By Mildred Cookson and Nathanael Hodge Mills are most well known for grinding corn into flour. However, over the centuries mills powered by wind, water and other power sources have been used for many other types of industry. You can find out more about some of these here: Paper mills Gunpowder mills Fulling mills Cotton…
Author: Mills Archive
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Niall Roberts (1922-2010)
Author: Michael Harverson Niall’s active interest in mills began when Wimbledon Common windmill, close to his home in New Malden, was restored and opened as a mill museum in 1976. He and his wife Julie acted as weekend guides there and organised the rota faithfully for many years. When he retired from the civil service,…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: Out and about in Boston
Part 6 of a weekly series of blogs about Rex Wailes’ 1929 trip to the USA and Canada. Massachusetts New State House I got a map and guide of Boston and set out. Had a new glass put in my watch – they call it a ‘crystal’. Got lunch at a quick lunch counter in…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: Boston
Part 5 of a weekly series of blogs about Rex Wailes’ 1929 trip to the USA and Canada. Boston, 1920s Tuesday 7.5.29. Y.M.C.A. Boston. I’ve made a new friend a man of 60 years of age – Hector Waylen of Oxford. I can’t describe him as anything else but a “Symbolist”. He studies the Bible…
Volunteer Spotlight: The Millers of the Past
Author: Pru Barrett In November 2017, Ron Cookson asked me if I would like to compile a database of millers, made up from the masses of emails and documents that the Archive had gathered in from numerous sources. As the daughter of a historian, and then a graduate historian, I’d been busy bringing up children…
Kenneth G Farries (d 1986)
Kenneth G Farries was one of the most productive and influential authors on windmills in the 20th century. The work of Ken Farries is probably unique in mill literature: five volumes devoted to the windmills, the millers and the millwrights of Essex, published in the 1980s, following his comprehensive study of The Windmills of Surrey…
Don Paterson (d. 2002)
Don Paterson was a great lover of Lancashire mills with roots at Bretherton. In 1982 he and Mildred Cookson decided to start up a North West Mills Group with Don as the chairman. They produced a newsletter of which Don was the editor until 2000, he then went on to produce the annual review for…
Roy Gregory (d. 2013)
Roy was a serious student of the history and conservation of windmills since 1974 when he took responsibility for the windmill in Skidby in East Yorkshire. His wide research led to his books “East Yorkshire Windmills” (1985) and “Windmills in Yorkshire” (2009) with Laurence Turner. He published “The Industrial Windmill in Britain” in 2005 and…
Volunteer Spotlight: Milling and Social Change from a Volunteer’s Perspective
Author: Nigel Birch I have been volunteering at The Mills Archive for 18 months or so, having previously known little about the milling industry, its historical and social influences, and variety of methods employed. I now know a little more than I did – but am far from being an expert! Volunteering at the Archive…
Volunteer Spotlight: The Old Miller of Sidestrand and Poppyland
Author: Pru Barrett Pru, one of our volunteers, often comes across records of interesting and oft-times eccentric people during her research… Whilst recording the many histories of millers in our collections, I came across a very flowery yet fascinating epitaph for a man named Alfred Jermy, also known as “The Old Miller of Sidestrand and…