10 bed detached house for sale

Cley, Holt, Norfolk NR25

A rare chance to acquire one of the North Norfolk coast's most recognisable landmarks. Cley Windmill is a Grade II* listed tower mill, dating from the early nineteenth century, set beside the Glaven and looking out across the marshes to the sea. Restored and run for many years as a well-regarded guest house and wedding venue, it offers a purchaser an established business, a striking historic building, and one of the best views on this stretch of coast.

The mill's red brick tower is capped by a white-painted timber cap, sails and fantail, all restored in recent years, with a balcony at second floor level and a further gallery at the top of the tower giving uninterrupted views across the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The main shaft and wheel remain in place at the top of the tower as a reminder of the building's working history.

Accommodation within the mill and adjoining ground floor rooms includes a sitting room, dining room, study, kitchen/breakfast room and several bedroom suites, each named for its original use and varying in character from the circular chambers of the tower to more conventionally proportioned rooms in the older ground floor range. Exposed beams, brick and flint work, and the original brick fireplaces are retained throughout.

Surrounding the mill and forming a courtyard are further self-contained guest rooms and cottages, giving a total of nine en-suite bedrooms across the property. These outbuildings have been renovated to a comparable standard and let alongside the rooms in the mill itself.

Historical note:
Cley appears in the Domesday Book under the name Claia, and was for several centuries one of East Anglia's principal ports, trading in wool and grain along a River Glaven that has since silted and narrowed. The dining room, study and Miller's Room, part of the original warehouse, date from about 1713; the mill tower itself was completed later. Milling ceased shortly after the First World War, when the building was converted to a private house, a project supported in part by Mary, Duchess of Bedford. It became a guest house in the 1980s and has traded as one since.

Current Use:
Cley Windmill currently trades as a guest house, restaurant and wedding venue with a long-established reputation and a strong repeat and referral business. It holds alcohol, performance and wedding licences. A purchaser could continue the business broadly as it stands, adapt it as a smaller guest house or private house with letting cottages, or use the main building as a private residence while retaining the outbuildings as holiday accommodation (subject to necessary permissions).

The gardens extend to about 0.6 acres, part formal lawn enclosed by low flint walls, part reed bed sloping down to the River Glaven, where a private timber jetty gives access to the water. Guaranteed parking is available for several cars within the grounds, with further parking available on the adjoining common land at the Quay.

The Windmill stands at the northern edge of Cley next the Sea, a well-kept coastal village of flint and brick cottages built around a working quay. The village has two public houses, a smokehouse, a delicatessen, galleries and a medieval parish church. Cley Marshes, immediately to the north, is one of the country's best-known bird reserves, with several hundred recorded species.

Holt, four miles south, is a Georgian market town with a fuller range of shops and services. Norwich, about 24 miles away, offers a full range of shopping, cultural and educational facilities, an airport with connections via Amsterdam, and a mainline station serving London Liverpool Street and Cambridge.