Elizabeth Bartram (Director) & Mildred Cookson (Founding Trustee) Milling has a rich and immersive history. Women have always been involved in some aspect of milling, those roles and their level of involvement have reflected wider society’s views on women, work and gender roles. The detail (or even existence) of records documenting their roles has been…
By Dave Pearce Wicken Windmill Partnership The mill has been restored by the Wicken Windmill Partnership, acting as millwrights, and its friends and…
Christmas is almost upon us, so we thought we would share some recipes for “Christmas cheer” from 1945.The Wine and Food Society published a series of books under the title, A Concise Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy. The fourth in the series, Cereals, contains some recipes for Christmas fare that must have presented a challenge to home bakers struggling…
By John Bedington The gears at Worston Mill, WorstonWorston Mill, Worston – main gears – Images and documents (millsarchive.org) As a youngster between 1963 and about 1972 I spent a lot of time pedalling around Staffordshire visiting watermills and a few remains of windmills, taking often rather indifferent photos and making extremely scribbly but often…
Jim Moher Those who have heard of the famous Scottish engineer, John Rennie (1761-1821), will probably remember him for his civil engineering achievements at the turn of the nineteenth century, such as the building of new London and Waterloo bridges. In fact, like many engineers of those days, Rennie also made considerable contributions to the…
Sugar & Slavery: Reproductive Mills is a new Mills Archive digital exhibition, launched in October 2021. It is the first of a series of online exhibitions. This exhibition sheds light on the links between technological developments in sugar milling and enslaved women’s reproductive systems, especially in the early nineteenth-century before the abolition of slavery. The exhibition…
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: 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,…
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…
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…
