This is my final day at the Archive! It feels like yesterday that I was writing my first ever blog and getting to grips with work here, and now I’m saying goodbye. It has gone so unbelievably quickly! I’ve had such a great time over the past 12 weeks, I loved discovering all the gems…
Author: Lydia Smith
WWII windmill cartoon mystery
A few weeks ago Ron gave me a fascinating World War 2 propaganda cartoon to look at. It features Mussolini balancing on the sails of a windmill, while Hitler is shouting up, “Well done Duce, but do not break the wings of the windmill”, which is written in Greek and English. The sails are drawn…
The mill cartoonist
Don Paterson was a prominent figure in the mill world, a widely respected man with a talent for wit and capturing a joke within a small cartoon. In 1982 he founded the North West Mills group along with our own Mildred Cookson, where he sat as chairman. Just reading through the early newsletters his passion…
A Mill Murder Mystery!
The Northwestern Miller is fast becoming a favourite in finding inspiration for my blogs! This week’s topic comes from one of the oldest journals we have in the collection, dating back to 1899. The article in question is that of the tragic story of a Mrs Winifred Bailey, an elderly hermit woman who lived alone…
What do an artist, a queen and a launderer have in common?
You may have heard of City Mill in Winchester, but did you know it is connected to world famous artist JMW Turner? Or do you know how it is related to Queen Mary I? And why did it have a brief spell as a laundry room? Read on to find out… This remarkable building possesses…
How millers fared in Soviet Russia
In this week’s blog I’d like to tell you about an article from the Northwestern Miller on the Soviet Union’s milling industry. In the 1927 March/April edition, a piece by R.J. Goldberg was published on how Russian millers and their industry were coping in the tumultuous conditions of the 1920s. By this point, the highly…
The Flying Highwayman
A search through part of the John Munnings Collection (one of my favourites!) revealed the tale of a miller’s son who became the famous Flying Highwayman. Of course, the story of a man born into a milling family and in the business of robbing travellers is one I couldn’t resist retelling! Interested to discover the…
The mill that was once a warship
As I was starting this week’s blog entry I was reminded of all the drawings in the John Munnings’ Collection that I looked through when I first started my internship. One in particular caught my eye because of the mill’s connection to a single ship battle between the Americans and British, which apparently was won…
What is a beehive quern?
On Monday we paid a visit to Reading Museum, so Hannah and I could see some more of the Archive’s collection that was on display, and see if there was anything we could use for our projects. We weren’t disappointed! The exhibition case is jam-packed with information and artefacts detailing the history of milling, and…
The Ghanaian travels of Stephen Buckland
Hello again! As my fourth week at the Archive is beginning, I am starting to compile a series of gems to show everyone hopefully in the very near future. As I first suspected, it certainly was not difficult to find gems in the vast number of collections here, and I’m so excited to help work…