Explore: A simply wonderful windmill conversion

There are windmill conversions, and then there’s The Windmill in Suffolk – one of the very best.

Sitting in gently rolling countryside between historic Bury St Edmunds and charming Lavenham, the last traditional windmill to be built in the county has been brought back to life – and given new purpose, as a luxury holiday home – thanks to the dedication and hard work of its passionately enthusiastic owners.

Unusual history

The windmill owned by technical sales consultant Steve and former sales manager Natalie stands in the sleepy village of Cockfield.

It was built in 1891 to replace an older mill on the same site. But, by then, the traditional windmill was a technology at the end of its lifespan, so the mill in Cockfield only operated for a few years, and had ceased to function by 1911.

The collection of old photos of the place that Steve and Natalie have amassed, shows that, by the early 1920s, the cap and sails had gone, though it seems milling may have carried on for a while longer using a diesel engine to grind the corn, instead of wind power.

Family friends

Natalie explains, “We’ve been lucky enough to have guests stay at The Windmill who played in the mill as children – four different sets of guests have been family members of people who lived at the windmill back in the day.

Through them we’ve been able to find photos and hear stories about the life of the mill.

But we have not managed to find a single photo yet of the windmill with its sails on. I think that’s because it was a working mill for such a short time.”

At some point the milling machinery was removed and, after that, the structure seems to have been mainly used for storage, though from the 1930s through to the 1950s old photos also show a rather precarious, Heath Robinson-style water tank perched on the top, to supply water to local homes.

Chasing windmills

North-Londoner Natalie and Steve, who’s from Essex, were living in north London when they decided to look further afield in the countryside to the north east of London.

Natalie takes up the tale, explaining, “It feels as though us getting this place was meant to be… Getting the windmill was all down to my mum, really.

“We’d decided to pool the money from our house with hers, and buy somewhere outside London with an annexe for her; a place where we could all live together.

It was Mum who suggested we start looking near Bury St Edmunds, because it’s such a beautiful spot and she knew it well.

So, when we came down to go to the Christmas market that year we thought we’d do a bit of house-hunting, and that morning at breakfast we saw the farmhouse that we live in now – which has the windmill in its back garden – advertised for sale in the local paper.

I wanted to go and look at it, but Steve was practical, and pointed out it was too far away from our jobs back in London.

“A couple of months later, my mum called. We were all still property hunting, and she was in Bury St Edmund looking in estate agents.

She was really excited about a property she’d seen – that had a windmill in the garden… of course, it was the same place.

“The three of us went to view what is now our house. We had a look round, chatted to the owners, then set off to drive home.

“But, as we drove, the more we discussed it, the more convinced we became that this could be the home for us. So, when we’d almost got home, we found ourselves turning around and driving all the way back to put in an offer.

It was accepted, and so we got our windmill in the end.

Starting work

“Mum lived very happily in the granary attached to the windmill.

“We moved into the farmhouse, which is still our home, and it was a few years before we decideded to tackle the mill.

“Then we came into some inheritance, which – along with remortgaging and borrowing money left right and centre – made it possible to contemplate doing up the mill. And we decided to go for it.”

Steve left his job and spent almost two years on the build with two local builders Ron and Simon.

Between them they did everything from scratch, from the new concrete floor to the stunning zinc-covered pod at the top.

When they started, the mill was virtually empty, and in a state of disrepair.

Steve recalls, “It was slowly falling down. The windows had fallen out, and there were no internal floors, just a partial mezzanine where the previous owner kept his model railway.

“These old windmills used to be tarred on the outside for waterproofing, and, over time, the tar had deteriorated, and water had penetrated the structure.

“The bricks are like sponges – so the place was just dripping with water.

“We had to have industrial dehumidifiers inside for weeks drying the walls out.

No corners

“We got the concrete slab, insulation, and underfloor heating laid, and then it got progressively more difficult – because, normally, you’d get architect’s drawings and then work off those, measuring from the corners of the building.

