On Monday 25th November 2019, we are holding a training workshop at the Archive, on the subject of ‘Caring for your Collection’. Whether you are an individual collector with just a handful of items, or part of an organisation with a room full of photos, letters, diaries, drawings and documents, we can help you to…
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Help save the Rex Wailes Collection
Today we are launching our campaign to raise funds to help preserve and make available the Rex Wailes Collection. Read on to find out more about this significant collection and how you can help to conserve and make the gems in his collection publicly accessible. We received the Rex Wailes Collection after long-term talks with…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: Boston
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…
Gems of the Archive: Giants and Germans
It’s likely that you are familiar with the well-used idiom ‘tilting at windmills’ – you may even have used it yourself to warn someone not to be foolish or irrational. But have you ever stopped to wonder where this strange expression originated from? The phrase was coined in Don Quixote, a 17th century novel by…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: Halifax
Part 4 of a weekly series of blogs about Rex Wailes’ 1929 trip to the USA and Canada. Georges Island, Halifax Harbour Monday 6.5.29. In Boston Harbour. On Thursday and Friday we entered and passed through the Grand Bank of Newfoundland fishing ground. Unfortunately, there was a thick fog and we saw but one fishing…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: Crossing the Atlantic
Part 3 of a weekly series of blogs about Rex Wailes’ 1929 trip to the USA and Canada. Canadian Pacific liner Monday 29.4.29. 10.p.m. (ships time) Our clocks have been put back an hour hence the parenthesis above. Was very sick this morning while shaving so took bromide and retired to bed until midday. Couldn’t…
Power to the People: another successful Heritage Open Day!
Following the resounding success of last September’s event, the Mills Archive was delighted to once again participate in Heritage Open Days, England’s largest festival of history and culture. Each September, thousands of volunteers across the country invite the public to visit over 5,000 events to celebrate England’s fantastic heritage. The festival keeps expanding, and this…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes: to Belfast and Greenock
Part 2 of a weekly series of blogs about Rex Wailes’ 1929 trip to the USA and Canada. Belfast Lough. Photo by Yuri Loginov from Pexels Sunday evening 28.4.29. Had a restful night. The boat has a compound vibration that periodically damps down. We anchored in the middle of Belfast Lough at 4 a.m. Nothing happened until about 12.30…
Volunteer Spotlight: Albury Park Paper Mill and its Forged Assignats
When I’m looking through articles in the Archive, I’m always fascinated in discovering how mills played a part in a wider, often unrelated area of history and their potential political impacts worldwide. One example can be seen in the records of Albury Park Paper Mill, in Surrey. In 1790, Charles Ball, a papermaker from Guildford…
Across the pond with Rex Wailes
In 1929 Rex Wailes, aged 28, went on a business trip to the USA and Canada – taking every opportunity to research mills on the way. This weekly series of blogs will showcase his diary of the trip, which he began the day he set of to cross the Atlantic. S.S. Aquitania. Image from the Library…