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…
Author: Mills Archive
This is the "unknown author": use this for occasional guest blog posts etc. where we do not want to create a WordPress user. The first line of such posts can credit the real author like this: "Author: John Smith"
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…
Muscle matters
Authors: Christopher Viney and Lydia Smith Before wind and water were harnessed, the strength of people and animals was used to power mills. Animal power Rotary Querns were crucial to the development of animal mills. From there it was possible to make the first step from replacing human power with other sources. Animal-powered mills could be…
Early photography
by Lydia Smith and Christopher Viney Fundamental changes in the ways mills worked and the effects they had on people’s lives were mirrored by the rapid development in photography from the middle of the 19th century. Several of our gems illustrate how photographs changed while capturing sometimes fleeting moments. See some of the early photography…
My introduction to archives as a cataloguing volunteer
Author: Orla Taylor-Davies I first heard of the Mills Archive when my mum sent me a photo of an article in the local paper about the Archive’s funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As a student of History and History of Art, I am always seeking volunteer roles in the cultural heritage sphere, so I…
John Munnings Collection
Authors: Nathanael Hodge & Laura Felton-Hustwitt The John Munnings Collection contains detailed watermill sketches by artist John Munnings, together with his notes and the typescript for a book. John Munnings (1916-1987) was the son of a miller and nephew of the artist Sir Alfred Munnings. He was born at Mendham Mill, Suffolk, and his planned book is full of…