22/03/2018: Save Sutton Mill - Preserving national heritage

by Jonathon Cook, Director, National Millwrighting Centre

Save Sutton Mill, Norfolk and enable the creation if the National Milling and Millwrighting Academy. 

Sutton Mill, one of the most important unrestored windmills in the UK is facing a perilous future after its current owners decided to auction the site splitting it into two lots.

Sutton Mill, Norfolk - credit to Mike Page

 The decision has also put in jeopardy the plans of the National Millwrighting Centre CIC to buy Sutton Mill and use it as the base for the National Milling & Millwrighting Academy, a scheme to train traditional millers and millwrights to help secure the future of Britain’s wind and watermills.

 We, the National Millwrighting Centre CIC, ask for your help in promoting our Pledge Campaign to raise the funds required to enable us to recommence negotiations to buy the site and thus resume the project to create the National Milling & Millwrighting Academy.

  Our Funding The project has been backed by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) who have awarded a grant of £500,000, and North Norfolk District Council who have offered a loan of £350,000. Donations and pledges of support to-date are now in excess of £70,000, including significant support from the local community. 

To pledge money and to learn more about the project, click here We have until the March 31, 2018, to secure an additional £80,000 – can you help?

Our vision and plan
We plan to restore Sutton Mill, one of the most significant and largest corn mills in Norfolk, to be the base for the Academy, creating a living heritage centre – a commercial venture which will fund the training of millers and millwrights into the future.

Hopper and rust black and white - Newsight Photography

 The scheme will create a commercial flour mill (windmill) where we will train our millers, a bakery, shopping experience focusing on local foods, café, training centre and luxury Glamping facility (the site is on the Weavers Way). This heritage centre will sit alongside a millwrighting workshop and space for allied trades (blacksmiths, foundry, wheelwright etc) where we can train apprentice millwrights and which visitors will be able to tour, learning about Norfolk’s milling heritage and how mills are constructed and maintained.

 The project has seven key benefits:

• Training millwrights and millers to repair, maintain and run our traditional mills;
• Creating a new heritage attraction in a comparatively disadvantaged area of Norfolk;
• Creating a rich ‘local food’ offering for people from the surrounding area to eat, drink and shop;
• Permanent employment for up to 15 people;
• Helping to secure the future Norfolk’s wind and watermills including drainage mills;
• Safeguarding the Nation’s milling heritage;
• Providing facilities for the local community and community engagement.

 Current situation and how you can help
 The National Millwrighting Centre CIC had come to an agreement to purchase Sutton Mill from its current owners and were raising funds in order to complete the purchase.

Black landscape survivor - Newsight Photography

 With the decision of the current owners to withdraw from the initial agreement and initiate an auction and to sell the site in two lots, the CIC have launched a Pledge Campaign, asking people to pledge money which will only be called upon if a new agreement can be reached with the owners to purchase the whole site.

We therefore ask you to join our Pledge Campaign. To pledge money and to learn more about the project, go to www.suttonmill.org/donate We have until the March 31, 2018, to secure an additional £80,000 – can you help?

Additional Information

The project will ensure a secure long-term future for Sutton Mill, after many years of uncertainty. It is one of North Norfolk’s most important heritage buildings and is currently on Historic England’s Buildings at Risk Register.

 Sutton Mill has a huge following among people across the region and farther afield, something that has become evident from the significant interest in the project to date. When completed, the Heritage Centre will provide local employment as well as volunteering opportunities.

More information can be found here and on social media;

• Twitter - @suttonmill
• Facebook - Sutton Mill

Please call 07796 696091 for further information or email; jcook@suttonmill.org. 

 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.

For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

16/07/2013: Hovis to close its Barry flour mill; livestock feeding habits; GMOs in Europe

Premier Foods, the United Kingdom's largest food manufacturer and producer of Hovis bread and Mr Kipling cakes, has revealed plans to shut a 109-year-old flour mill with the loss of 43 jobs.

Premier announced their Hovis Rank at Barry Docks, South Wales, is set to close by the end of October this year.

The mill was built in 1904 by the Hovis-Bread Flour Company – Britain’s largest flour miller, which has since been renamed Rank Hovis.

The Premier business, which is struggling under a near UK£1 billion debt hopes to save around UK£20 million this year through the bread business restructure and general cost cutting. 
Read more...

A new system to monitor livestock feeding habits has been developed by agricultural engineers at the the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
 
According to the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Tami Brown-Brandl and Roger Eigenberg, scientists at the Roman L. Hruska US Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, designed software and hardware that uses radio-frequency identification technology to monitor daily variations in feeding behavior.

The technology monitors the amount of time each animals spends eating, the number of times the animal feeds and the timing of those events,
Read more...

A study by Futuragra, supported by scientists, has reported that 55 percent of Italians think research on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in Italy should continue.

A 2012 study by Coldiretti, an Italian agricultural organisation, showed that 71 percent of the interviewees considered GMOs less safe than traditional products.

A lot of the meat and dairy products in Italy come from animals that have eaten GMOs.
Read more...

Hovis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Olympic Games fever hits the Global Miller

We’re all enjoying a fabulous Olympic Games in London. However, which countries are doing better? And which are not? How do you compare the larger countries against the smaller ones?

It’s becoming clear that the more money a government is prepared to invest in supporting its athletes, the more medals they are likely to win. That’s proven to be the case for Great Britain where more than UK£264m has been shared between 27 Olympic sports from 2009 to 2013 to help British athletes perform to their potential at London 2012 Olympics.

While Britain ranks third in the overall medal table, it’s interesting to note that some countries prefer to base their medal success on medals won per head of population!

The New Zealand government’s statistics department has done precisely that and is keen to demonstrate, on a gold medal tally, that its haul of three golds puts it third behind Grenada and Jamaica and second on total medals won behind Grenada – for every one million head of population.

Using this medal count, Great Britain would rank ninth on gold medals while and Australia would rank eighth on total medal count.  See here for more details …

Great Britain Team Pursuit (Photo credit: Velo Steve)