Wind, Water, Work: Ancient And Medieval Milling Technology 9789004146495, 9004146490

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations/Figures
Figure Sources
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One Agricultural Milling in Ancient and Medieval Societies
Chapter One Milling technology in the ancient world
Introduction
Rotary handmills
Beast mills
Compartmented waterwheels
Vertical-wheeled watermills
Horizontal-wheeled watermills
Was technological stagnation a characteristic of the ancient world?
Conclusion
Chapter Two Milling technology in the first millennium CE
Introduction
The sources
China
Islamic societies
Italy
England
Ireland
Conclusion
Chapter Three Tide mills and windmills in the middle ages
Introduction
Tide mills
Horizontal windmills
Vertical windmills
Tower mills
Conclusion
Chapter Four The costs of construction and maintenance of medieval watermills and windmills
Introduction
Responsibilities of lords and tenants for mill maintenance
Waterpowered grain mills
Fulling mills
Tide mills
Windmills
Conclusion
Chapter Five The role of the monasteries in the development of milling in medieval England
Introduction
The role of monasticism in the “reintroduction” of the vertical-wheeled watermill to Western Europe
Milling monopolies and lordly control
Monastic mill construction, innovation and profitability in medieval England
The role of the monasteries in the independent milling sector
The profitability of milling and the factors that shaped it
Conclusion
Part Two Industrial Milling in the Middle Ages
Chapter Six Was there an industrial revolution in the middle ages based on water-power?
Introduction
The early history of industrial milling
The industrial use of water-power in the middle ages
Summary of findings from the larger sample
Conclusion
Chapter Seven Medieval European industrial mills
Introduction
Malt mills
Hemp mills
Fulling mills
Tanning mills
Forge mills
Tool-sharpening mills
Sawmills
Conclusion
Chapter Eight Medieval English industrial mills
Introduction
Documented industrial mills
Undocumented industrial mills
Conclusion
Chapter Nine The medieval Welsh fulling industry
Introduction
Carus-Wilson and the English fulling industry
Ian Jack’s gazetteer of Welsh fulling mills
Structure of the Welsh mechanized fulling industry
Analysis of Welsh fulling mill rental data
The relative profitability of mechanized fulling in medieval England and Wales
The changing structure of the Welsh fulling industry
Conclusion
Conclusion
Chapter Ten The social shaping of milling technology in the pre-modern period
Introduction
Technological systems and sociotechnical networks
Do mills have politics?
Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix A Industrial Mills in Eurasia and North Africa, 20 to 1600 CE
Appendix B Selected pre-modern industrial mills by country, 20 to 1600 CE
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

WIND, WATER, WORK

TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGE IN HISTORY

VOLUME 8

Georgius Agricola’s illustration of a water-powered blast furnace, 1556

WIND, WATER, WORK Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology

BY

ADAM LUCAS

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights for the use of the illustrations printed on and in this volume. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed, we would be glad to hear from them.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1385-920X ISBN 90 04 14649 0 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

List of illustrations/figures .......................................................... Figure sources ............................................................................ List of tables ................................................................................ Acknowledgements ......................................................................

ix xiii xvii xix

Introduction ................................................................................

1

PART ONE AGRICULTURAL MILLING IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SOCIETIES

Chapter One Milling technology in the ancient world ........ Introduction ............................................................................ Rotary handmills .................................................................... Beast mills .............................................................................. Compartmented waterwheels ................................................ Vertical-wheeled watermills .................................................... Horizontal-wheeled watermills .............................................. Was technological stagnation a characteristic of the ancient world? .................................................................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

9 9 19 22 24 29 34 42 47

Chapter Two Milling technology in the first millennium CE .................................................................... Introduction ............................................................................ The sources ............................................................................ China ...................................................................................... Islamic societies ...................................................................... Italy .......................................................................................... England .................................................................................... Ireland .................................................................................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

51 51 52 54 61 69 73 78 82

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contents

Chapter Three Tide mills and windmills in the middle ages ........................................................................ Introduction ............................................................................ Tide mills ................................................................................ Horizontal windmills .............................................................. Vertical windmills .................................................................. Tower mills ............................................................................ Conclusion .............................................................................. Chapter Four The costs of construction and maintenance of medieval watermills and windmills .............................. Introduction ............................................................................ Responsibilities of lords and tenants for mill maintenance ........................................................................ Waterpowered grain mills ...................................................... Fulling mills ............................................................................ Tide mills ................................................................................ Windmills ................................................................................ Conclusion .............................................................................. Chapter Five The role of the monasteries in the development of milling in medieval England .................. Introduction ............................................................................ The role of monasticism in the “reintroduction” of the vertical-wheeled watermill to Western Europe ................ Milling monopolies and lordly control ................................ Monastic mill construction, innovation and profitability in medieval England .......................................................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

85 85 86 101 107 122 124

128 128 129 133 141 143 145 152

154 154 159 165 177 195

PART TWO INDUSTRIAL MILLING IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Chapter Six Was there an industrial revolution in the middle ages based on water-power? ................................ Introduction ............................................................................ The early history of industrial milling .................................. The industrial use of water-power in the middle ages ...... Summary of findings from the larger sample ...................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

201 201 207 212 226 230

contents

vii

Chapter Seven Medieval European industrial mills .............. Introduction ............................................................................ Malt mills ................................................................................ Hemp mills .............................................................................. Fulling mills ............................................................................ Tanning mills .......................................................................... Forge mills .............................................................................. Tool-sharpening mills ............................................................ Sawmills .................................................................................. Conclusion ..............................................................................

233 233 239 241 243 248 251 255 257 260

Chapter Eight Medieval English industrial mills .................. Introduction ............................................................................ Documented industrial mills .................................................. Undocumented industrial mills .............................................. Conclusion ..............................................................................

