Here are your Sizzling Summer Brainteasers

Q1.  Can you name the Hampshire  watermill in this charming scene?

Q2   A mill was chosen to grace the cover the calendar of a nationwide society.  Can you name the mill, its location and the society

Q3   What silken textile derives its name from the silk moth’s name? 

Q4   Mr. Whitney, an American inventor, revolutionised a textile cleaning process. What was the machine – and what did it do?

Answers will be given at the Summer meeting and in the Autumn Newsletter

1. Q. This retired windmill is in the Home Counties, north of Hampshire. Do you know where?

A. The Old Mill, Old Guildford Road, Frimley Green, Camberley GU16 6PD O.S.REF: SU896563

The round tower to the left of this picture was built as a tower mill in 1784 for grinding cereals.  By the early 20th century it was no longer in use. Its cap was converted to a roof and it was  incorporated into a mock-Tudor house in 1914.

2. Q. A familiar high street firm of opticians, with branches throughout England, has an ancestral link with silk mills. Any idea who?

A. Mr John Dolland of Dolland & Aitchison is the milling connection. Son of a Huguenot silk-weaver in Spitalfields, where he was born. He followed his father's trade, but on gaining education in Latin, Greek, mathematics, physics, anatomy amongst other subjects he abandoned silk-weaving and joined his eldest son, Peter Dollond (1730–1820), making optical instruments in 1750. Published an "Account of some experiments concerning the different refrangibility of light" (1758). In 1761 he was appointed Optician to the King; his name is especially associated with development of achromatic lenses by the combination of crown and flint glasses, which reduces chromatic aberration (colour defects).

3. Q In 1900, a Hampshire Mill was the first to be recorded as converted from steam driven roller milling to stone milling. Do you know which one it was?

A. Abbey Mill, Bishops Waltham. Sadly now a development site for a Sainsbury Supermarket.

4. Q. There have been four editors so far of the HMG Newsletter; Pam Moore was the first, can you name the other three?

A. Mary Yoward, Ros Plunkett and Sheila Viner.

5. Q. Can you make the connection between Hollins Mill, Marple, Cheshire and a book entitled “Weeping In the Isles”?

A. This large cotton mill hit the news headlines with a scandal involving deaths of three young ladies taken from the Isle of Skye to work in Hollins Cotton Mill. The full story was told in the book written by Minister for Sleat, on the Isle of Skye, in 1852. The story appeared in David Mitchell’s edition of BBC’s television programme, “Who Do You Think You Are? (Still available to watch on iplayer

6. Q Where in Hampshire was Captain Harcourt Brown’s ‘Patent Parchment Factory’?

A. Rivermead Mill, Romsey. Captain Harcourt Brown bought the mill c.1856 and set about producing parchment from pulped bullock hides. Parchment is a thin material made from hide, often calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin. However, Captain Harcourt Brown, like several paper millers before him, was not successful and Rivermead Mill changed hands again a few years later.

Answers sourced from: 1. English Heritage . 2. Wikipedia. 3. The Mills & Millers of Hampshire Vol.2.  4. Hampshire Mills Group Newsletters. 5. Romsey Mills & Waterways. SMV