Chris Wheeler

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Those were Winston Churchill’s words after the British victory at El Alamein in November, 1942. The reason I have quoted those words is that, after two months of hard work at The Mills Archive Trust, I have come to the end of my two-month placement courtesy of Vodafone. During that time I have scanned, digitised and catalogued over four hundred photographs; catalogued and publicised hundreds of correspondence and research notes; worked on the Lincolnshire and Suffolk section of the windmills in Peter’s collection; and I have made the entire Whitmore & Binyon section of Peter’s collection available once more for public research.

Many of you will recall that, in my last blog, I had finally finished going through the numerous photographs that Peter held on the Whitmore & Binyon firm. I then stated that I would be searching through his research notes and correspondence to see if any answers would appear as to why the firm folded so suddenly and quickly after a prolonged spell of success. Well, search through the notes and correspondence I did, and I discovered quite a few gems with regards to the answers in the process. It turns out that there was an item in Peter’s collection, made by associates Ken Masters and Phyllis Cockburn, that gave a full explanation as to why the firm folded, and I had finally come across the answers that I was looking for. It appears the firm folded due to a combination of factors, such as poor management; local competition; poor transport access; and changes in technology. A full explanation can be seen in my other blog on the Friends of the Mills Archive Trust website.

The example above demonstrates the key as to why it is so important for all of this material to be made public. The more material that gets made available for research, the more key discoveries can be made. It is through the hard work and generous support of numerous people that The Mills Archive can help to develop these goals. Which brings me to another point – the idea of team work. We have a close knit unit here at the Mills Archive, where everybody from the trustees through to the management team, and also the volunteers all work together and give their precious time to help develop the MAT and to bring the collections and material to the fore once more. Each volunteer comes in once, twice or sometimes three times a week and devotes their energies into cataloguing, scanning, sorting, researching, fundraising, and various other tasks and duties which are all key to making the Mills Archive Trust a success.

For the last two months, I would like to thank many people, the first of which is Vodafone themselves. If it were not for them and the World of Difference Programme, then I would not have been able to have worked at the MAT on a full-time basis and to have worked on Peter’s fabulous collection. The World of Difference Programme is a fantastic way to help charities and long may it continue. The second group of people I wish to thank are my fellow volunteers, trustees and management team at the Mills Archive Trust – all of whom have been absolutely brilliant in the two months full-time that I have spent there.  They are a credit to the Archive and I know the amount of hard work and long hours that they put in are gratefully appreciated. The third and final people I wish to thank are two of the most important people of all when it comes to the Archive itself – Ron and Mildred Cookson. Without them I would not have been at the MAT in the first place, and I believe that the Mills Archive Trust is a great reflection of all the hard work and dedication that they have put in over the years. They should be proud of their efforts as the MAT is a credit to them, and I have been thrilled and privileged to have worked full-time for them over the past two months.

Earlier on I quoted Churchill on his ‘End of the Beginning Speech’. That is the historian coming out in me. But it is also relevant. For the moment, I am carrying on my volunteer work at the Archive, and I am loving every minute of it. Working on Peter’s collection for the past two months has opened my eyes as to how big the Collection and the Archive really is. It would be fantastic to be able to finish what I have started and I will be looking to do that in due course. My last action is to thank everybody who has been able to for reading my blog. Your patience is much appreciated!

Best wishes to everyone!

Hello to you all on this fine sunny Sunday morning!

Well, its been over three weeks since my last blog and that has been due to a variety of reasons. As I left you last time I was on my way to Devon for our yearly golfing holiday. It turned out to be excellent as usual, and my golf was even up to some better standards at one point, although I have the feeling that I managed to sink more pints that putts!

My week away managed to increase my drive to tackle the Whitmore & Binyon part of Peter’s Collection. I have been working extra hard over the past three weeks to get as much as possible done in the time that has been allotted to me, and I have managed to scan and catalogue over three hundred and twenty photographs in that time. These photographs were all of different windmills, watermills and steam mills that were either constructed by or contained machinery made by Whitmore & Binyon. The sad thing was that many of the photographs that I came across were of the remains of mills that had perished or declined over the years. One of them, a steam mill at Southwold, was constructed in 1894 and ceased to operate effectively in 1901 – perhaps a consequence of the decline of Whitmore & Binyon themself.

Once items or photographs at the Mills Archive have been scanned, catalogued and put into albums, they then need to be stored correctly.  The Archive currently has three stores (as seen in the pictures) at Watlington House, all of which hold well over two million catalogued or uncatalogued items. Shelf numbers need to be selected and albums and boxes stored properly so that it is easy to select the appropriate material for the public when they wish to conduct research after arranging an appointment at the Archive. Indeed, one of the tasks that I had early on at the Archive was to transfer material from the Stephen Buckland Collection into smaller, better designed Archive boxes, and it ended up filling over one hundred and twenty boxes. So space is definitely a priority!

Having dealt with photographs in Peter’s Collection for the past three weeks, I will now be moving on to the notes, documents and correspondence part of the Whitmore & Binyon section. Although it is interesting seeing different photographs of various mills, it is nice to deal with a bit of variety. I always find particularly that correspondence and such items can reveal such fascinating aspects of history and unveil links that no-one previously knew. The Mills Archive Trust not only deals with Mills, but has an increasing family history section. So if you have any millers in the family and are interested in family history, then it might be an idea to contact the Archive to see if you can find out more.

Have a good Easter Sunday everyone!

Hello to everyone again!

Following on from last week, this week I have been cracking on with the material in Peter’s collection on the Whitmore & Binyon company (for more information see my previous blog).