263 263 265 271 276

Chapter Nine The medieval Welsh fulling industry ............ Introduction ............................................................................ Carus-Wilson and the English fulling industry .................... Ian Jack’s gazetteer of Welsh fulling mills .......................... Structure of the Welsh mechanized fulling industry .......... Analysis of Welsh fulling mill rental data ............................ The relative profitability of mechanized fulling in medieval England and Wales ............................................ The changing structure of the Welsh fulling industry ........ Conclusion ..............................................................................

278 278 280 284 285 289 295 298 300

CONCLUSION

Chapter Ten The social shaping of milling technology in the pre-modern period .................................................. Introduction ............................................................................ Technological systems and sociotechnical networks ............ Do mills have politics? .......................................................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

305 305 308 326 334

viii

contents APPENDICES

Appendix A Industrial Mills in Eurasia and North Africa, 20 to 1600 CE .................................................................. 339 Appendix B Selected pre-modern industrial mills by country, 20 to 1600 CE .................................................... 399

Bibliography ................................................................................ 401 Index ............................................................................................ 419

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS/FIGURES

Georgius Agricola’s illustration of a water-powered blast furnace, 1556 ......................................................

Frontispiece

Fig. 1.1 A) Sandstone grinding stone fragment discovered at Cuddie Springs, northern New South Wales, Australia, dated to approximately 28,000 BCE. B) A modern Aboriginal grindstone made of sandstone, typically used for the wet milling of grass seeds, found at the surface at Cuddie Springs ..........

10

Fig. 1.2 Saddle-quern and grain rubber found on Worm’s Head, Rhossili, Gower, Wales ......................

12

Fig. 1.3 Hopper-rubber in which the upper stone has carved out within it an elongated slit through which the grain passes automatically ..........................

12

Fig. 1.4 Lever mill in which the upper stone is moved across the lower stone in a short arc by means of a radially oscillating arm, pivoted at one end ........................................................................

13

Fig. 1.5 Rotary handmill, mola versatilis, in which the grain is fed through a hole in the upper stone and turned by hand with a rotary motion ................

14

Fig. 1.6 Animal-powered rotary mill with large hopper ..........................................................................

14

Fig. 1.7 A) Vertical-wheeled watermill, hydraleta, in which the millstone is worked by right-angle gearing (front elevation); B) perspective drawing of the mechanism: a) millstones; b) spindle; c) shaft; d) vanes ........................................................................

16

Fig. 1.8 Horizontal-wheeled watermill from the isle of Lewis (after Curwen 1944) ..............................

17

x

list of illustrations⁄figures

Fig. 1.9 Chinese rotary handmill, lung, made of baked clay or wood, used for hulling grain or decorticating rice ....

21

Fig. 1.10 Chinese rotary handmill, mo, for grinding husked grain, rice or wheat into flour ....................................

21

Fig. 1.11 One of three illustrations depicting different types of geared horse mill by Agostino Ramelli, 1588 ..........

23

Fig. 1.12 Chinese ox-driven cereal-grinding mill without gearing (mo). From Thien Kung Khai Wu, ch. 4, p. 12a (1637) ..........................................................................................

25

Fig. 1.13 Saqiya gear, a right-angled gearing mechanism for lifting water from a waterwheel or pot-chain pump, as seen in this diagram redrawn from al-Jazari’s book on ingenious mechanical contrivances (1206) ................................

27

Fig. 1.14 Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a waterwheel with external containers, 1588 ..................................................

28

Fig. 1.15 Diagrammatic representation of the operations of A) undershot, B) overshot and C) breastshot vertical-wheeled watermills ........................................................

31

Fig. 1.16 The basic mechanism of a horizontal-wheeled watermill: a) millstones; b) spindle; c) shaft; d) vanes; e) gudgeon ..................................................................................

35

Fig. 1.17 Twin-flume horizontal-wheeled watermills at Littleisland, Cork, c. 630 CE ....................................................

36

Fig. 2.1 A) Ship mills on the River Tiber, Rome, in a painting by Giuliano di San Gallo, c. 1490; B) Ship mills on the River Rhône, Lyons, in a drawing from 1550 ..........

63

Fig. 2.2 Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a bridge mill, 1607 ............................................................................................

64

Fig. 2.3 Horizontal-wheeled watermill fed by valley floor irrigation system in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) ......................

66

Fig. 3.1 Reconstruction of the wheelhouse of an early medieval horizontal-wheeled tide mill at Nendrum, Mahee Island, Northern Ireland, early 7th c. CE ..................

91

list of illustrations⁄figures

xi

Fig. 3.2 Persian horizontal windmill (after Wulff ) ................ 103 Fig. 3.3 Horizontal windmill from Kandia (Iraklion), Crete, 1486 (after Grünemberg) ................................................ 104 Fig. 3.4 One of Hero’s anemouria, or wind-driven organs .... 106 Fig. 3.5 Romanian single-bearing “paltrok” windmill .......... 108 Fig. 3.6 Romanian double-bearing “paltrok” windmill ........ 108 Fig. 3.7 Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a post-mill, 1588 ............................................................................................ 116 Fig. 3.8 Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a tower mill, 1588 ............................................................................................ 123 Fig. 7.1 Vertical stamp operated by cams (after Reynolds) .......................................................................... 234 Fig. 7.2 Edge-runner mill (mola olearia) used for crushing olives during the Hellenic period, c. 50 CE (after Drachmann) ...................................................................... 235 Fig. 7.3 Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a fulling mill, 1607, showing: A) & B) recumbent trip-hammers; G) camshaft; H) cams; I) waterwheel ...................................... 245 Fig. 7.4 Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a water-powered edge-runner mill, 1607 .............................................................. 250 Fig. 7.5 A fifteenth-century forge mill directly driven by a vertical waterwheel .................................................................. 252 Fig. 7.6 Isaak de Caus’s illustration of a sawmill incorporating a crank instead of a cam to produce reciprocating motion, 1659 ........................................................ 258

