Susan Ing One of our regular volunteers, Susan Ing, has been sorting through the many books that were donated to our library from the collection of the late Alan Stoyel. In this newsletter she shares some insights in the role of women in needle-making from an article in the book Women in Industry and Technology from…
A version of this article originally appeared as two posts on the Mills Archive blog in 2019.Mills have often played surprising and unexpected roles in world history. One example is the story of the part several English paper mills played in forging currency with the intent of undermining the French revolution. Assignats Assignats were a…
This article was first published on our blog on 10/05/2019 J R R Tolkien It is a widely known fact that J. R. R. Tolkien took a lot of inspiration for his novels from real places. Interestingly for us, this includes mills: Sarehole Mill in Birmingham, to be precise.Although he was born in South Africa…
Sailing down the Thames in a brown paper boat is a rather unusual idea to say the least. One that many people would never imagine doing, but apparently someone did just that in 1620. The person in question was John Taylor, author of “one of the earliest and most enthusiastic” texts in English, on the…
Mills have played a huge role in our lives for hundreds of years, from the primitive mill stone to more recent hydroelectric turbines. It is interesting to see how much of an impact mills have had in all areas of our lives, not least their impact on language across the world. Whilst reading through many…
You may remember from a previous blog post the story of Albury Park Paper Mill, Guildford, Surrey and forged French assignats (a form of paper currency issued by the French Republic from 1789-1797). A recent discovery of an article in The Quarterly (the Journal of British paper historians, 106, April 2018) has provided us with an update…
Another fascinating, if not slightly bizarre discovery has been found amongst our paper mill journals: a novelty invention from 1891, a typewriter in the form of a glove operated with one hand. In these days, the conventional typewriter comprised of an oak box, 13 inch by 5 inch, with a “feeder” at the top where…
When I’m looking through articles in the Archive, I’m always fascinated in discovering how mills played a part in a wider, often unrelated area of history and their potential political impacts worldwide. One example can be seen in the records of Albury Park Paper Mill, in Surrey. In 1790, Charles Ball, a papermaker from Guildford…
In the wake of the recent premiere of the film ‘Tolkien’, about the life of the famous author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, our volunteer Susan has explored the mills in Tolkien’s work and how he uses them as an outlet to express his opinions on the way the world changed…
February hosts a very popular and tasty-sounding celebration: National Chocolate Lover’s Month! In honour of this, our volunteer Susan has written a blog to get your taste buds tingling… A recent interesting read from my research at the Archive led me to the discovery of the Menier Chocolate Factory, the largest chocolate factory in France,…
