Development Assistant Lucy has just submitted an ambitious grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Read on to find out what we hope to save and the benefits that we hope to offer the mills community. Mill Makers: The Wright Records, is our latest grant application for an ambitious project that – if we are…
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Michael’s Middle Eastern Adventures
In 2016 when Michael Harverson passed away, his collection of mill material was left to us. We knew his collection would be a valuable asset to the Archive. Of particular interest to Michael, and indeed to us, was his prolific study of Middle Eastern and Persian mills, more intimately those in Iran and Afghanistan. Michael…
Browse images by county and mill type
A new feature we have recently added to our Images and Documents catalogue allows you to browse images by country, county and mill type. You can find the page here: https://catalogue.millsarchive.org/images-type-country For instance, selecting England, Buckinghamshire and Tower mills brings up a page showing only tower mills in that county. All results other than images have been filtered out, as have…
Heritage Open Day a great success
On Saturday 8th September, the Mills Archive hosted a very successful Heritage Open Day. The event kicked off with much excitement to the arrival of Anoushka Williams, the BBC Radio Berkshire presenter! She and her assistant decided to visit us as part of their journey on ‘The Peach Quest’ – a madcap dash around Reading…
Gems of the Archive: Planning the Future
With the summer heatwave already fading into a distant memory I have come to the end of my internship. The last three months have flown by, but fifty-one gems later I can safely say I have learnt a huge amount about archives, mills and milling. With a greater appreciation for the incredible stories that lie…
Gems of the Archive: From Flour to Power
Hello, it’s me again. With just one week of my internship left to go, I thought this would be the right time to look into the future of wind power. Traditional windmills are few and far between, and traditional mills that still operate commercially are rarer still. However, when we think of wind-powered production, wind…
Gems of the Archive: Milling with a Bang!
This week I have been looking at Gems with a Bang! Don’t worry, the Mills Archive is still standing… One of the items (which I hope Mildred is keeping in a safe place) is a gunpowder horn, dating from around the 1850s. Amazingly, it still holds a small amount of black powder within – which…
Gems of the Archive: Milling About
This week Mildred brought in a number of objects for me to look at, which are interesting examples of the huge variety of different types of mill in existence. One of my personal favourites was a collection of marbles made only with the power of water, which come from a watermill in Germany. Mildred explained…
Gems of the Archive: Tilting at Windmills
On my first day at the Mills Archive, my preconceived notions of quaint Dutch windmills were quickly blown away and my eyes opened to the incredibly universal nature of mills and milling. I’ve been struck by how widely mills have been used across centuries and cultures, and this week’s Gem is a perfect example of…
Visit to Upminster Windmill
On Friday 20th July, Liz, Nathanael, Paul and I went on an exciting visit to one of the Mills Archive’s valued Heritage Partners: Upminster Windmill in Essex. Most of us had never visited Upminster before, so it was an excellent opportunity to build our relationship with them by discovering new ways of working together, and…