FIGURE SOURCES

Frontispiece Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (1556), p. 290. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Chapter One figures Fig. 1.1 Photographs by Georgia Britton. Courtesy of Dr Judith Field, University of Sydney. Fig. 1.2 Photograph courtesy of City and County of Swansea: Swansea Museum. Fig. 1.3 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 185, fig. 442. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.4 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 185, fig. 442. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.5 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 186, fig. 443. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.6 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 186, fig. 443. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.7 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 367, fig. 600. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

xiv

figure sources

Fig. 1.8 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 368, fig. 601, after E. Cecil Curwen, “The Problem of Early Water-mills”, Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 71 (1944), p. 141, fig. 5. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.9 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), fig. 445. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.10 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 188, fig. 444. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.11 Agostino Ramelli, Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), pl. 120. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers. Fig. 1.12 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 193, fig. 449. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.13 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 353, fig. 587. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 1.14 Agostino Ramelli, Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), pl. 44. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers. Fig. 1.15 E. Cecil Curwen, “The Problem of Early Water-mills”, Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 71 (1944), p. 133, fig. 2. Courtesy of Antiquity. Fig. 1.16 E. Cecil Curwen, “The Problem of Early Water-mills”, Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 71 (1944), p. 131, fig. 1. Courtesy of Antiquity. Fig. 1.17 Courtesy of Dr Colin Rynne, University College, Cork.

figure sources

xv

Chapter Two figures Fig. 2.1 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), pp. 409 & 410, figs. 628 & 629. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 2.2 Vittorio Zonca, Novo teatro di machine et edificii per varie et sicure operationi (1607), p. 14. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fig. 2.3 Thomas Glick & Helena Kirchner, “Hydraulic Systems and Technologies of Islamic Spain: History and Archaeology”, in Paolo Squatriti (ed.), Working With Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource Use (2000), p. 280, fig. 7.3. Courtesy of Brill Academic Publishers. Chapter Three figures Fig. 3.1 Courtesy of Mr Tom McErlean, University of Ulster. Fig. 3.2 Michael J.T. Lewis, “The Greeks and the Early Windmill”, History of Technology, Vol. 15 (1993), p. 149, fig. 3, after H.E. Wulff, The Traditional Crafts of Persia (1966). Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis. Fig. 3.3 Michael J.T. Lewis, “The Greeks and the Early Windmill”, History of Technology, Vol. 15 (1993), p. 156, fig. 5, after Grünemberg, reproduced in A.L.M. Lepschy (ed.), Viaggio in Terrasanta de Santo Brasca 1480 (1966), pl. 15. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis. Fig. 3.4 Michael J.T. Lewis, “The Greeks and the Early Windmill”, History of Technology, Vol. 15 (1993), p. 144, fig. 2, from Hero, Pneumatica, W. Schmidt (ed.) (1899). Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis. Fig. 3.5 Michael J.T. Lewis, “The Greeks and the Early Windmill”, History of Technology, Vol. 15 (1993), p. 174, fig. 17. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis. Fig. 3.6 Michael J.T. Lewis, “The Greeks and the Early Windmill”, History of Technology, Vol. 15 (1993), p. 174, fig. 18. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

xvi

figure sources

Fig. 3.7 Agostino Ramelli, Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), pl. 133. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers. Fig. 3.8 Agostino Ramelli, Le diverse et artificiose machine (1588), pl. 132. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers. Chapter Seven figures Fig. 7.1 A. After Terry S. Reynolds, “Medieval Roots of the Industrial Revolution”, Scientific American, Vol. 251, No. 1 (1984), p. 111. B. Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (1556), p. 223. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fig. 7.2 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 Physics and Physical Technology, Pt. II Mechanical Engineering (1965), p. 203, fig. 458, after A.G. Drachmann, “Ancient Oil Mills and Presses” (1932). Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press. Fig. 7.3 Vittorio Zonca, Novo teatro di machine et edificii per varie et sicure operationi (1607), p. 42. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fig. 7.4 Vittorio Zonca, Novo teatro di machine et edificii per varie et sicure operationi (1607), p. 30. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fig. 7.5 Hugo Spechtshart, Flores musicae (1488), f. [M7] v. Fig. 7.6 Isaak de Caus, New and Rare Inventions of Water-Works (1659), pl. 11. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Dates and locations of sixteen tide mills in England and Wales before 1500 ..............................................

93

Table 3.2 The earliest English manuscript references to windmills ...................................................................................... 109 Table 4.1 Incomes, expenses and millers’ wages for eight mills held by Beaulieu Abbey, 1269/70 (£/s/d) .................... 138 Table 4.2 Cost of constructing Newborough windmill, Anglesey, in 1303 ...................................................................... 150 Table 5.1 Suit of mill and average mill revenues for six religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England .......................................................................... 193 Table 5.2 Suit of mill and average mill revenues for four Category 1 religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England .............................................. 194 Table 5.3 Suit of mill and average mill revenues for four Category 2 religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England .............................................. 195 Table 6.1 European industrial mills cited by proponents of an industrial revolution in the middle ages, 770 to 1600 ............................................................................................ 214 Table 6.2 Chronological order in which water-power was applied to various industrial processes in medieval Europe, 770 to 1469 .................................................................. 216 Table 6.3 Industrial mills in Europe by type, 770 to 1600 ............................................................................................ 217 Table 6.4 First appearance of various industrial mills in medieval Europe, 770 to 1443 .................................................. 218 Table 6.5 Industrial mills in Europe by country, 770 to 1600 ............................................................................................ 218

xviii

list of tables

Table 6.6 Water-powered industrial mills by country, 770 to 1600 ................................................................................ 222 Table 9.1 Number of fulling mills held by different sectors of Anglo-Welsh society, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries ...................................................................... 285 Table 9.2 Twenty-three ecclesiastical estates holding fulling mills in Wales, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries .... 286 Table 9.3 Twenty-five lordly families holding fulling mills in Wales, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries .............. 287 Appendix A Industrial Mills in Eurasia and North Africa, 20 to 1600 CE .......................................................................... 339 Appendix B Selected pre-modern industrial mills by country, 20 to 1600 CE ............................................................ 399

