Milling About... A visit to Frogmore Paper Mill

Being the massive geeks that we are, we elected to visit a paper mill to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Who wants a posh dinner when you can run around an old factory??

The mill in question was Frogmore Paper Mill on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Frogmore claims fame as the first mechanised paper mill in the UK, with their oldest gear dating back to the early 1800s, I believe. Sadly, a lot of the large-scale machinery is now lying dormant at Frogmore, as post-recession it's very hard for them to compete against more modern paper manufacturers. They still make some wonderful specialist papers though, including some made from sheep poo (and no, it neither looks nor smells like poo, silly).

We began our tour with a little papermaking session, where we each made our own sheet of paper to bring home, which was great fun. If you're visiting with kids, they'll love this bit.

We then proceeded to a tour of the facilities. My memory is appalling, so I'm not going to try and identify the name or function of each of these. I'll just generalise... look at this amazing collection of old industrial awesomeness:

We also saw the water wheel:

And a fascinating exhibition of historical artefacts relating to fire-fighting. Here's me hanging out with the lovely people there:

I was also very enamoured of the typewriters on display, puts my collection to shame somewhat:

Then just as if we weren't excited enough, they had a bloomin' letterpress studio! Woo!

After our tour (and, to be honest, after all the other visitors had basically gone home!), we hung around for ages having a proper good chat with Paul, the letterpress chap there. He's a volunteer, keeping the presses running where possible. He was knowledgable and incredibly generous with his time; we came away with some excellent tips and a wish-list for new toys as long as your arm!

Frogmore do actually run letterpress courses, so we'll certainly be looking into that.

Here are some of the wonderful presses they had there.

Also saw this, but I hope we'll make it through a couple more anniversaries before this becomes relevant:

So in short, a marvellous day out for anyone with an interest in our industrial heritage, paper, or printing. If you're into letterpress as well, get down there, you're in for a ruddy treat.