A historic windmill within the English countryside that appeared alongside Dick Van Dyke and a magical flying automotive within the 1968 film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” has gone up on the market.
The black-and-white Cobstone Mill, in Buckinghamshire, England, simply exterior London, is a part of a property that additionally features a most important home, about 37 acres of land and a swimming pool. It could possibly be yours for 9 million kilos (about $11.4 million).
The mill is assumed to have been constructed round 1816 and was used to grind cereal till 1873, according to Savills, the true property agency promoting the property. Earlier than the windmill could possibly be used as a film location it wanted substantial renovations. The property had been broken by a fireplace and, in response to native media stories on the time, squatters had been dwelling in it.
Within the movie, which was loosely based mostly on a kids’s ebook by the James Bond creator Ian Fleming, the windmill served as the house for Mr. Van Dyke’s character, a nutty, widowed inventor named Caractacus Potts, who lives along with his kids, Jeremy and Jemima. Collectively along with his love curiosity, Really Delicious, performed by Sally Ann Howes, and his automotive, named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for its distinctive engine sounds, they journey to the land of Vulgaria to battle the tyrant Baron Bomburst.
However the windmill’s movie business connections didn’t finish there.
In 1971, the actress Hayley Mills purchased the property at public sale together with her husband, Roy Boulting, a movie director. Ms. Mills wrote concerning the first time she noticed the property in her 2021 memoir, “Without end Younger.”
“I acknowledged it without delay as the kids’s house in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and it was love at first sight,” she wrote, envisioning herself and her husband watching their little one play within the afternoon solar, despite the fact that the property was “totally impractical.”
Mr. Boulting then shocked her by shopping for it at public sale for 30,000 kilos (about $38,000). “It was loopy, fully, marvelously loopy,” she wrote. Whereas she hoped the windmill would develop into her dream house within the nation, and whereas she began renovating the property to make it livable, the windmill’s renovations weren’t completed, in response to the autobiography, and the couple later divorced.
The property was later owned by David Brown, an English industrialist and a former proprietor of the automaker Aston Martin. Within the Eighties, the property was offered to the present proprietor, in response to Stephen Christie-Miller, one of many realtors on the itemizing.
“It’s such a landmark once you drive by the valley,” Mr. Christie-Miller stated, “It dominates.”
The windmill is a Grade II-listed constructing, which suggests it’s thought of of nationwide significance and is legally shielded from being demolished or considerably altered with out particular permission.
Although the value tag is steep, there was curiosity within the property, Mr. Christie-Miller stated, particularly for the often sluggish month of August throughout which many potential consumers are on trip.
“So many individuals understand it,” he stated, including that he was planning to point out the windmill to 2 potential consumers on Wednesday and had already confirmed it to 1 couple who have been, he stated, “very eager.”
Since peaking in August final 12 months, home costs in Britain have begun to drop. Final month, costs fell 3.8 p.c in contrast with a 12 months earlier, in response to Nationwide Building Society, the steepest annual drop in additional than a decade.
Between the windmill and the home, the property has six bedrooms and 4 loos, in response to the itemizing. The windmill’s sails have been restored previously 18 months, in response to Savills.
With views over the close by countryside, “the windmill itself can be a beautiful place to have an workplace,” Mr. Christie-Miller stated, however added, “not that you just’d get any work performed.”
It’s not simply “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” followers who is likely to be excited. The windmill seems to be over the village of Turville, the place scenes from the Nineties English sitcom “Vicar of Dibley” have been filmed.
Mr. Christie-Miller stated the itemizing stands out in his 40-year profession. “It comes up as soon as in a technology,” he stated. “It was final available on the market in 1988. The subsequent particular person will most likely personal it for an additional 30 years.”