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would never have made it to print had it not been for the many hours of support, encouragement and inspiration provided by family, friends and colleagues. Guy Freeland, former senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of science at the University of New South Wales was the man who initially inspired my interest in the subject. Sybil Jack, formerly associate professor of medieval and renaissance history at the University of Sydney, outlined some of the problems and primary sources available for research when I first entered the field. John Langdon, senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Alberta, and Christopher Dyer, visiting professor at the Centre for Local History at the University of Leicester, both encouraged me to enter into the debate about medieval milling. Chris offered advice about the appropriate use of sources, and feedback on drafts of some of the material in the book. John provided detailed and extremely useful feedback about the contents of most of the chapters. John Schuster and Tony Corones from the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales supervised the doctoral dissertation from which some of this material was drawn. Örjan Wikander, professor of classical studies at the University of Lund, Colin Rynne from the School of Archaeology at University College Cork, Alex Keller, formerly senior lecturer in history and philosophy of science at the University of Leicester, Paolo Squatriti from the Department of History at the University of Michigan, Thomas Glick from the Department of History at Boston University, Michael Lewis from the University of Hull, and Niall Brady from the Discovery Programme in Dublin, read drafts of various parts of the book and provided helpful comments along the way. Colin, Tom and Michael also gave me permission to use some of their illustrations. Thanks also to Phillip George, head of the School of Media Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, for his help in photographing images and compiling the electronic files for the publisher. To Richard Holt, head of the Institute for History at the University of Tromsø, my deep gratitude for his indefatigable assistance on

xx

acknowledgements

numerous fronts over many years. My partner, Bronwyn Holland, Director of the Women in Engineering Program in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney, has been a great support during the time that it took to bring the manuscript to completion. Finally, I’d like to thank the reviewers who supported the publication of this book, and the staff at Brill Academic Publishers, especially Marcella Mulder for being a patient and attentive editor.

INTRODUCTION

Watermills and windmills continue to enjoy an iconic status in the popular imagination; their elemental regularity often being used to symbolise the restful natural rhythms of a pastoral idyll. In countries where there has been a long milling tradition, their scattered ruins provide glimpses of an almost forgotten way of life, when households took their grain to the local miller to be ground. While they are now generally regarded as quaint landmarks with some heritage interest, it was not so long ago that the town or village mill was a centre of social and economic activity that not infrequently represented one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology in the locality. Mills for grinding grain were one of the first kinds of machine to employ non-human and renewable forms of energy as their motive power. They were, therefore, amongst the first machines to be automated, and some of the first to be used in factory-scale production. For these and other reasons that will be explored in the pages to follow, the history of mills and milling has attracted the attention of significant numbers of amateur and professional scholars for at least a hundred and fifty years. This attention has ensured that the development of milling technology has become part of the standard vocabulary of modernist narratives of invention and progress. Engineers and professional soldiers, industrialists and artisans, poets and journalists have all written eloquently on the subject, if not always accurately, as have professional historians, geographers, philologists and archaeologists. Anyone who immerses him- or herself in mill scholarship soon finds that the most common approach to presenting the subject has been to provide a technical description of the type of mill concerned, followed by an account of its chronological development and geographical diffusion. This approach, which can be described as “internalist” from a historiographical perspective, is one that I partially emulate in the first two chapters of this book. It should be emphasised, however, that while this is a perfectly acceptable means of quickly conveying the rudimentary characteristics of a particular technology to an unfamiliar reader, it does tend to leave the impression

2

introduction

of a level of certainty that is not necessarily warranted with respect to the statements that are made. It also tends to gloss issues relating to how society and the environment shape, and are shaped by, technological development. Although it is not uncommon for the factual bases for an academic discipline to be open to revision and modification as new evidence comes to light, a somewhat puzzling reluctance to pursue such strategies has characterized much of the discussion regarding the early history of milling, particularly within the history of technology. The result is what might facetiously be described as a “crisis of facticity”, whereby much of what has passed, and in some cases continues to pass, as factual content within the debate is anything but factual. Hearsay and poorly informed speculation have provided the basis for many a misleading statement within the literature, providing the diligent reader with a veritable labyrinth of misinformation to wade through before arriving at anything approaching the truth of the matter. In presenting this material I have therefore tried on the one hand to draw the readers’ attention to any and all factual claims that may be contentious or open to future revision, and on the other to ensure that the social and environmental factors contributing to the developments described are briefly provided in each case and referenced when appropriate. It is also the case, however, that a growing body of excellent work dealing directly or indirectly with the early history of milling has appeared over the last twenty years or so. This has provided a great deal of invaluable material for the revisionist history before you. While its treatment of the subject has generally been restricted to specific countries and/or time periods, this study is more in the vein of that relatively new genre of history known as “world history” or “global history”. Its ambitions are, therefore, somewhat broader, in that it has attempted to not only analyse and synthesise the work of a large number of authors and source material from a number of fields, but has sought to draw some more general conclusions about such topics as the social, economic and environmental factors that shape technological innovation, why certain technologies become well-established in some conditions while others do not, and the relative importance of the various legal, administrative and political institutions of the state to technological development in general. In a book of this kind, however, it is difficult to always go into the same kind of detail as that found in regional and national studies.

