a year. You don't need to be Hannah Fry to work out that an annual return of £170,000 is quite the projected return on a £1.5 million purchase price, even after the costs of running it as a rental business are taken into account. Obviously, it'd be a shame to own a property this beautiful and not live in it yourself... but it's useful to know that this could be a wonderful lifestyle business waiting to happen.
Sutton Mill is for sale via Sowerbys at £1.5 million — see more details.