I have just learned of the death of Jonathan Minns, the founder of Hove Engineerium (The Argus, November 1).

I knew him personally, largely because he owned the Old Water Mill in Hellingly, near Hailsham. My grandparents owned it between the wars, and ran it as a country tea garden between 1927 and 1933.

Engineer Jonathan Minns was only the latest of a series of owners of the Old Water Mill, while playwright John Osborne was perhaps the most famous.

My mother and I met Jonathan Minns and his family in Hellingly in 1984 after I had visited the British Engineerium in Hove.

He showed us the new water wheel, which he had made to replace the one that had rusted and rotted to pieces over the years.

We told him my grandfather had adapted the original wheel to power a generator which ran lights in the mill house and the gardens, long before mains electricity came to the area.

When looking for funds for the Engineerium, Minns rightly said there is money for all sorts of art but not when it comes to preserving what put the Great into Great Britain. It seems no coincidence that the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is invariably called the RSA.

Even in this supposedly classless era, “trade” is still seen as a dirty word.

Eric Hayman, Bournemouth, Dorset