Turning windmills into houses 🌍

Unfortunately the sad fate of many of the UK's remaining windmills is the spectre of house conversion. Two such examples showed up recently on Geograph, where the archive is able to offer before and after (or rather during) photos of the process.

Llancayo windmill in Wales was a derelict and roofless tower, which has now been rendered and turned into a spacious home. The roof of the tower is totally wrong (and I've no idea what the Jolly Roger is doing there), but the gallery around the mill looks fairly authentic, and given the state of the tower when this started, this may have been the best outcome for the building.

On the other hand, Frettenham tower mill in Norfolk, had been maintained in reasonable condition for years, being roofed (with an unauthentic cap it must be said) and still retains machinery. The conversion work here seems to be starting with the attached buildings, which are being converted into a number of dwellings - let's hope that that means that they will leave the mill largely alone, and in particular preserve all the remaining machinery it contains. However, the very fact that this is now incorporated into a private housing development means that even if preserved, these remains become inaccessible. A far from ideal outcome for this particular mill.