If you’re stuck with nothing to do, try having a look through our Archive Catalogue, and help us improve our data. Our Archive Catalogue can be found here. It contains 84,554 entries relating to mills and milling, including 70,382 photographs and 2,078 text documents. There are various ways to search the catalogue. From the search bars…
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The Mills Archive receives a grant for our project, Mill Makers: The Wright Records
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a grant of £9,944 from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust for our new project, Mill Makers: The Wright Records. Here at the Archive we hold 26 millwrighting collections, containing unique and vital records of Britain’s milling heritage created by the skilled men who were…
Archivist’s Choice: Archive Oddities
One of the most exciting parts of working in an archive is opening up a newly donated box of material. There are almost always some interesting or odd items tucked in among the photographs, plans and papers which make up most of our collections. A recent example was a collection of papers we received relating…
Archivist’s Choice: Agent of Millers
This document, newly donated to the Archive from the Owen Ward Collection, gives a glimpse of the role mills would have played in the event of an invasion of Britain by Napoleon. The document is a ‘Form of an appointment of an agent of millers’. In accordance with the Defence of the Realm Act of…
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…
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…
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…
Bibliotheca Molinologica
Now if you can pronounce that word at the first attempt, I am told (on good authority) that you are part of the ‘milling club’. Hence why I thought it would be an apt name for this piece, as only true mill researchers will appreciate the content of this blog! Hello and welcome back to…
Tools of the trade
Alongside papers and photographs, the Mills Archive also collects small milling artefacts. These are some I recently added to our catalogue from the Thompson Family Collection. Can you guess what these items were used for? This may look like something that would come in handy in the zombie apocalypse, but it is in fact a…
The Mills Archive receives the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service
We are thrilled to announce that the Mills Archive has been awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. To receive this award, equivalent to an MBE for organisations, is a great honour. This accolade represents the valuable contributions and commitment of all our volunteers that make the Mills Archive a success. The Queen’s Award for…