Windsor

Windsor is a ruined windmill and later hunting lodge near Lovosice in the Ústecký kraj. It stands close to the D8 motorway between Prague and Dresden, about four kilometres southeast of Lovosice and one and a half kilometres east of Siřejovice. The site is protected as a cultural monument. The building is privately owned and not open to the public. The original Dutch-style windmill was built in 1843 from local light opuka stone and bricks. It had a circular plan about twelve metres high and eight and a half metres across. After milling stopped in 1870, the Tschinkel brothers bought it and converted it into a neo-Gothic hunting lodge called Windsor. By the late 1880s the lodge had been sold at auction and changed hands several times before falling empty and decaying. It remained partly habitable during the First World War, but later collapsed to leave only the outer walls. Visitors see the exposed shell of the windmill and lodge rising from the flat landscape beside the motorway. The light-coloured opuka masonry and brickwork stand out against the fields around Siřejovice. The circular outline of the original mill is still clear, and sections of wall mark the lodge’s former rooms. The site is quiet and little visited, a quiet reminder of the building’s past uses.