Question: What do these 3 images have in common? Answer: Identification – and the problems caused if a mill site is not identified correctly. Picture 1 is an old postcard titled Moon Rising over Moulsford.  Well, the only Moulsford I can trace is in 1974 Berkshire, now Oxfordshire, and there is no record of a mill of any type there.  Several mill experts have been unable to identify the mill and its location.  Can you? I would love to hear from you. Pic. 2 is of delegates inspecting the archaeology of the 1746 Perkins Grist Mill at Kennebunkport during the 7^th Annual Conference of the Tide Mill Institute in November 2011. Identified and recorded, but, I hope that all the humans have been identified too for the sake of memory and future mill researchers. Pic. 3 is an old postcard of Papworth Mill in Cambridgeshire, correctly identified and labelled.  Rex Wailes and Peter Dolman have endorsed this.  The image is from the Peter Dolman Collection held at the Mills Archive Trust where a lot of memory searching goes on in needing to identify mills and the people in pictures, postcards and photographs which have not been labelled.  Why people? Whatever their connections, whether family, workers or visitors, names and dates can soon be forgotten which leaves mysteries for those who research when our memories have gone.  So please, make sure all your photos are labelled and dated too especially if they are to be archived one day!

Papworth Mill is now part of the living accommodation of a young family and we will be learning from them what it is like to live as a “Windmill Family” in a future issue of the newsletter.  A Kent couple appeared recently in an episode of Channel 4’s “Grand Designs”, turning part of their existing brick tower windmill linked with a renovated barn into residential accommodation.  The family owned mill had been left derelict for years; it was decided to supply the tower with a new cap and sails, but, disappointingly, like the mill’s machinery, these were to be inoperable, being there for aesthetic reasons only.  Well, it looked very nice but I did wonder if they realised sails can get blown off in violent winds, and in their case would more than likely fall on the barn. The finished home looked lovely but it sadly was not seen by the young wife who died from cancer before it was completed.  Closer to home, Arborfield Mill in Berkshire, now demolished but once the pride of Bank of England paper maker Henri de Portal, has become the site of the first fish pass on the River Loddon.  A channel for fish has been created to help them reach their spawning grounds upstream.  The £400,000 project bypasses weirs at Arborfield that hindered migration and will benefit fish including sea trout, eel and barbel.   The Loddon rises in Basingstoke and flows north through Hampshire and Berkshire, joining the River Thames at Wargrave.  In an exchange of emails with the Editor of The Countryman magazine, Paul Jackson, I asked about Broughton Watermill, Skipton, where The Countryman offices are located.  He replied: “The mill here is part of the Broughton Hall estate, owned by the Tempest family for many centuries. The mill and surrounding buildings were converted into offices in 1994. There has been a water mill on this site since the fourteenth century but it fell out of use around 1900 when grain was no longer grown in the locality. Sadly the wheel has long gone (there's an ornamental one in need of some tlc) but the culvert and former wheelhouse can still be seen.” It’s good to know that the building is still in use and judging by a photo on www.broughtonhall.com/watermill it hasn’t been altered externally.