Mills Archive visit

Penny Steele reports on a visit to the Mills Archive near Reading

We were able to look at material from various collections held by the Mills Archive Trust relating to Brixton Windmill, but it felt like we were only scratching the surface.

Michael Short, who wrote Windmills in Lambeth,?has given his collection to the archive, and it includes prints of photographs which appear in his book. There are some images collected by Kenneth G Farries, who with Martin T Mason, authored The Windmills of Surrey and Inner London,?and a collection of press cuttings and correspondence relating to Brixton Windmill compiled by SPAB Mills Section over 50 years.

We also looked through some fragile-looking copies of The Miller journal from the early 1900s but sadly didn’t spot anything relating to Brixton.

One of the most interesting collections is that of Stephen Buckland, who visited and researched the windmill over a number of years and wrote an unpublished history – the archive holds his typescripts, many notebooks and photos. His collection has only recently been catalogued and further information about Stephen, his collection and the cataloguing process can be found on this blog.

The Mills Archive Trust has kindly sent scans of some of the items which we can use in our interpretation of the windmill. If you’re not able to visit the archive in Reading, you can search its collections’ catalogue and find other interesting mills information online.