This Quern is thousands of years old and is one of the earliest ancestors of modern milling. This ancient Gem is what is known as a beehive quern. It is probably the oldest item in the Archive’s collections, dating back to the Iron Age (around the second century BC). It gained its name, the beehive…
An American frigate lost and found. This sketch of Chesapeake Mill is by John Munnings, the nephew of Sir Alfred Munnings, the controversial President of the Royal Academy who was famous for his paintings of horses. However, as these sketches show it was not just Sir Alfred with an artist’s eye. John was born the son of a miller…
A lifesaving link between milling and The First World War. These two identical oval plaques once decorated two railway carriages of a First World War Ambulance Train. The two carriages (numbers 16 and 17) from which the plaques come were on one of the earliest ambulance trains, which played a crucial role in the support…
This photo is an important reminder that without a range of extraordinary enthusiasts these collections would not exist. This Gem is a black and white glass plate negative, from a series taken by David H Jones, a specialist in watermills. During his research, David came across an account written by a soldier stationed on the Faroe…
“Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women.” “Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women. However, when the…
The experience of a national suffrage campaigner which led to the saving of the nation’s watermills. Miss Emilie Montgomery Gardner, known to most as E. M. Gardner, was an avid watermill enthusiast. It was through her diligent campaigning that in 1946, the SPAB agreed to expand their windmills section to include watermills. The SPAB were…
Stereographic images allowed the Victorians to explore the world from the comfort of their own home. This amusing Gem, a stereoscope, was a popular Victorian device used to view optical illusions. The stereoscope was a pair of lenses through which picture cards, or stereographs, would be viewed. The cards had two almost identical images next…
A supposed French invasion craft designed to cross the channel during the Napoleonic Wars. In the late 1790s, Britain was gripped by the scare of an invasion by the infamous French warlord Napoleon Bonaparte. Over the channel he was amassing his forces; rumours of his conquests were rife and everyone knew he had set his…
A token used when the country was short of money. In the 18th century, a shortage of coins consistently caused widespread problems: workers could not be sufficiently paid and simple transactions could not be carried out. It wasn’t that everyone was poor – there just weren’t enough coins to go around. To compensate for the…
A pre-war note which became worthless is now an expensive collector’s item. This paper note is an old form of German currency called ‘Notgeld’, which was printed in 1922 and was worth 75 German marks. The image printed on the note depicts the development in timber milling from the old wind-driven mill on the right,…
