Beyond the brochure: Escape the grind

Inside the Watermill in the smart Norfolk village of Burnham Overy Town, the locum now forms part of the top floor of its 4,000 sq ft of living space. It’s a groovy, relaxing area with a sitting room and a separate bedroom under a skylit roof of exposed beams and trusses, and a bit of hauling machinery — a wooden wheel and some sturdy chains — worked into the decorative scheme. That’s what you have to do when you convert an old mill. Not only would it be a right pain to get the old equipment out, but the conservation people wouldn’t let you.

David Barrows “always wanted a watermill”, so his wife, Gillian, tells me. Why a London wine-shipper should nurse such a desire was not for me to probe, but Gillian used to work for SPAB (the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), and they’d already done up a couple of old places in Kent, so they were well equipped for the task.

Flour power: The mill has a working water wheel

In 1999, they paid £650,000 for the adjoining windmill, which had already been renovated. The whole complex was a “union mill”, dating from the 1730s, which could grind flour using either wind or water power.

So they lived in the windmill while they did up the derelict watermill, which they bought for £190,000. They got a £10,000 grant towards fixing the roof: a mere drop in the millpond of the total cost of turning it into the home it is today (not much change from £500,000). In 2006 they sold the windmill for £1.25m — reflecting the eye-watering upward trajectory of the property market in this coastal enclave — and moved in with their three daughters.

The most imposing building in a small complex of immaculately restored and tended cottages and barns, the Watermill looks south over the millpond, a magnet for bird life. Water flows from the pond to the stream under a new hardwood deck, driving the rounded flaps, known as “buckets”, of the huge water wheel when it’s released — simply by “pulling out a pin”, David says. And this provides the power to turn the millstones, which happened on October 9, 2009, for the first time since the 1950s.

Mill-pond calm: the grounds are a magnet for bird life

The first thing David had done was to put in a new sluice to control the water flow, and, in answer to the obvious question, apart from an inundation in 1953, when the whole area was under water, he says it has never flooded.

Then he got to work on the inside, using pitch pine for the open-tread stairs that connect the four floors and LPG for heating and the Aga, so they would never risk an oil spillage into the pristine stream. Bare brick, reclaimed wood and new eco-materials dominate: bright limewash and solvent-free paints adorn the walls. And, of course, the old cranks, wheels and posts that worked the mill have been cleaned up and incorporated, giving the whole place the agreeable vibe of rural loft living, with kitchen and dining room downstairs, big sitting room and study above them and three ensuite bedrooms on the second floor.

Now, with children grown and the hunger for a “new project before it’s too late” — they’re in their mid-sixties but look way younger — it’s on the market. David and Gillian can also sell you their 0.6-acre garden and barn with garage space for three cars (for a sum to be negotiated separately).

So, they’re selling — but not necessarily leaving. They are offering a prospective buyer 5% return on the £1.6m purchase price in the form of rent at £80,000 a year for two years so they can carry on living there while doing the next “project”.

And now you’re an expert on old flour mills, negotiating on all that should be a doddle.

If you would like Karen to cast her critical eye over a property you are selling, email btb@sunday-times.co.uk