“But, of course, on a round building, there are no corners to measure from. It makes everything that much more complex…”

Back to school

The lack of straight lines meant Steve had to dust off his trigonometry and geometry skills.

He says, “I had to try to remember maths from school.

“I found the centre point by measuring to the middle from various points, and making arcs.

“Then using a protractor I used the angles to establish where the openings in the walls and the starting point of the staircase needed to go.

“It was critical that the staircase finished in exactly at the right spot on the top floor.

“Of course, the diameter gets smaller on every floor, so there’s a lot of complicated maths involved.”

Bifold doors

Originally there was no opening on the ground floor, the building was accessed via some rickety stairs to a door a first-floor level.

But the couple wanted to add bifold doors on the ground floor.

Steve explains, “That was trickly because, if you open up a horizonal slot in a cylinder (rather than a vertical one, like an arrow slit in a castle tower), it has the potential to seriously weaken the structure.

“So, introducing those bifold doors meant we had to add a whole new steel frame to support the brick structure.”

Expenses curve

The steel frame is curved, and, as Steve says somewhat ruefully, “Everything curved is three or four times the ‘straight’ price – everything curved has to be custom made.”

And there are lots of bespoke curved fittings and fixtures in the windmill.

The mathematically-taxing staircase and three floors were inserted into the building, housing two bedrooms on the first and third floors, and a bathroom on the second.

The ground floor is given over to a kitchen-diner.

Rendering gang

When it came to the insulation, Steve was determined to save every square inch of space inside the round tower, so 300mm insulation was bolted on to cover the exterior.

Then a team of 16 worked together to render the outside of the mill.

“We needed that many guys working at the same time because, without corners to work from or to, the whole building had to be rendered in one go to avoid any visible joins,” he explains.

Timber pod

The crowning glory of the building is the ‘pod’ at the top of the column, which forms the fourth-floor living room with superb views over the beautiful Suffolk countryside.

Steve recalls, “We had a vision of what we wanted the top section to look like, which was really as much as possible like the original windmill cap.

“We talked to Craig Beech our excellent architect, at Beech Architects, and got him to put some proposals for different options together.

“We liked this curved, inverted-boat shape the best because it most resembled how the windmill would have originally looked – but with a contemporary twist.”

Inside, the wooden pod does looks rather like an upturned boat hull with a large window at each end.

The original plan was to construct the pod off site and crane it into place on top of the windmill.

But when it became clear the road to the property wouldn’t support the weight of the required crane, it was back to the drawing board, and plan B meant assembling it in situ on top of the building.

Hand-crafted charm

The pod is formed around horseshoe-shaped ribs made from triple thickness of Kerto, a Finnish laminated timber that is both lightweight and strong.

The ribs were cut out using a CNC machine.

The unusual shape of the pod means each plank of the timber covering the ribs required precise shaping.

But a quote for £25,000 for cutting them in the CNC machine meant they decided to do the job themselves the old-fashioned way – by hand.

Each plank had to be shaped slightly differently.

Natalie points out proudly, “It wasn’t an easy job. Every single piece of wood in there has been cut and placed by hand.

“It was a labour of love.”

As a former graphic designer, Steve has a good eye.

He explains, “I had to adapt things visually, so it looks as though they are equally sized and parallel to each other.”

His hard work has paid off – the results are highly effective.

The wooden planking gives the high-up room a warm and cosy feeling, with echoes of a traditional boat-hull or wooden chalet.

Yet because the curves have a non-tradition profile, there is a very modern feel about the interior too.

Zinc cladding

To weatherproof the wooden pod, it was clad with zinc, with a bold ‘standing seam’ design, featuring ridges that curve over the pod.

This was a highly-skilled job for a specialist.

Steve says, “Noone has ever tried to zinc an elliptical roof like this before, so we had trouble finding anyone who could do it.

“In the end we had to go back to the supplier, Rheinzink, and they found us a local guy, at Cu.Tech.Zn, who spent six months up there doing it.

