Mills and millers
Tom Hine
I have a collection of some 50 mill books built up over
the last nine years. My most recent acquisition, Blockley — Village of
Water Mills, raises a question in the editor’s foreword which I find
particularly interesting, it reads ‘We need, furthermore, to know much
more about our millers. Were all silk throwsters, as they called
themselves, Baptists, as we are told, and if so why?’
My own feelings about his question of Baptists/Silk Throwsters is
perhaps that this was a local peculiarity, although some Society
members may be able to throw more light on this. Continuing with the
subject of silk manufacture but closer to home in Berkshire, I have
re-read an account of the silk industry in Wokingham, started around
1585 by refugee weavers from Flanders, right through to the decline in
1831. There doesn’t appear to be any reference to Baptists. Wokingham
silk throwsters employed as many apprentices and paupers as possible,
but despite the employment of almost 100, the town didn’t reflect any
prosperity from its labour, indeed in the censuses of 1801 and 1811
they showed that the ratio of empty houses in the town was over twice
that of the rest of Berkshire. Thomas Mann in his A Stranger In
Reading, published in 1806, described Wokingham as ‘the most dreary
dismal place you ever saw, where Poverty seems to have taken up her
abode, and from whence the energies of the British character seem to
have fled’.
The 1841 census for Berkshire shows there were just two silk throwsters
(millers) employing 101 males and 100 females. Berkshire silk mills
were at Reading, Newbury, Wokingham and Twyford. This last silk mill
closed in 1829, and like all the others the decline was brought about
by the treaty with France allowing French silk to enter this country
duty free.
The National Archive for Wind and Water Mills should be opening its
doors to researchers at its new home in Watlington House, Reading, in
the early autumn. A total of nearly 40 collections has been already
given or promised to the Archive. And by September there will be 5000
entries in the catalogue, making a start on locating the half a million
records being sorted for reference. It is anticipated that several
thousand high resolution images will be available free of charge on the
internet. (Telephone Tom Hine on 0118-950-3063 for latest details.)
with any
queries