Have you read the potted resumé on HMG’s Vice Chairman and tide mill expert Dave Plunkett in the Tide Mills Times?  Go to www.tidemillinstitute.org   page 3 where you’ll find it, complete with a photo of him– fully clothed! Besides learning more about Dave (and if you haven’t been to see the exquisite repair and renovations work at Windsor Castle yet shame on you) the TMI newsletter is a revelation in its wealth of New England tide mill discoveries being unearthed and researched, well illustrated with photos and maps. And if you’re over there in November, why not attend the 9^th Annual Tide Mill Conference taking place at Topsfield, Mass. on November 8/9.

// Bills, metal ones for dressing stones not invoices, are a more unusual subject for scrutiny but Colin Moore of the Lincolnshire Mills Group is researching them and makes this plea:  I have been researching and establishing a data base on mill bills. I have data from Lincs and the Midlands and would like to get info from mills in the rest of the country. What I need is:- type of bill-chisel or point;and length, width and thickness. If there are any names, words or parts of words these can be enhanced by the talcum powder treatment and these help to identify the maker and the type of steel used. Finally, if the bills are different from chisel or point, a photo would be very welcome. My email is: colinmoore364@btinternet.com and my telephone no is:  01673 818939.

//  The Mills Archive's successful Research Competition is being held again, with proposed titles required by the 1st December 2013. Completed entries must be submitted by 31st May 2014 and the winning submissions will be announced by 31st July 2014. Two prizes are offered. The Research Prize of £500 is for a major piece of previously unpublished research, whilst the Research Award of £50 is for a shorter original article.  The research must be on a topic connected with a traditional use of wind, water or muscle power.  Subjects such as steam power or roller mills are admissible if their close association with these uses is demonstrated by the submitted text.  Email for more info. on enquiries@millsarchive.com or write to: The Research Management Board, The Mills Archive Trust, Watlington House,  44 Watlington Street, Reading, Berkshire. RG1 4RJ. UK.n.b. Entries must be in English.

//This website on renewable energy windmills is worth a read: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html. // Meanwhile, many fascinating items have been netted by William Brown in his latest global trawl for mill news on the internet;  they are too numerous to include in the newsletter, but I know you would enjoy reading about them so, contact me if you would like to be sent the links.

//  This very sad news about Caerlee Mill appears on the Mills Archive’s Mill Writing site:  Efforts to save Scotland's oldest continually-operating textile mill from closure failed with the gates of the mill closing after production came to an end on Good Friday. Liquidators KPMG had attempted to secure the sale of the 225-year-old mill as a going concern, but no interest was expressed. At its peak the mill, which dates back to 1788, employed 400 workers. The full story is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-21994152.  33 remaining jobs were lost.

//TEAMS The East Anglian Mills Society celebrates its 6^th anniversary over the weekend of 7/8 Sept 2013 by opening these member mills to the public: Bardwell, Suffolk;  Cattell’s Mill, Willingham, Fosters, Swaffham Prior, Great Mill, Haddenham, Impington, Northfield, Soham, Wicken – all in Cambridgeshire - and Thurne Dyke in Norfolk.
 See http://www.millsofeastanglia.org.uk/TEAMS/Home.html for more information.

//  Early advice on one of the 2014 Industrial Archaeology Conferences received is that SW&WERIAC 2014 will be on the 12th April 2014 and is to be held at Baxter College Kidderminster. Booking forms and programme available 1st October from Christine Sylvester 12 Upper Park Street Worcester  WR5 1EX. No news yet of SERIAC.  Why mention these? More information about mills is usually made known to us, sometimes with tours, as well as most of us having a general interest in everything to do with how we lived and worked in the past.

// Mills on TV: Mr Portillo’s Great British Train Journeys episode which featured his excellently presented trip around Whitchurch Silk Mill.  Repeated too was Restoration Man’s renovation of a windmill.  If you stayed the course to watch all four episodes of what became known in our house as 50 Shades of Grey at The Mill featuring Cromford Mill, what did you think of it? Friends took their grandchildren to a couple mills and delighted in seeing Cromford’s machinery clattering away on tv just as they’d watched it-and,  gosh, they thought of me with a gift of a bag of pastry flour from Caudwell’s Mill. Yum!          Sheila.