Hannah Pomeroy After HarvestGone the sun-stained yellowStalks of grain; the sallowClose-shorn fields lie fallow.Stalks and stubble brokenAre a rain-bleached tokenThat the loam is mellow;That the land has spokenTrodden straw lies shattered;Chaff is thinly scattered;Rain-bleached stubble broken.Grain was all that mattered.– Maud E. Uschold Wheat field in Devon, 2007 – SWAT-002 ‘Grain was all that mattered’. That was…
Category: Blog
Filter posts by tag:
The Mills of Shushtar
The mills of Shushtar built below the dam on the river Karun. In 1992 Michael Harverson visited Iran to look for watermills. One of the most memorable sites he visited was Shushtar in the Khuzestan province. In this region are to be found the largest rivers in Iran, flowing from the Zagros mountains to the…
The hero of the drought
Early 20th-century crossbreeding of sorghum in the United States and its propagation in a 21st-century world affected by climate change Click here to continue reading
Mills in the Second World War – Hannah Pomeroy
This GunWho is this man,This man who holds a gun?His gun is differentYet, it is the same…His has a staff of wood,A blade of steel;A hoe they call it…Yet, it is a gun!His cool nerve can’tRespond to ship or plane;He is needed here!He knows the feel of soil,The feel of grain.His rough palms holdThe bounty…
Stansted Windmill, Essex by Nathanael Hodge
The mill in 1880 with the miller in the doorway REXW-ESS-73-06 Stansted windmill stands in the village of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex, England, not far from London Stansted airport. It was first erected in 1787 by Joseph Linsell and his wife, along with the adjacent house, granary, bakehouse and malthouse (later destroyed in 1877). At the…
Mill Fires
October, 1886: After a hard day at work you are asleep in your bed, the chill of the autumn day is negated under your blanket. Suddenly you are awakened. You have heard something that causes a chill to go down your spine…the cry of ‘Fire’. You jump out of bed and rush to the window…
French Windmills – Amanda Knight
A quest to begin a new career as an Archivist led me to seek some hands-on experience at an accredited archive before embarking on the recommended qualifications; and who better to ask than the Mills Archive? Happily, running true to form as a recipient of the prestigious Queens Award for Voluntary Service…
Mills Sections and Mills Archives
E. M. Gardner alongside millstones, Llecheiddior, Gwynedd in June 1951 – EMGC-04-25-28. How can one woman’s fight to preserve watermills in the 1940s define two different heritage institutions, multiple important archival collections and give young people essential work experience in the next century? This is the legacy of Emilie Montgomery Gardner. The Mills Archive received her…
Workshop – Caring for your collection
At the Mills Archive we recently made our first foray into delivery online webinars, on the topic of caring for archival collections.Two webinars held over two weeks looked at all aspects of archival care, including archival cataloguing, preservation of the physical items and the world of digital collections.The webinars were a repackaged version of courses…
‘As you like it’ – Nathanael Hodge
The magazine ‘As you like it’ was created for the staff of Joseph Rank Ltd in the 1920s. They provide a fascinating glimpse of the lives and interests of the people who worked in flour mills a hundred years ago.Named after one of Rank’s flour brands, the first issue of ‘As you like it’ was…