I first met architect John Reynolds when I was editing the Mills and Millers of Hampshire set of books for the Hampshire Mills Group.  He kindly welcomed me to his home and showed me the drawings he had made and the photographs he had taken of Hampshire mills, generously inviting me to use whatever was useful.

John had lived a full and varied life, first in the Merchant Navy where he was an officer for the Blue Funnel Line, travelling all over the world including the Far East, Australia, and the USA.  After meeting his future wife Joan in Canterbury, marrying in 1951, he decided to leave the sea and train as an architect.  By 1960 he had completed his qualifications and taken a job with Hampshire County Council (HCC).  The family moved to Hatherley Road, Winchester, where they lived for the rest of their life together.

As Historic Buildings Officer for HCC, John was involved with the restoration of Bursledon Windmill, Whitchurch Silk Mill, Fort Nelson (the Napoleonic fort at Portsmouth), Basing House, and Odiham Castle, amongst many other projects.  By the time I met him John was retired, but still keeping busy – he was Clerk of Works for some years at Twyford Waterworks, a founding member of the Winchester and District Model Engineering Society, and an active member of the Hampshire Mills Group.  John loved to paint too, showing at exhibitions at the Art Club in Winchester.

John’s drawing of machinery in Hockley Mill, Hampshire

John’s drawings of Whitchurch Silk Mill

Whitchurch Silk Mill

Over twenty years after that first meeting I sat with the same drawings and photos as I helped scan and catalogue them at the Mills Archive.  John himself had passed away in 2016, aged 89, but his family have kindly donated his extensive collection of mill-related drawings and photos to the Archive, including many more photos, not just those of Hampshire mills.

Two things struck me while working through the collection.  You could see his architect’s approach to the photos he took – the framing, lighting, and positioning of the camera. These make the images quite special.  

Secondly, I was amazed looking at the drafts of his mill drawings – here you could see his working, all done with pencil and ruler (and maybe a rubber), to create a perfect perspective of complicated gearing and mill wheels.  No computer involved, just skill and time.

The final published drawings lost the workings and were more polished, but for me a greater pleasure was seeing how he set up the perspective for getting individual teeth on bevel gears looking exactly right.  Architect training, meticulous attention to detail and precision.  This summed John up.

One of John’s working drawings

A lot of his photos and drawings were prepared to be used in his seminal book Windmills and Watermills, published in 1970 after years of research, and which remains a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the development of mills, milling and milling machinery.  

Hampshire Mills Group and the wider mills community have lost a valued and respected friend, but we take heart from knowing that his drawings and photos are preserved in the Mills Archive, and will be available to everyone on the their website.