| The romantic windmill has often gained the lion’s share of attention from mill lovers, with watermills sometimes being overlooked. This blog discusses two researchers who went the extra mile in watermill recording, and whose collections form the backbone of our data on watermills in England and Wales. |
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| The 60-foot waterwheel at Maggs and Hindley’s works , Bourton, Dorset. Photo Alan Stoyel – ASFC-00942 |
| E. M. Gardner |
| Academically gifted, Miss Gardner (as she was known) won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, to study history. There she became a committed suffragist and joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. She was instrumental in the SPAB Windmills Section becoming the Wind and Watermill Section whilst serving on the mills committee, and wrote three small booklets for the SPAB, part of a series on tide mills. |
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| Unidentified mill in Merioneth, Wales, E M Gardner Collection – EMGC-04-12-01 |
| E M Gardner’s collection was given to the Mills Archive by the SPAB in 2004. Miss Gardner photographed watermills over a wide area from Cumbria down to the south of England, recording the buildings, their locations, inventories, condition, and whenever possible the millers who ran them. Watermills were her passion, but windmills also feature. Alongside the photographs and slides are the many index cards and files of notes, each containing detailed information on every mill visited. E M Gardner pioneered watermill research and without her our archives would be considerably poorer. Her photographs have been catalogued and are available to view on our website. |
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| Pontysgawrhyd Mill, Meifod, Wales, 1950 – EMGC-04-25-55 |
| Alan Stoyel |
| Alan was known to many people, in the milling world and across many other organisations. He will be particularly remembered for the meticulous records he kept, documenting watermills across the UK. A geologist by profession, he had a particular interest in the use of water power in mines, writing a book on the tin mines of Cornwall. As well as recording mills throughout the country, he bought his own mill, Venn Mill in Oxfordshire, for which he built a new waterwheel. He carried out similar work at mills throughout the county, and on moving to Herefordshire persuaded many mills to open their doors to the public for the first time. |
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| Alan at work tightening wedges in a waterwheel, Court of Noke Mill, Pembridge. |
| Alan’s collection came to us in over 200 boxes and its contents range from photos and notes to ephemera, casework, correspondence, over 100 wooden patterns, a quern and a small millstone. There is still much work to be done, but the collection is already proving invaluable in helping us answer the many watermill enquiries we receive. |
| View the E M Gardner Collection here, and the Alan Stoyel Collection here. |
