No troubles at t'mill

Feel the rush of two exciting mills in Hampshire and Gloucestershire

- Penny Churchill

IT will be a sad day for Laurance and Patricia Lafosse when they hand over the keys to imposing, Grade II*-listed Lumley Mill at Emsworth on the Hampshire/ Sussex border, a charming small town set at the head of a channel in Chichester Harbour, between the South Downs and the sea. For the past 47 years, the mill house, which they bought as an empty shell in 1972 and have painstakingly remodelled and refurbished over the years, has been their cherished family home and they are understandably reluctant to leave.

Mrs Lafosse, whose great joy has been the garden she re-created from a wilderness during their long period of ownership, is philosophical about the couple’s need to move: ‘With both of us now heading towards our eighties, a six-bedroom house with a large garden is too much to manage. However, we won’t be going far, as we plan to move to a smaller house in nearby Westbourne, taking with us some wonderful family memories that include the weddings of all three daughters and holidays spent with our grandchildren, who happily ran wild in the garden with its tall trees, river and mill race.’

The delightfully quirky, early 19th-century house with its generous ceiling heights, well-proportioned rooms and large Georgian windows that give the whole property a light and airy feel, is now on the market through Knight Frank in Haslemere (01428 770560) and Henry Adams in Emsworth (01243 377773) at a guide price of £1.5 million.

The original Lumley Mill complex, powered by a mill race leading off the River Ems, was the most northerly of Emsworth’s mills, located halfway between the harbour town and the village of Westbourne. According to local records, it was built in 1760 on the Sussex bank of the town, as part of Lord Lumley’s substantial Stansted estate.