A windmill in a front garden has been awarded the largest National Lottery grant for the restoration of an individual windmill in Britain.

Paul and Bee Frost have been awarded £577,000 towards restoring the huge postmill in their garden in the appropriately-named village of Windmill Hill, near Hailsham.

At nearly 50ft, the mill is the tallest in Sussex and is one of the most important surviving windmills in Britain. Only the postmill at Friston, Suffolk, is higher.

The couple, with the help of millwrights and expert carpenters, are confident they will now be able to restore the mill.

Paul, head of the school of service management on the Eastbourne campus of the University of Brighton and his wife, Bee, a part-time teacher, will open the mill to the public when the restoration is complete.

They have set up a charitable trust for the work.

News of the grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has delighted the Frosts.

Bee said: "We applied originally in 1996 and a grant was agreed in principle. They wanted to know about costings and exactly what the restoration work entailed and we had to provide more detailed information.

"It will mean people traipsing across our front garden but we are prepared to open it for a minimum of 30 days in the summer and will be willing for school parties and other interested groups to be shown around."

The Frosts originally lived next door and had always admired the property with the windmill dominating the garden.

They bought the house which used to be an old bakery and they restored it to live in. Then they turned their attention to the windmill.

It is a listed building, built about 1814 and had sails until 1954.

The mill is one of the last surviving hand-turned mills. A long pole, called the tail pole, was used to turn the structure towards the winds.

Scaffolding and survey work has already been carried out with a grant from English Heritage and support from Wealden District Council and East Sussex County Council.