The Mills Archive Trust is celebrating this year; having notched up ten years of existence which has seen it grow from one to many collections and additional items.  Mildred Cookson’s need to house her extensive collection of material which encompasses Middle Eastern animal powered mills, tropical sugar mills as well as British and European mills of all types, sparked it all off.  Mentioned to others, a basis of four foundation collections kicked into touch the idea of creating an archive to save them as original reference material.  A website was then set up and the task began of digitising much of the material to allow any researchers anywhere in the world to access it.  Hampshire Mills Group and several of its members have supported the venture from the outset and some, such as Ken Kirsopp and David Plunkett, have done much to get old photographs, drawings, lists and reports “on-line”.  HMG members may be pleased to learn that David is currently working at cataloguing some very fragile Armfield drawings.

Tony Yoward and his late wife, Mary, contributed a wealth of milling family details which, along with the 15 years worth (and ongoing) collected notes on millers and associated tradesmen donated by Tom Hine, form the basis of the Milling Family History section of the website.  Other HMG members have donated material over the years and these can be found under the ‘Special Collections’ heading.

Never intended to be in competition with the any other organisation, The Mills Archive Trust has enjoyed the support and collaboration of the SPAB Mills Section, taking under its wing  a large part of the Mills Section’s own Archives because of space problems in London. Similarly, the SPAB Bookshop is now run through MAT and the TIMS Bookshop has followed, relieving part-time administrators of a time consuming and weighty task. 

The number of volunteers has grown to around 25 made up of people of all ages carrying out the many tasks required.  Three of those have won Vodafone awards to help them and the Archives on specific projects.

This year MAT played host to a second SPAB meeting at its Watlington House offices in Reading and is set to celebrate its decade of existence with a garden party there on 7th July for Friends of the Mills Archive.  So, join the Friends of MAT pronto to enjoy the party and help to keep the Archives growing and servicing the needs of our world of mills which it does so well. 

SPAB members enjoyed meeting guest speakers, Nick Jones (Little Salkeld Mill), Jan Spaens (a watermill near Toulouse) and Wouter Pfieffer (a Dutch windmill) telling us about their mills in Cumbria, France and the Netherlands, and getting to know the new SPAB Administrator, Emma Sheridan-Smith.  Jonathan Cook, SPAB’S new Chairman, and Emma briefed us on how the organisation and administration is taking advantage of 21st century media practices by establishing sites on both Facebook and Twitter as the need to appeal to young would-be mill enthusiasts gathers pace.