introduction

3

Largely due to the proliferation of empirical research on the subject over the last two to three decades, it is now possible to put together a relatively coherent picture of the role of milling technology in pre-modern societies. This book attempts to use this research to provide an evidence-based reassessment of the development of milling technology to around 1600. The extensive factual detail that has been incorporated into the discussion is intended to provide a firmer empirical basis for future discussions of what is arguably an issue of central importance to the disciplines of history, sociology, geography and archaeology. A major concern of this book is to try to get beyond the conventional approach to the subject, which has generally consisted of a reeling off of “knowledge nuggets”, as the historian of science John Schuster would say. Although internalist techniques of description are employed in the early chapters, the book seeks to provide a broader sense of how milling was integrated into the activities of ancient and medieval people, and in what ways its development contributed to modernisation and industrialization. Regular and sometimes extended discussions of who it was that built and owned mills in different societies at different times, and why and how they built and operated mills where they did, provide some insights into these uses. The book consists of two parts that deal with two different kinds of milling activity: grinding grain and the processing of materials other than grain. For conveniences’ sake, I follow a convention begun by Anne-Marie Bautier (but popularised by Lynn White Jr.) which distinguishes between “industrial” mills used for grinding bark, sawing timber, crushing ore, fulling cloth, etc.,1 and those used for grinding grain, which we might designate “agricultural” mills, or simply “grain” or “corn” mills. The notion of an “industrial mill” is commonly employed when referring to mills used for processing materials other than grain. Although the distinction is somewhat arbitrary, in that it implies that “industrial-scale” flour production cannot be included as a form of industrial milling, most of the milling literature post-1965 has followed this convention. It is nevertheless useful to make a distinction between mills used in industry as opposed to

1

Bautier (1960); White (1964).

4

introduction

agriculture, and milling as an industry, which captures both agricultural and industrial aspects of milling activity, but which is arguably only applicable to more urbanised societies, such as the Roman and Chinese empires, and parts of high medieval and early modern Europe. The first chapter of Part One focusses on the technical details and chronologies of development of handmills, animal-powered mills and watermills in the ancient world. Chapter Two looks at the social context within which watermills and related hydraulic technologies were deployed in various regions of Eurasia during the early middle ages. Chapter Three examines the origins and construction of tide mills and windmills in the middle ages, and Chapter Four looks at the relative costs of constructing and maintaining watermills and windmills in high medieval England relative to their levels of profitability. Chapter Five is more historiographical. It examines whether innovation or oppression characterized the role of the monasteries in the development of milling in medieval Europe, drawing primarily on the evidence from England. Chapter Six, Part Two, is also historiographical in focus, and discusses whether there is sufficient evidence to argue that there was an industrial revolution in the middle ages based on waterpower, and to what extent the Romans, Chinese and early medieval Islamic societies may have contributed to the development of industrial milling in medieval Europe. This chapter first appeared in the journal Technology and Culture in January 2005. Chapter Seven looks in more detail at the different kinds of industrial mill that existed in medieval Europe and the terminology that was used to describe them. Chapter Eight looks at the archaeological evidence for industrial milling in medieval England, and Chapter Nine is a case study of medieval Welsh fulling mills that focusses on issues of ownership and varying profitability. The concluding chapter utilises recent theoretical insights from the social studies of technology to illuminate those social and natural processes that played key roles in shaping the development of milling technologies in the ancient and medieval worlds. Appendices A and B serve as references and aids to the discussions in Parts Two and Three. Appendix A attempts to provide a comprehensive listing of industrial mills in Eurasia and North Africa from the first to the sixteenth centuries that have been cited in the secondary literature, while Appendix B summarises this information.

introduction

5

With the exception of Chapters Five and Six, the book generally avoids entering into historiographical debates about the pros and cons of various authors’ views. However, there are instances in which such discussions have been more or less unavoidable, primarily because it would be a less than honest representation of the current state of knowledge on these specific topics to fail to mention those scholars who have contributed most to that knowledge, and what it was that constituted conventional wisdom prior to those efforts of revisionism. Apart from the issues already flagged in relation to Chapters Five and Six, there are four subjects that are dealt with in this way. The last section of Chapter One looks at whether technological stagnation was characteristic of the ancient world. The section on the tide mill in Chapter Three examines the social and economic significance of the tide mill, and the section on the windmill in the same chapter examines the evidence for the various theories that have been proposed to explain its origins and diffusion. Finally, the section on the malt mill in Chapter Seven attempts to clarify what kinds of device are being referred to in the medieval sources. In addressing such complex and contingent questions as those relating to origins and pathways of diffusion, I have employed an interpretive form of explanation that takes into account multiple and variable forms of causation. As in any high level theory of causation, “best fit” theories with the evidence are the best at which we can realistically aim in the pre-modern period. This is partially due to the patchy nature of the evidence, but it is also a function of the limits of empirical knowledge itself. The reader is therefore urged to continue to bear in mind throughout the discussion that chronologies of invention and diffusion for pre-modern technologies are largely unstable and open to revision until sufficient archaeological or manuscript evidence is brought to bear to stabilise the relevant claims. A certain level of scepticism is of course warranted when the evidence is thin and the claims conjectural. Unfortunately, this is still the case with respect to a number of important issues surrounding pre-modern milling technologies, including the early history of milling, the profitability of milling for industrial purposes other than flour production, and the diffusion of a variety of different windmill technologies. What is now known on the subject of ancient and medieval mills is undoubtedly far more than was known twenty years ago, and I suspect that much more than we now know will be known in another

6

introduction

twenty years. The empiricists’ problem of whether we will we be any closer to “the truth” by then can be answered from an instrumentalist perspective: perhaps not, but we should have more reliable information from which to deduce more plausible explanations of how these technologies developed and what role they played in different societies. Although this book is primarily aimed at those with either an amateur or a professional interest in the history of technology, it is hopefully accessible and wide-ranging enough to appeal to a broader audience with interests in historical sociology, social and economic history, historical geography and archaeology. A reasonably wellinformed graduate or undergraduate in the humanities should have little difficulty in comprehending the vast bulk of the material covered in the pages to follow. Sydney August 2005