Most of the week I have been scanning, digitising and cataloguing many photographs that Peter took of various windmills and watermills that used Whitmore & Binyon milling machinery. The one thing that did strike me whilst sorting through all this material is just how rapidly Whitmore & Binyon declined as a company. The company steadily increased its output of milling machinery throughout the early to mid 19th Century until the introduction of new iron roller mills in the 1870s and 1880s. In this period the company really took off, and built an astonishing 45 new roller plants by the mid – 1890s, reaching its zenith. The amount of Whitmore & Binyon advertisements that I came across in Peter’s collection show this to be true! Yet just a few years later, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the company had closed down. It is a sad story and sadly reminiscent of today’s world.

My role is not just limited to scanning and cataloguing – quite often there is quite a bit of research work and to be carried out where I have to use my initiative. Many of the photographs and drawings of machinery and mills that I have come across in the past two weeks have been unlabelled. Thus it takes a bit of investigative work to search through our catalogue and see if they match up with any of the existing mills on the database. For those I can not identify, I turn to our excellent management team of Luke Bonwick, Ron and Mildred Cookson and others to help me determine which mill it is, and all of whom have been a great help in the time I have spent at the Mills Archive so far!

I managed to finish two albums worth of photographs, drawings and advertisements on Whitmore & Binyon in the past week and a half, and hope to conclude this mini-project as it were within another two weeks. I can not believe I am nearly halfway through already, and there is so much still to be done. I am determined to complete as much as possible in the remaining time that I have available.

For now though I am off on a golfing holiday for a week (no doubt to play some awful golf!), so there will be no blog next week, but I look forward to posting in two weeks time.

Have a great week everyone!

Hi again everyone!

At the end of my last blog I mentioned that I hoped to have finished cataloguing the partly indexed material on Peter’s Collection of Suffolk windmills. Well, I got as far as the D section of windmills and then a change of plan occurred….

During the week a member of the public expressed an interest in the collection that Peter had on Whitmore & Binyon, so it shows that I must be doing something right! Whitmore & Binyon were a company set up by John Whitmore in the late 18th century that produced milling machinery for all sorts of wind, water, steam and flour mills. The company was based in Wickham Market, Suffolk, and later acquired offices in London, and was one of the foremost companies in producing milling machinery throughout the 19th century. Sadly, at the end of the 19th and early 20th century, the company went out of business and all the property was sold off in auction.

Peter took many photographs of the remnants of the Whitmore & Binyon machinery used in mills and also took copies of the numerous advertisements that the company used to produce. All of this collection on Whitmore & Binyon is still unsorted, uncatalogued, unscanned and not indexed. So for the last half of the week I have been working through this, and hope to make it available as soon as possible. It will be really great when I have finished this section, as this has been entirely untouched as it were since Peter’s collection was donated to the Archive. Thus I can really put my own stamp on this project and make a difference by making this particular section of the collection available for public research for the first time.  Hopefully the member of the public who expressed interest will be satisfied with my work – time will tell!

That’s all for now, here’s hoping for a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon……

Hello again everyone!

This week has been a very busy one. Aside from a nightmare with the trains on Thursday morning (don’t ask…), I have been working(see below) on Peter’s Collection (see here for more details) of Suffolk windmills non-stop! Due to Peter’s love of Suffolk and its wind and water mills, it meant that he took many photographs of the different mills in the area. Consequently, these all need to be sorted, scanned, indexed and then stored properly in albums. Luckily for me, the photographs that I am working on at the moment have been partly indexed, thus making my job slightly easier as they have already been scanned and catalogued. Mind you, I am only just beginning to realise how many Suffolk windmills begin with the letter B……. let’s just say that Peter took plenty of photographs of them!

Although it sounds like an easy process in cataloguing and scanning the items into the Mills Archive catalogue, it is actually rather a meticulous process. An error here or there means that a researcher might spend hours trying to find information on the mill that they are after. That is why the volunteers here, who put in such hard work and are fantastic people, always try to ensure that all the detail is absolutely correct before it goes into the catalogue.

At the end of last week we had a visitor in our library and research centre (right) at the Archive who used Peter’s Collection to do some research on a Suffolk mill. By all accounts he was very pleased with the material that he managed to discover on the particular mill he was interested in. Its nice to know that hopefully once I have finished the project, people will be able to use the material I have helped to make available to do their research – thus meaning that hopefully I will have made a difference.

I hope to have finished the partly indexed material on Peter’s collection by the end of next week, meaning that I can move onto his correspondence. Considering that Peter conversed with many of the prominent mill researchers of the 20th Century, it is sure to bring up some fascinating finds.

Until next time then!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first blog! I can not believe that it has been a week already; time flies when you are working hard to try and make a difference! For this first blog I thought I would give a short introduction as to what I am trying to achieve at my chosen charity, The Mills Archive Trust (MAT) at Watlington House, Reading (below).

The MAT aims to help preserve and integrate threatened sources of information on all kinds of mills, millers and milling. As a result, over the years the Archive has received many donations and collections that need to be preserved and made available for research once more. One such collection is the Peter Dolman Collection, which is the collection I shall be working on.

Peter passed away in 2002, and his collection was donated to the Archive. As you can see from the picture below, it contains over 75 boxes with thousands of various items that need to be sorted, catalogued, scanned, indexed and properly stored for future research – thus ensuring that I will be busy!

I have already been working hard on all of Peter’s photographs and postcards on Lincolnshire Windmills. They are now fully catalogued, scanned and indexed and are available to see on our Mills Archive Website. Its free to register to view our catalogue and collections, so please take the time to view Peter’s Collection and the difference I am hoping to make.

I am moving on to Peter’s collection of Suffolk Windmills next week. This part of the collection is substantially bigger, thus I will have plenty to do so keep an eye out for my next blog.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Hi there,
I’m really excited to be taking part in Vodafone’s World of Difference programme and looking forward to sharing my stories. Check back soon to see what I’ve been up to in my first weeks.