Building a New Home in the Style of a Windmill

Step inside Glyn and Debbie Larcombe’s windmill and you could be entering another age. Massive timbers, low ceilings, old pulleys, ropes and pieces of agricultural equipment and even large bellows line the walls. The tiny kitchen, tucked into a corner of the octagonal ground floor living and dining room, resembles a galley. A rustic staircase leads gingerly off from a spot near the entrance, the first of four flights that eventually lead to the boat-shaped cap that forms the roof of the 60ft tall building. “I could easily have built a much more ordinary house of similar size – two/three bedrooms – for about the same figure and it would have been a lot less trouble,” says Glyn, who designed the windmill himself. “However, I have a passion for old timber structures, especially windmills, and I thought that for my first self-build it would be fun to have a go at something different.”

It all came about because Glyn and Debbie, who have four children, were running out of space in the adjacent Victorian house they had extended and adapted since they arrived in 1990. “At that time our youngest son, Charlie, was four,” says Glyn. “Now he is the biggest member of the family. We had a good idea it might be feasible to build something on the adjacent plot and I then thought of building upwards rather than outwards to be a bit different. The windmill idea soon followed and of course the children were over the moon about the idea of a windmill they could live in. Even Debbie – usually a restraining influence over my wildest ideas, could see no objection.”

Despite its proximity to Heathrow, the village of Wraysbury has a very pretty core. However one end of the green – the old axis of the village – was very run-down. It contained a semi-derelict bungalow — now Glyn’s studio, their existing house – which dates from 1860 and was converted into four bedsits when they came – and the old stables and garage, on the site of which the windmill now stands. “I was brought up in Wraysbury and over the years have seen hundreds of rather unadventurous and overdesigned new houses being built here,” Glyn says. “I felt that something really exciting and ‘different’ was needed; something that would form a focal point in the old heart of the village. I also thought it would be rather fun to test the planning system.”

Deciding to take a cautious approach at first, Glyn and Debbie put in an application for an agricultural permission for the four-floored windmill, expecting to receive a pretty rapid rejection. Instead they found their proposal, based on a smock mill 30 miles away in the Chilterns, unconditionally approved by planners at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead — so the with planning system having passed Glyn’s test, he felt duty bound to build the structure.

Six years later the scene looks very mature. There are ducks on the stream that flows past the floor of the mill and the village lawn tennis and bowls club happily coexist on the edge of the old village green. The plot has been enlarged with the addition of a pretty garden, created by adding half a garden attached to a nearby end terrace house they bought.

The vast majority of the build was from reclaimed materials. The frame consists of eight huge 50ft long sloping ‘cant posts’ of pitch pine that came from the Tall Ships sidings at Tilbury. Glyn and Ewan, an engineer who lives nearby, built this first, using an old but reliable crane that was no longer roadworthy and bought for £1,500 to raise them into position.

“The building control officer was perfectly happy – probably because we employed a firm of structural engineers, who obviously thought I had ‘overcooked’ the structural elements,” Glyn says. “However, I wanted to err on the safe side.”

The main frame of the building is completed with 18 mm sheathing plywood on the inner leaf, with a roofing felt behind, a 150mm layer of Rockwool insulation, then a breathable membrane, and on the outside horizontal weatherboarding, curved by screwing it firmly to the shape of the frame. “We made sure it complied with the insulation requirements and the building control officer was well satisfied,” Glyn says.

Once the frame was in position they raised the 10 tonne ‘boat’ into position, complete with fantail, using an 80 tonne crane they hired for a day. When the wind gets up it now moves freely round on its ring beam and 15 giant castors, 60ft up at the rear of the high street.

There are five floors if one counts the inside of the boat, which currently houses a drive shaft from an old lorry which will eventually be coupled to a wind turbine. Beneath this is a storage floor that could easily be converted to a bedroom and beneath that the master bedroom adjoining the bathroom and wc. Beneath – on the first floor – is another bedroom. All floors afford views over the centre of the village. There are windows on each floor in every alternate side.

On a windy day the boat will rotate through as much as 360˚. “It is so satisfying that people here think the windmill has added life and character to the village — in fact as Glyn says, it has completed the village picture,” Debbie says. “It just shows how with a good idea and a bit of determination, and the planners on your side, you really can build a most unusual and imaginative house.”

Further Reading:

• A Converted Barn With a Contemporary Twist 
• Converting an 18th century stone barn
• A Converted Bowling Alley