“It was very fiddly, but he executed it so well that he won a National Roofing Award for it.”

That’s not the only award the build has won.

There have been nominations for RIBA and RICS awards, woodworking awards, as well as a whole host of tourism awards.

Curves matter

Steve continues, “One of the hardest parts of the whole refurb was the plasterboarding, particularly round the staircase.

“The sides of the staircase form the inner walls of the rooms, but plasterboarding curved walls, especially where the radius is larger at the bottom of the room than at the top… well, it’s not easy.

“For one thing, you had to put each board on the bias slightly. I wanted to give up a few times it was so difficult.”

It was the same with the timber for the staircase handrail, Steve had to almost “hug” it into shape, using his bodyweight to shape the wood.

Natalie remembers, “I’d come home and find him bending bits of wood – using his body, pieces of metal, anything – to get the curved shapes he wanted.”

The curves mattered.

At the outset the pair had decided that they wanted everything in the windmill to be curved to fit into the round building.

She explains, “When we first started dating, we went to stay in a windmill that was furnished with standard square or rectangular furniture.

“We found that a bit disappointing as the sense of roundness was lost, so, when we got our windmill, we wanted everything to be curved.

“We went out of our way to ensure everything was going to be round.

“The TV had to be curved. The bath has a wave-like shape to it. The walls needed to be curved. And all the furniture.

“We wanted it to feel as if you were almost being hugged by the building.

“But, of course, that meant a lot of extra work for Steve.”

Design through empathy

When it came to designing to the interiors, the couple had another shared vision.

The underpinning idea was an empathetic understanding of how people will want to use and occupy the space.

For example, Natalie explains, “We originally thought about putting a bedroom up in the pod.

“The idea was you’d be able to lie in bed and look at the stars.

“But that would have meant only one couple – the house is designed for four adults – could do that.

“The other couple loses out. In any case, once you’d looked at the stars for 10 minutes, then you’d go to sleep, and that felt like a waste of what is a special space.

“So we decided to put the lounge at the top, where everyone can enjoy it, all day long.”

Big built-in sofas mean there’s room for everyone to lie back and admire the views through the big picture windows.

And braver guests can venture out onto the external balcony to really take in the Suffolk landscape.

Practical details

Natalie reflects, “We wanted to take all our experiences from when we’ve stayed in other places, and try to build on those, to get things right that other places might have missed – to get all the little practical details right.

“So, for example, there are plug sockets near the mirror so you can dry your hair more easily.

“For me, because I’m super tall, I often find on holiday that the wardrobes aren’t tall enough for me to hang up my full-length dresses in.

“So, I wanted to make sure that there was room for that, and each wardrobe also has a step up so that anybody who isn’t so tall can still easily hang their clothes up too.

Not just a novelty

“It’s all about trying to think about how people use the building – to have the functionality as well as the luxury and the beauty of it.

“Rather than it just being a case of ‘Oh, that looks good’ we really wanted people to have the enjoyment of staying in a wonderful, liveable, luxurious and well-thought-out space rather than just the novelty value of staying in a windmill.

“Our guests regularly tell us they think we have thought of everything with the build and interior design, and that is a compliment we are truly grateful for because it’s fantastic to know they have noticed all the thought that has been put into the design.

“When we started, we didn’t know if people would come just once.

“We wanted to try to make it special enough that we’d get repeat bookings.

“And thankfully that plan seems to have worked.

“We have guests that come every single year and say to us, ‘We’re going to come until we can’t do the stairs any more.’”

Takeaways

There is much to learn from this lovely project and from Steve and Natalie’s approach to their beloved windmill reno: their attention to detail; their empathetic focus on the experience of living in the space; and an old-fashioned willingness to put in the work hard to make their vision come to life.

These are all qualities that would improve any build – and have helped them create a really rather wonderful windmill conversion.

You can read more about the Windmill Suffolk here.

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