Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum opens online Gift Shop

A safe way for customers to support the Tide Mill Charity

Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum has launched an online shop to sell Tide Mill merchandise without the need for customers to visit the Mill. Like all Charities the Mill has had to come up with alternative ways to maintain some sort of income. The Mill relies on visitors’ entrance fees, donations and Gift Shop purchases to maintain itself. Visiting has been severely curtailed by the Covid pandemic and the need to restrict opening to pre-booked times at the weekend. This has hit gift shop sales hard so this online shop will be a big boost.

The Mill is a major supporter of work by local artists. You can see the range of their work by visiting the online shop. The range of tea towels, posters, postcards, mugs, prints, drink mats and fridge magnets features work by Claudia Myatt, Michael Coulter, Judy Mattin and Rebecca Pymar. They will make excellent Christmas gifts. The Mill, which has a Suffolk Carbon Charter Gold award, will use environment-friendly packaging to dispatch items.

John Carrington, Chair of the Woodbridge Tide Mill Charitable Trust, said: “We need to maintain income to look after our lovely historic Mill. Creating a virtual shop will help us generate funds to run and maintain the Mill. It costs the Charity about £5,000 a month to run the Woodbridge Tide Mill. The notion of selling beautiful images of the Mill to help the Mill keep going has certain symmetry to it.

The dreadful pandemic has caused us to be inventive. We have increased our online outreach support for schools and our other virtual activities. The online shop is just the latest manifestation of a wish to remain accessible to as many people as possible, even in extreme circumstances.

We have also introduced an online means for Friends of Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum to order our stoneground flour online. Flour is heavy and delicate to distribute so, for now, it is only available to Friends to order and collect from the Mill ”

The Tide Mill Gift Shop is available at https://woodbridgetidemill.org.uk/shop/

To become a Friend of Woodbridge Tide Mill go to https://woodbridgetidemill.org.uk/be-a-friend/

Media contacts
Tide Mill Chair; John Carrington, jcc@carringtoncom.com, 01394 384695
Tide Mill volunteer; Simon Ballard, simon.theballards@gmail.com , 01394 383646