This Mill Is Twice as Old as the Painting That Made It Famous

With a spare $2 million, you can step out your front door and into a JMW Turner painting. The Rossett Mill in Wrexham, Wales—believed to be the inspiration for Turner's late-18th-century work "Marford Mill"—has hit the market after more than four centuries of grinding grain. Built in 1588 and expanded in the 17th and 19th centuries, the undershot watermill sits on 9.5 acres overlooking the River Alyn and can still be used to grind grain for bread, per the BBC. Turner, whom the Guardian recently labeled "Britain's best artist," encountered the formerly-named Marford Mill around 1795, when he was in his early 20s and crisscrossing Britain "looking for picturesque" subjects popular with antiquarian buyers, says Tate Britain curator Nicola Moorby.

The mill nearly didn't survive to see its current listing. By the 1970s it was derelict and marked for demolition before it was rescued and restored by Michael Kilgannon, who opened the site to visitors. Its current owners, Brendan and Celia Wilson, spotted it in a newspaper ad in 2010, paid $1.4 million, and then sank about $350,000 into turning the then-basic structure into a four-bedroom home with modern comforts like central heating. Until then, "living here would have been a bit like camping," Brendan Wilson tells WalesOnline. The property is now being marketed by Currans Unique, whose senior valuer calls it a rare combination of "history, land and lifestyle." The BBC reports it comes with "an ancient agreement" allowing the owner to extract as much river water as is needed to keep the mill running.