SUPPORTERS bidding to restore an historic windmill in York are celebrating after scooping nearly £50,000 to help fund new sails.

Holgate Windmill Preservation Society was backed by viewers of ITV Yorkshire’s Calendar news programme to win £46,500 of Lottery money.

The programme is pitting two community schemes against each other to win part of a £250,000 funding pot every night this week.

The High Five For Holgate project, to fund the sails for the windmill, was bidding for the cash against an arts project in Rotherham on Monday night’s edition of Calendar.

After watching a film about the five-year restoration project in York and a similar recording about the South Yorkshire project, viewers were urged to vote for the scheme they thought most deserving.

The Holgate Windmill Preservation Society came out on top, and it will use the money, plus a further £20,000 it already has in the bank, to replace the windmill’s five double shuttered sails and frames.

It means it will be able to work as a windmill for the first time in almost 80 years.

The mill was built in 1770 by George Ward to grind corn but closed down in 1933 and has lain empty and semi-derelict ever since.

Bob Anderton, chairman of the society, said: “Thank you to all the people who voted because without their votes we wouldn’t have got the money.”

He said the money meant the project to restore the windmill to function as a working windmill and produce its flour, using locally grown grain, was almost now complete.

There remain a few small projects to be completed on the inside of the windmill.

Mr Anderton said he was organising the contractor to do the work and hopes the windmill could be up and running by this time next year.

Vanessa White, Big Lottery Fund head of region for Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “This is a great result for the people of York, and just goes to show what groups can achieve when they have the support of their community behind them.”