Volunteers working to bring an 18th century mill back to life are hoping to see it producing flour within the next five years.

White Mill in Sandwich, which had been left in a state of disrepair, is being restored by the team from the Whitemill Rural Heritage Centre.

The windmill, which was built in 1760, is named a smock mill because it resembles what farmers would wear at the time - the basic smock arrangement.

Its purpose was to turn grain into flour but it stopped working 65 years ago.

Martin Smith, the chairman of Whitemill Rural Heritage Centre, said: “It was working up until 1957 and then as most things, became uneconomic and was left derelict.

“It fell into disrepair and it was identified by Vincent Pargeter - a famous millwrite whose first mill was Sandwich.”

Mr Pargeter repaired the mill in the 1960s before he became a professional millwrite, but he died in 2015.

“It is owned by Sandwich Town Council and managed by Whitemill Folk Museum Trust, aka Whitemill Rural Heritage Centre,” Mr Smith said.

“I got involved in the project in the early 1990s and we were fighting the weather - keeping things as we needed to.

“It wasn’t until 2018 that with the volunteers we have on the team that we could begin doing a restoration.

“The skillset of our volunteers is exactly what we needed to do a full restoration to get the mill to a working condition, retaining as much of the original material in it as possible.”

The first step of the reassembly was completed about a month ago, which saw the curb replaced.

The next step is to put the cap back on which will happen in spring.

Mr Smith added: “The cap sits on top of the tower and that carries the sails and turns into wind and automatically weather cocks so the sails are always facing the wind.

"When that’s back on, it will look more like a windmill. At the moment there is scaffolding around it so the cladding can be repaired.

“In the future when it’s working again, we will turn our attention back to the tower.

“We should be producing flour in five years I should think.

The team work on the project on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

The chairman added: "The youngest person on the team is 60, and the oldest is 92. The average age is probably early to mid 80s.”