Hampshire Water Festival July 16 & 17 2011
by Eleanor Yates.

The festival was held at Staunton Park in north Havant again this year.  This is a lovely landscaped country park with a walled garden and farm and very popular with families, many of whom braved the extremely changeable weather which often accompanies the Water Festival!

Once again the Hampshire Mills Group was in the marquee with lots of craft stalls and groups promoting economical use of water.  As soon as it started to rain the crowds filled the tent, eating the President’s Tea Bread and the Treasurer’s Fruity Gingerbread and buying our Longbridge Stoneground flour, cards and notelets and looking at the pictures of mills and milling on our information boards.

We had a site opposite the door of the marquee and our new banner was used to good effect.

The committee would like to thank the members who helped set up and represented us on our display stand: Mick Edgeworth, Andy Fish, Margaret & John Silman, Tony Yoward, Jane Yoward, Alison Stott, Peter Mobbs, John Christmas, Carol O’Shaughnessy and Eleanor Yates.

QUIZZICAL CORNER

1. Photographed in Cornwall, what is the apparatus called and can you guess what it was used for?   ..Stamps.  Not for licking but for bashing – or stamping – ore to release the raw materials; in the case of the ones in the photo, Cornish tin. The Stamps were worked by water power in the same manner as trip hammers.                                                                                           

2. Which Hampshire company made machinery for mills and were renowned for their turbines under “British Empire” and “River” trademarks? ..Armfields were the renowned Ringwood foundry manufacturers of so many mill parts and related machinery as well as turbines.

1.    Do you recognise this Hampshire mill where the wheel is gently decaying in its wheel housing?     

2.    What is the English translation of the term “meuniere”?  You will  often see it on a menu i.e. Sole Meuniere.

3.    Can you complete this ancient quip?  “Hair grows in the ..…. of an  honest miller.”