ELEVEN years of hard work were rewarded when the restored Holgate Windmill was officially opened by the Lord Mayor of York, Coun Keith Hyman.

The five double-slatted sails of the 200-year-old structure turned on Saturday, as York Waits led the civic party, MP Hugh Bayley, Jenny Hartland, chair of the Holgate Windmill Preservation Society and others in procession up Windmill Rise.

Coun Hyman, who grew up in the Acomb Road area and played round the then-derelict windmill as a child, said: “It now stands as a marvellous landmark and a York landmark. A mill on a little roundabout in a housing estate really has became part of our living history.” He also commented on how silently the sails turned.

Initially, society members thought they would have to settle for a “cosmetic” restoration, putting the building but not the windmill itself back in order. But then an anonymous donor gave £25,000 and the society started work to restore it to a fully working mill, with the first wind-driven flour grinding expected soon.

Bob Anderton, who led the society for eight years before stepping down in March, said: “It will be a very, very special moment because that hasn’t happened in the mill for 80 or 90 years,” he said.

Mrs Hartland led three cheers for Tom Davies and the other millwrights who did the technical work that restored the working machinery before the Lord Mayor cut the ribbon after a medieval fanfare.

The society has ground flour by electricity, but needs to finish work on the main machinery before it can produce flour using wind-driven millstones.

The mill is believed to be the only one in the world using five double-slatted sails and last ground flour in 1933 when it was closed for safety reasons. By 2001, when the society was formed, it was derelict.