PART ONE

AGRICULTURAL MILLING IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SOCIETIES

CHAPTER ONE

MILLING TECHNOLOGY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Introduction The grinding of grain was a fundamental part of everyday life in ancient and medieval societies, playing an almost universal role in the preparation of cereal crops for human consumption. For thousands of years, the task of grinding was undertaken by hand with the aid of stones employing one of several kinds of reciprocal motion. In most recorded cultures, it has been women who performed this task. Probably the most ancient technique involves the grinder rocking backwards and forwards while grasping an ellipsoid stone in both hands which crushes the grain within a larger concave stone that sits in front of the grinder. Both upper and lower stones are usually made from a hard igneous rock such as granite or basalt to avoid the production of stone grit in the grinding process. The grain is fed into the bed stone by hand, and the crushed grain swept into a nearby container. It is then cooked to make porridge or bread. The oldest examples of grinding stones to date have been excavated at Cuddie Springs in the central north of New South Wales, Australia, and date to c. 28,000 BCE. Probably used to grind grass seeds, the various fragments of more than twenty grinding stones discovered at this late Pleistocene site were sourced from a sandstone outcrop more than 100 kilometres away. Such grinding stones constitute the most primitive form of handmill, and pre-date others found in the northern hemisphere by 15,000 to 20,000 years [Fig. 1.1].1 The saddle quern is a slightly more sophisticated development of the same principle. Rather than forming a concave bedstone, as its name suggests, the upper grinding surface of a saddle quern is shaped

1 See Fullagar & Field (1997). Based on evidence from contemporary huntergatherer societies, around 60% of food collection and preparation is done by women, including the grinding of grain, so it would seem not unreasonable to assume that this was also the case in archaic Aboriginal societies. See Murdock (1936).

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Fig. 1.1. A) Sandstone grinding stone fragment discovered at Cuddie Springs, northern New South Wales, Australia, dated to approximately 28,000 BCE. Believed to be the oldest known grinding stone in the world, it pre-dates others found in the Northern Hemisphere by 20,000 years. B) A modern Aboriginal grindstone made of sandstone, typically used for the wet milling of grass seeds, found at the surface at Cuddie Springs. Photographs by Georgia Britton. Courtesy of Dr Judith Field, University of Sydney.

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like a saddle, the ellipsoid grain-rubber being used to rub or crush the grain within the saddle [Fig. 1.2]. In European and Asian societies, use of the saddle quern emerged towards the end of the palaeolithic, and continued to be employed in many societies until urbanisation or industrialisation. In ancient Mesopotamia, a wide range of materials were processed using saddle querns, including seeds, nuts, herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables, meat, clay, bark, pigments, medicines, cosmetics and dyes.2 The saddle quern continues to be used in some parts of Latin America and Africa today. Around the Mediterranean and possibly also in China during the first half of the first millennium BCE, the saddle quern was superseded by two more sophisticated versions of the handmill, the hopper-rubber and the lever mill. The hopper-rubber consists of an upper and lower stone. The upper stone contains a shallow hopper at the bottom of which is a hole or slit that feeds the grain through automatically. The lower stone has a larger surface area than the upper stone, and contains a series of parallel grooves in a herringbone or other pattern for crushing the grain. The grinder pushes the upper stone backwards and forwards across the lower stone, grinding the grain through friction [Fig. 1.3]. The lever mill (also known as the Olynthian mill after the Greek site at which the first example was found) is an adaptation of the hopper-rubber. The upper and lower stones are similar in design to the hopper-rubber, the difference being that the upper stone is attached to a lever arm that is pivoted at one side of the lower stone. This allows the grinder to use a radially oscillating action to rub the upper stone back and forth across the lower stone [Fig. 1.4]. The earliest examples of the lever mill date to the sixth century BCE.3 Between the fifth and early first centuries BCE, three new types of mill began to be used in Central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. These new machines applied the principle of rotary motion to the action of grinding for the first time. The profound impact that they had on ancient societies has only begun to be properly understood over the last three decades or so as archaeological evidence

2

Wright (1992), p. 87f; Lease, et al. (2001), p. 235. Lewis (1997), p. 13. Needham (1965), pp. 185–7 dates the earliest examples of the Olynthian mill a century later. 3

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Fig. 1.2. Saddle-quern and grain rubber found on Worm’s Head, Rhossili, Gower, Wales. Querns of this type were used for grinding grain in neolithic Britain (4,500– 1,900 BCE), as well as in many other ancient societies. These pieces were excavated by archaeologist, Benjamin Howard Cunnington (1861–1950), from the kitchen midden below the turf on the south side of the Inner Head. Photograph courtesy of City and County of Swansea: Swansea Museum.

Fig. 1.3. Hopper-rubber in which the upper stone has carved out within it an elongated slit through which the grain passes automatically. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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Fig. 1.4. Lever mill in which the upper stone is moved across the lower stone in a short arc by means of a radially oscillating arm, pivoted at one end. Also known as the Olynthian mill after the site at which this type of handmill was first excavated. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

has revealed the extent to which they were applied in a variety of domestic, commercial and military contexts. The earliest and simplest of the three new types of mill was the rotary handmill or quern, known to the Romans as mola versatilis [Fig. 1.5]. The earliest archaeological evidence for its existence comes from the eastern Mediterranean and dates to the fifth century BCE.4 The rotary handmill is highly portable and cheap to manufacture and repair. Examples can be found over a very wide geographical area and time period. The earliest archaeological evidence for the second type of mill is dated to around 150 years later. What the Romans called the mola asinaria, or donkey mill, is the earliest type of mill to substitute the repetitive motions of human beings for those of animals, and was probably the first type of mill to use non-human power [Fig. 1.6].5 Mills driven by donkeys, horses and occasionally other beasts of burden continued to be used in many parts of the world until well into the nineteenth century, most frequently in small workshop settings.

