Founders  of the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, Nick & Ana Jones wish to retire and sell their Little Salkeld Watermill in Cumbria, and so are inviting us all to contribute towards a community purchase of the mill and its thriving business to ensure its continuation. This venture is supported by the Eden Valley District Council and the Plunkett  Foundation. The mill provides vital community employment and has a strong list of outlets it supplies with organic and biodynamic flours.  Find out more from their website: http://www.organicmill.co.uk/node/186 and follow the links.

Have you seen the tide mills video featuring a millwright at work in Woodbridge Tide Mill?  Beaulieu and Eling also get a mention.  See it on http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/334.  From the East Anglian Film Archive it is titled  The workings of the tide mill in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and it features the millwright Jim Desborough, at work.

By the time you receive this newsletter, The Tide Mill Institute will have held it’s 9th Annual Tide Mill Conference this time at Topsfield Historical Society,  Massachussetts, U.S.A.   Conference reports will be awaited with interest.  If you went to it, do let us have your written impressions of it, and if you didn’t go, catch up with all the international tide mill news at http://www.tidemillinstitute.org/41.html.  

Meanwhile, if you want to know even more about tide mills have a look at the 33 downloadable pages of The Saga of Tide Mills, a  discourse written in 1997 and published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Vol.1 no.3.; find it at www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/refs/tide/TideMills.pdf‎   

A copy of the Hampshire Family Historian : Sept.2011 was passed to me with an article on the Aylward Family and Dunbridge Mill; it carries photos of the family and mill house but, sadly, not of the mill itself.  Milling families certainly got around a lot - a colleague researching the Bracknell mills has come up with the Ailward/Aylward family there too.  Three more family names found both in Hampshire and Berkshire are Cooper, Paice  and Tubb but hopefully more of them in another issue of the newsletter.  If you can tell me anything about the families and the mills they worked, please let me know.                                    

Sheila.

Obituary:   Jonathan Minns.   

We were all very sad to learn that the enigmatic creator of the British Engineerium at Brighton has died.  This visionary man did so much to engender public knowledge and experience the historic importance of recognising and understanding the mechanical evolution, and principles, which shaped food and textile production plus transport and, in particular,  of steam, in a first hand, practical way that he will long be remembered by many.  In ‘Old Glory’ magazine’s tribute, Ian Clark, known to many HMG members for his millwrighting skills, is quoted thus: “I first met Jonathan in 1976 at the British Engineerium, …and subsequently started work for him at the museum in 1977; what followed was a lifelong friendship.  He was an intuitive engineer, inspirational leader and old school enthusiast.  He was a one-off and will be sorely missed.”

Hellingly Mill became his Sussex home and he set about restoring it with customary zeal as well as being involved in many ventures promoting interest in our industrial past throughout the country.  He died at home, the day after his 75^th birthday on October 13^th 2013. We send our sincere condolences to his family.

Hellingly Mill: an early postcard