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Turning your shirts into books. This Gem is a picture that tells a story of its own origin: a sketch of a windmill, drawn on paper which has been handmade in the traditional way. Although the sketch is titled ‘Molenpapier’, or ‘papermill’, it seems that the mill in the picture is not actually a papermill…
Mill don’t just grind flour. This is a donkey-powered rice mill in China. It makes use of an Edge Runner Stone rather than using a pair of flat millstones. To work it, the rice would be placed on the stationary lower stone. The donkey then drags the top vertical stone around the edge of this lower stone,…
“Newport’s cattle market had not seen anything like it before. There, talking business among the weather-beaten faces of Isle of Wight farmers, was a woman.” This Gem is a newspaper cutting from The Southern Echo, a regional tabloid newspaper covering Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The article, which was published on 14th March 1978,…
“With flour-dust sprinkled in her greying hair and a beaming smile [she] runs, all alone, the centuries-old watermill of Thunder Bridge.” This jolly Gem is a newspaper cutting from the Daily Mail, from the 21st October 1938. It reports on the life and work of a certain Mrs H. Dickinson, who, having taken over the…
This Quern is thousands of years old and is one of the earliest ancestors of modern milling. This ancient Gem is what is known as a beehive quern. It is probably the oldest item in the Archive’s collections, dating back to the Iron Age (around the second century BC). It gained its name, the beehive…
“Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women.” “Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women. However, when the…
The experience of a national suffrage campaigner which led to the saving of the nation’s watermills. Miss Emilie Montgomery Gardner, known to most as E. M. Gardner, was an avid watermill enthusiast. It was through her diligent campaigning that in 1946, the SPAB agreed to expand their windmills section to include watermills. The SPAB were…