4 The most recent book to deal with this subject in detail is Lewis (1997), pp. 13–16. Cf. Bennett & Elton (1898), Vol. I, pp. 128–37; Moritz (1958), pp. 103–5. Needham (1965), p. 187, states that the earliest references to the rotary handmill are by Cato in De Re Rustica (its correct title is De agri cultura) 10.4 & 11.4, and date to 160 BCE, but concedes that the reference indicates that they were already in “fairly common use” by this time. 5 See: Moritz (1958), pp. 74–102; Wikander (1984), pp. 34–5.

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Fig. 1.5. Rotary handmill, mola versatilis, in which the grain is fed through a hole in the upper stone and turned by hand with a rotary motion. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

Fig. 1.6. Animal-powered rotary mill with large hopper. Also known as the Pompeian mill after the site at which this type of mill was first identified. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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The earliest evidence for the third type of mill appears another 150 years later in the eastern Mediterranean, and involved the application of water-power to the process of milling. What the Greeks and Romans called hydraleta was a vertical-wheeled watermill that employed right-angled gearing [Fig. 1.7].6 Its invention was, therefore, reliant on the prior existence of three technological innovations that it ingeniously combined in its design, apparently from its earliest inception: gearing, the vertical waterwheel, and the rotary mill. While it has often been argued that the ancients made little use of this late Classical innovation, such an assumption is based on an inadequate assessment of the evidence. Like the various forms of animal-powered mill, what has come to be known as the “Roman” geared watermill was commonly used in many parts of the world until the late nineteenth century. Archaeological evidence for a fourth type of mill, a simpler watermill with a horizontal waterwheel and no gearing, is yet to be found for any earlier than the late third and early fourth centuries CE.7 However, some scholars continue to argue that there is some textual evidence that the horizontal-wheeled watermill was part of the “first wave” of milling technology based on the rotary principle [Fig. 1.8].8 Most of the examples of milling technology described so far seem to have emanated from southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. The evidence from ancient China suggests that it did not lag far behind the Occident in its adoption of these new types of mill, and in some cases may have originated their own versions of certain milling technologies. However, much work remains to be done to determine whether China originated or independently developed its own prototypes, or adapted them from occidental examples.

6 Some useful entry points into the debate over where and when the verticalwheeled watermill and other milling technologies were invented, and how they were disseminated, are: Bennett & Elton (1898–1899); Moritz (1958); Needham (1965); Reynolds (1983), Chh. 1 & 2; Wikander (1984); Holt (1988), Ch. 1; Lewis (1997). In his most recent work, Michael Lewis has presented some plausible arguments in support of an earlier date for the invention of the vertical-wheeled watermill. 7 Wikander (2000), p. 377. 8 For example, Michael Lewis has recently argued that an early medieval Arabic translation of The construction of the machine of the flute-player attributed to Apollonius of Perge (c. 260–180 BCE) makes reference to a horizontal-wheeled watermill that is part of the original text and not a later interpolation; Lewis (1997), pp. 9, 49–61. The more well-known example relates to interpretations of Antipater’s poetic reference to a watermill, which will be discussed in more detail later in The Chapter.

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A

Fig. 1.7. A) Vertical-wheeled watermill, hydraleta, in which the millstone is worked by right-angle gearing (front elevation); B) perspective drawing of the mechanism: a) millstones; b) spindle; c) shaft; d) vanes. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute, Cambridge University Press and Antiquity.

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Fig. 1.8. Horizontal-wheeled watermill from the isle of Lewis (after Curwen 1944). The mill parts are: a) hopper; b) rynd; c) stones; d) wheel with obliquely-set paddles on thick shaft; e) chute delivering the water to the side of the wheel behind the shaft. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

The earliest references to rotary handmills in China are reputedly from the beginning of the second century BCE. These differ from the occidental versions of the quern in their design and the materials used to make them, but given the relative chronologies and the handmill’s proven portability, it is possible that there was direct transfer of the technology to China from the West. Both beast-driven mills and watermills appear relatively late in the Chinese manuscript evidence. The earliest references to animal-powered mills (ma mo) date to some time before 175 CE, while there is no firm evidence of the watermill until the third or fourth century CE.9 On the basis of the current evidence, therefore, the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean would appear to be the broadly defined area within 9 Needham (1965), pp. 189 & 193. His claim that the geared watermill first appears in China in the first century BCE (ibid., p. 370) cannot be relied upon, a point that will be explored in more detail in Chapter Two.

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which these various innovations in milling technology were probably first developed. Their emergence coincided with the commercialization of bakeries during the last few centuries BCE, this process having in turn been stimulated by rapid urbanization.10 In China, although similar demographic processes were at work during the same period, the technologies concerned appear to have been adopted in whole or in part from the West as the Chinese imperial state expanded its territorial dominion. They were also adapted to the processing of different products. The end result of these transcontinental processes of urbanization and imperial expansion was a gradual transformation across most of Eurasia and North Africa with regard to the processing of grain for human consumption. Like the mechanization of other manufacturing processes before it, such as that associated with the potter’s wheel, this included the replacement of women’s labour and skills by those of men. This skeletal outline of the chronological development of ancient milling technology is based on the most current research. What is most significant about this research is that it has revealed that the use of rotary handmills, beast mills and especially watermills was far more commonplace in late classical times than had generally been appreciated in the past.11 For example, almost fifty watermill sites in central and far flung locations of the former Roman Empire have now been documented. Most of these sites feature the remains of vertical-wheeled watermills, and all of them can be dated to before 500 CE.12 One well-known site in southern Gaul was a factory complex containing sixteen waterwheels that could have provided for 12,500 people, and was operating from the early second century CE.13 The discussion to follow puts some flesh on the skeleton just outlined. It provides a broad introduction to the workings and history of these various milling technologies, outlining what is known of their origins and diffusion, and how the various types of mill are related

