Stories of Mills

Stories of Mills consists of four short stories on the theme of how technology shapes society – is it a force for good or ill? The stories are fiction but are firmly based on historical events. The Quern Stones is set in the medieval town of St Albans covering a period that includes the Black Death and the Peasants Revolt The Factories in the Fields tells how water and wind powered sugar mills drove the development of sugar production in the slave economies of the Caribbean. The Anti-Millers of Hull is an account of how ordinary people harnessed wind power to provide one of their basic needs in a pioneering cooperative enterprise in the 19th Century. The Draining of the Mere is a story that spans the period from Jacobean times to the near future showing how energy technologies have transformed the Fenlands of the East England from wilderness to industrial farms.