One of the oldest working windmills in the UK is for sale.

Wheatley Windmill off the M40 seven miles from Thame between the Oxfordshire villages of Wheatley and Littleworth is being sold by the great grandchildren of Ezra Cripps, the last miller to own it.

He was the son of George Cripps who bought the mill in 1857.

The huge flat stones on the first floor of the three-storey tower mill would have ground locally grown wheat and corn into flour until production ceased at the outbreak of the 1914-18 First World War.

After that, the mill went to rack and ruin.

It was damaged by fire, struck by lightning, battered by the weather. The octagonal tower mill is an unusual shape. There are only two or three others like it in the country.

Ezra’s descendants Paul Cripps and Sarah Storey live on the Isle of Man.

They’ve put great grandpa’s mill on the market for £300,000. The price includes the strip of land amounting to almost two acres of green belt that surrounds it.

Jonathan Seabert, associate director agents at Chancellors in Headington says his clients are determined both the mill and the grazing land it stands on must go though they are prepared to split them into two lots.

On Monday this week the average asking price for a two bed flat in Bucks was £309,098.

Caroline Dalton, secretary of the Wheatley Windmill Preservation Society, whose dedicated group of volunteers rescued the mill from further decay and restored it to full working order over a course of more than 30 years between 1976 to 2010 has been to the Isle of Man to meet Paul and Sarah.

“They don’t have the opportunity to come over to see it,” she reports.

“If you come by sea it’s an arduous and costly journey of something like seven hours to get here.”

She understands why the couple want to release the money tied up in the building which to the huge fan base of windmill afficionados is an irreplaceable part of the local industrial heritage.

Members of the preservation society and their supporters dismiss any romantic notion of a buyer following the example of actress Hayley Mills and her first husband film director Roy Boulting.

In 1971 they converted Cobstone Windmill in Turville into their home.

It had been the smock mill used for the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [they’re known as smock mills because they look like an old man wearing a smock - that’s true: look it up.]

All those in Oxfordshire who came together to rescue what had been more or less a ruin when they took it on are hoping against hope a group of benefactors or a charity with sufficient funds will step in to ensure the 18th century structure of Wheatley Windmill remains true to its past and retains its integrity.

It happened at Lacey Green windmill close to Princes Risborough in Bucks and at Great Haseley windmill at Milton Common.

As soon as the sale was mooted, Caroline and her preservation society colleagues along with the local parish council and South Oxfordshire District Council took immediate action to get the mill listed as an asset of community value.

Regardless of the outcome over the future ownership, whether it goes to a sympathetic buyer or one who plans to convert it, the mill will continue to be operated under licence by the preservation society until October 2025.

After that, it will still need to be opened to the public from time to time under the terms of the Grade II listed status.

The mill costs the society an average of £5,000 a year to maintain - it cost the local charity many times more than that to restore.

Apart from special openings for schools and other educational groups, it’s open to the public from 2-5pm one Sunday each month from May to October.

The winter wraps come off each year on National Windmill Day, the second Sunday in May.

The final opening this year will be Sunday October 14.

www.wheatleymill.co.uk.