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I am delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant of £75,000 by the Garfield Weston Foundation. This is the second largest grant we have ever received and comes at a time when Covid-19 has introduced extra challenges and curveballs for the charity sector. We have all felt the effects of the pandemic…
Everybody knows about the dangers of eating wild plants, and even experienced nature-lovers have to be careful when picking woodland mushrooms, berries or flowers for a foraged feast. I know from personal experience that eating a funny mushroom is absolutely not funny at all! These days we like to stick to good old reliable Tesco…
Noor One of our volunteers, Noor, has written about her experience at the Mills Archive: I am sure everyone has their own different experiences of being an archival volunteer. Today I am sharing some of my beautiful experience of working as an unexperienced volunteer at The Mills Archive Trust. Before I thought librarians and archivists…
The issue of The Miller dated 5 May 1930 contains this story about the ‘Devil’s Mill’ A miller’s apprentice loved a pretty peasant girl named Yvonne, but the young people concealed their deep affection from others, swore eternal fidelity and for a long time preserved their own secret. Meanwhile the ‘prentice laid plans for the…
While sat in a meeting in our Founders’ Room, my eyes travelled across the spines of the antiquarian books visible from my seat, and I couldn’t help but notice a small, gold-decorated book covered in tan-coloured leather. The name of the book was too small for me to read from a distance. After the meeting…
An image found in Hindu temples shows a god and woman grinding together at a mill. This is the revered Hindu sant (holy person) called Janabai. Janabai was a low-caste maidservant and poet. There are various versions of her story, but according to one of these she was taken as a five-year-old child to the…
Here’s another round up of mills featured in the news over the past few weeks. Wheat field. Photo: Sue Watts As we mentioned in our previous blog, the impact of the pandemic on mills has been significant, with flour still in short supply and many smaller and traditional mills working overtime to meet demand. In spite of…
An article in “The Miller” dating from 1900 tells this wonderful story of the mill-swallowing tree. “The annexed cut, which is reproduced from the Strand Magazine, shows a tree in the act of swallowing a corn mill. Fifteen years ago, in Natal, South Africa, a hand corn mill was attached to a post some 6…
Sailing down the Thames in a brown paper boat is a rather unusual idea to say the least. One that many people would never imagine doing, but apparently someone did just that in 1620. The person in question was John Taylor, author of “one of the earliest and most enthusiastic” texts in English, on the…
Throughout the ages, the role of the miller has been subject to all sorts of stories and stereotypes: millers have been slandered, satirised, respected and romanticised all in equal measure. Langstone Mill, Havant. Photo: Ashok Vaidya Oft-times in literature, the miller has been the recipient of a similar treatment to smugglers and pirates, his contemporary…
