Tucked between Żabbar and Żejtun lies a windmill known as Ta’ Bir Għeliem, built at the beginning of the 1700s overlooking large fields.

Also known as Il-Mitħna ta’ Bulebel, the windmill stopped working in 1887 and nowadays lies solitary on a roundabout, cars zipping around it from every direction.

But despite the changing surroundings, time seems to have stood still inside the windmill, and behind its aged walls is a heritage that the Apap family have managed to restore over the past 25 years.

Jimmy Apap was born in a room on the ground floor of this windmill and today lives there with his wife Tessie and their four children.

Before him, his mother Dolores and her sister Angela were brought up in the windmill after their father Ġuzeppi Lia moved in when it had already stopped working.

Now 53, Mr Apap remembers the place without electricity and water services. He saw the area around the windmill transform slowly into a roundabout over the past decades.

There was a time when it was used to send signals to British bases in the area during the Second World War, but the windmill is now surrounded by apartment blocks, power cables and a scrap yard.

And for the past 25 years, Mr Apap has been coming home from work to preserve the windmill’s original features – like rainwater drains cut in stone and old etchings on the inside walls.

He even preserved some of the wooden beams in the lower rooms that were originally ship masts and other beams taken from the windmill’s sails. Unfortunately, the windmill’s machinery and sails were sold before Mr Apap’s grandfather moved in.

Mr Apap is now looking for sponsorship that would help his family install sails to restore the windmill to its former glory, and hopes that one day he will be able to open the place to the public on special occasions.