Watermills for Sale

If you are interested in buying a watermill, it's a great idea to become a volunteer at New Hall Mill. You may find that volunteering on our weekly work sessions and open days are enough to 'scratch that itch', as well as providing you with a wonderful community of like-minded individuals. Volunteering also allows you to concentrate on those aspects which you really love, whilst avoiding those which you might not like so much, whether that's mechanics, mud, admin, or something else.

Learning

If you are really serious about owning a mill, you'll need to do plenty of research and training. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) has a Mills Section which provides plenty of advice and learning materials for those interested in windmills and watermills. They also offer a range of online and in-person courses, workshops, talks, site visits and working parties.

Finding your Watermill

There are two options for finding watermills for sale:

Join the SPAB Mills Section

By becoming a Mills Section Member of SPAB you get access to their current online list of historic properties for sale, which often includes mills which are not advertised on the open market.

Search the Property Portals

You can keep an eye on properties for sale on the property portals, where you can search using keywords. Rightmove is the biggest by far, followed by Zoopla.

To search Rightmove, use the "draw a map" tool to specify the area you're interested in. Next, viewing your search results as a list, use "Add keyword" to narrow your search by entering the word 'Watermill'. You could also try searching with the keyword 'Mill'.

Using keywords means that you'll have to go through a lot of property which is not actually a watermill, such as

• words with similar spellings - Rightmove does not have an 'exact spelling only' check box.
• all the houses in "Watermill Lane", "Watermill Road", etc.
• former watermills with no sign of the original building, and
• mills converted into blocks of flats...

Looking in France?

The biggest search portal in France is SeLoger. Again, you can search using a keyword. I recommend against entering 'moulin à eau', the literal translation of watermill, as the site does not allow short phrase searches. I suggest using just the word 'moulin' instead. Yes, you'll get a few results with windmills, and a few villages with the work 'Moulin' in their name, but you'll still be better off with this method.

Good luck chasing your dreams!