Photographs, Correspondence and Other Documents

All our records are carefully indexed as they are catalogued. It is not possible to view uncatalogued material, although if you are interested in helping us catalogue, we would be pleased to hear from you.

Any image or document (but not database entries per se) is indexed by entries from our People Index. This describes people by names, dates, birthplace and occupation. To explore what we have you need to register with us. You can do this here.

Photographs
In such a large collection there are many leads for the family historian. We have various pictures of millers and millwrights working and posing for the camera. Photographs may help to put a face to a name and may help the dating of information. Pictures can sometimes be dated from the condition of the mill and knowledge of the millers.

Correspondence and legal documents
Most of our catalogued correspondence dates from after 1920. We have been promised a variety of leases and other legal documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but they are still in private collections. Once they are handed over will they be available for easy public reference. Meanwhile we are exploring ways to digitise the information, both to make the information readily available to researchers and to ensure these fragile records are more easily preserved. This work is time-consuming and expensive as the material is often delicate and needs handling with care. We welcome financial donations to support our work

Research notes
Our individual research notes are a useful resource, although they are secondary sources, written by researchers rather than the subject of the research. They come from both family historians and mill people. Mill-related data from the LDS database of the 1881 census has been integrated with permission into the Mills Archive with the help of Neil Stobbs of Heron Corn Mill.

Various individuals are the subjects of biographies that can give a valuable insight into activities and relationships in the mill world of the last two centuries. We need more such biographies and are very grateful to those who have already given us mill-related family histories for inclusion in the Archive. We would encourage those with valuable family history material to consider lodging it with the archive for the benefit of others. Please send us an email if you would like to contribute.

After registration you can access the People Index by clicking on the "The Catalogue" tab above.