Great Bircham Windmill

This impressive Grade II listed windmill was, until recently, a fully working corn mill grinding grain into flour. Now one can clamber up and down the five storeys and stand on the platform near the very top, just beneath the fantail. This is the smaller windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill. It turns the cap so that the main sails are always facing into the wind to produce maximum power. 

Room is quite limited inside because the walls are over 2 feet thick. It's fascinating to climb the wooden staircases and stand on the old wooden floors beneath giant iron cogs and wheels and shafts and levers, and marvel at the minds which invented such ingenuity.

The house to the right is owned by the Wagg family who purchased the windmill from the Queen's Sandringham Estate in 1976, and the building to the left (with its own windmill weather-vane) is a cafe and shop.