IN today’s Timeout, we look back on the historic Patcham Windmill.

Built in 1885, the five-storey tower mill was the last working mill to be built in Sussex.

It is in Mill Road, Patcham, on the edge of Brighton and was built for baker Joseph Harris who also owned Preston Mill nearby in Brighton. This was demolished in 1890.

The Patcham mill continued to mill corn for the baker until 1924 before eventually becoming a private home with modern extension and a goldfish family in the swimming pool in the Sixties.

Descendants of the Harris family still live in Patcham and run the local Post Office, however the mill has changed ownership multiple times since.

The property was bought in 1989 by a George and Muriel Musgrave, as a suitable premises for housing the couple’s large collection of personal paintings and sculptures, the Musgrave collection.

It cost them £250,000.

The windmill remained open to the public, who were invited to see the art and the grand property, which retained many of its original features including the windshaft, brakewheel and the millstones, which now sit below a main bedroom.

It wasn’t long after the Musgraves bought the property that the windmill was damaged by gales and then a lightning strike in 1990.

The cost of repairing the windmill was £14,000 after the gale and a further £170,000 after the lightning destroyed two sails. It took two years for the windmill to be repaired, in which time all four of the sails were restored.

Unfortunately due to ill health, the Musgraves were forced to sell the windmill, at which point it was bought by Bob Baker, who subsequently sold it in 2013 for £1 million.