After a very exciting summer of being named as a recipient of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service and enjoying all the ensuing celebrations, this week the day finally arrived for us to officially receive the much-coveted award! On Tuesday, nine smartly-dressed representatives from the Archive, including staff, volunteers, and one of our nominators, Dennis…
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The Mills Archive receives a nationally important collection from the Science Museum
The Mills Archive Trust is pleased to announce that it has received one of the most important mill collections of the 20th century from the Science Museum. The material was assembled over decades by the late Rex Wailes OBE, who was an engineer and the leading consultant for the repair of windmills. Rex’s passion took…
Archivist’s Pick: Notes on gunpowder manufacture
Two of the most attractive items in the Alan and Glenys Crocker collection are beautiful handwritten notebooks from the Royal Gunpowder Factories at Faversham and Waltham Abbey. The notebook from Faversham is older – it consists of pages from a notebook of 1798 which were then pasted into another notebook in 1878. As well as…
The end of my journey at the Mills Archive Trust
Hello and welcome back to my weekly blog series in which I share with you (my doting audience) topics which have interested me in that particular week of working at the Mills Archive Trust. As many of you know, after a successful 9 week internship in which I have enjoyed every moment, I am now…
What’s so interesting about social history?
Hello and welcome to my penultimate blog, working at the Mills Archive Trust, where I write about a myriad of intriguing aspects of working at the Archive. So what is on the menu for this week’s blog? Well, I think it would be fascinating to explore the variety of books we have in the library…
How do you make mills interesting for the general public?
Hi and welcome along to another instalment of the weekly blog, where I talk about things which I have found particularly interesting. For the topic of today’s discussion, I think it would be really interesting to analyse two pamphlets and one booklet pertaining to three different mills: Ashton Windmill, Yafford Mill and Longbridge Mill. These…
Is there any value in a book you can’t understand?
Hello and welcome to my final blog as an intern at the Mills Archive Trust… or is it? Turns out I will be sticking around just a little while longer, as I will be ensuring that all of the different aspects of the library system are ready for their overhaul onto the new system next…
Visiting our Heritage Partner, Wimbledon Windmill!
Last Friday, Liz, Mildred and I had a delightful visit to Wimbledon Windmill, one of the Mills Archive’s Heritage Partners. On our arrival we were greeted by a friendly bunch of trustees and volunteers who help to look after the mill, headed by their Chairman, Asif Malik, and their curator Norman Plastow, a mill enthusiast…
The Watermill Warrior
In the year 1892, a formidable force arrived on British shores: a lady by the name of Emilie Montgomery Gardner, or simply E. M. Gardner, as she is widely known. A forerunner of the women’s suffrage act who travelled around the country by horse-drawn caravan, and a civil servant who won an OBE for her…
The preservation of the past
Hi and welcome to my latest weekly blog detailing my journey in the Mills Archive, where I talk about all of the things which I have found particularly interesting. This week I have come across quite a few books pertaining to the conservation and preservation of mills. This of course got me thinking about just…