10

Wikander (1984), pp. 24–7. Economic historians and historians of technology have until fairly recently been particularly vocal in denying the importance of water-power in classical antiquity. See, for example, Bloch (1935); Gille (1954); Forbes (1956), p. 93; White (1962), pp. 79–83; Finley (1965). This view, which has been promoted within the context of a broader thesis asserting that economic and technological stagnation characterised the classical period, will be discussed in more detail at the end of this chapter. 12 Wikander (2000), pp. 372–3. 13 Sellins (1983). 11

milling technology in the ancient world

19

to one another and earlier technological innovations. Apart from providing a technical and historical overview, this material provides an introduction and guide to the secondary literature, flagging where appropriate those more detailed studies that might warrant further attention from readers interested in specific aspects of the subject. Future research will no doubt push back some of the dates for the milling technologies outlined in the pages to follow and refine our understanding of the various pathways of invention and diffusion. Until then, however, this synthesis of most of the different streams of research on ancient and medieval milling technology provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the current state of knowledge on the subject.

Rotary handmills Consisting of an upper and lower stone in which the upper stone of the mill is rotated continuously in the same direction by a radial arm, the so-called “Roman” quern or rotary handmill is one of the earliest devices in which a cranked handle appears.14 The upper stone is concave on its lower surface with a hole through its centre for feeding the corn and a rynd or bar that passes horizontally through the stone. This in turn rests upon a pin rising vertically from the centre of the lower stone, thus supporting the upper stone. The lower stone is convex on its upper surface, thereby allowing the flour to fall automatically from the mill as it turns. In simpler versions, the radial arm is substituted for a hole in which is inserted a wooden peg or handle. 14 According to Oleson (2000), p. 263, the crank was probably not known to the Romans, although he does not make it clear what he means when using this term. It seems likely that something resembling a crank handle was used to turn the device known as the Antikythera mechanism [see Price (1965)]. Needham notes that the eccentrically placed handles on many rotary querns from the Roman period “constitute a crank” [Needham (1965), p. 186]. If we take the purist view of what constitutes a crank, it remains unclear how long before the eighth century the crank handle was commonly used in the West, although it was certainly known in China by the Han dynasty (second century BCE—second century CE). See Needham (1965), pp. 111–118, 374, 378–9. The more sophisticated mechanism of the crank and connecting rod appear to be early medieval developments. The influential views of White on the origins and diffusion of the crank can be found in White (1964), pp. 104–110, 113–16, 118, 119, 167–8, White (1972), p. 157, and White (1978), pp. 17–18, 49, 186 (the original essays in the latter book to which these citations refer are from 1940, 1960 and 1969 respectively).

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Rotary querns were usually quite small; their diameter generally being between 32 and 40 cm. Extant examples with a diameter smaller than 24 cm or larger than 50 cm are quite unusual, although one Roman-era example of c. 80 cm has been found in England.15 The limits on the variability in diameters of querns relate to their potential portability and the physical strength of those who habitually used them—the larger a quern, the harder it was to move and turn. The quern fairly rapidly became a ubiquitous piece of domestic equipment,16 and continued to be used very widely throughout the middle ages across Europe and Asia. Its widespread popularity is hardly surprising considering that until the invention of mechanised handmills such as the lever mill and the rotary quern, one member of each household of eight to ten individuals would have had to have been engaged full-time in grinding grain.17 Unlike the later adaptation of the quern’s design to animal- and water-power, however, grinding with the aid of querns remained predominantly women’s work for many centuries. There was at least one important exception to this rule, however. In order to obviate the need to move flour over long distances and for extended periods of time, Roman commanders allowed their soldiers to carry their own handmills. The legions therefore played an important role in the diffusion of this technology throughout the Empire.18 In ancient China, there were two words for the rotary handmill, mo and lung, depending on the material used to manufacture the mill concerned. The lung was used for hulling grain, especially rice, and was made from baked or sun-dried clay or wood. If the mill was made of clay, it was common to set teeth of bamboo or oak into the grinding surfaces while the clay was still damp [Fig. 1.9]. These teeth served the same function as grooves in a millstone. The mo was similar in design to the Roman quern, and was used to grind rice or wheat into flour [Fig. 1.10]. The evidence relating to the earliest use of rotary handmills in ancient China can be fairly confidently dated to the first half of the 15

Wikander (1995), p. 132. Wikander (1984), pp. 24–5. In Wikander (1985), p. 154, he notes that “[r]otary querns spread slowly outside the Empire, and did not reach Scandinavia until c. CE 200.” 17 Wikander (1984), p. 24. 18 Ibid., pp. 28–9. 16

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Fig. 1.9. Chinese rotary handmill, lung, made of baked clay or wood, used for hulling grain or decorticating rice. The lower disc or bed-stone is shown here in the process of manufacture. Clay soil is beaten down into the wickerwork form and the teeth of bamboo (smoked oak for the upper disk), as well as the central pin, are set in place before drying. Fu-chou, Chiangsi. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

Fig. 1.10. Chinese rotary handmill, mo, for grinding husked grain, rice or wheat into flour. In all of the various types of mo, the clearance between the upper and lower stones was adjusted by the height of the central pin bearing. Larger versions of the same type were equipped with a connecting rod attached to the crank handle of sufficient length that it could be pushed and pulled by several men. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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second century BCE.19 It therefore remains under-determined as to whether it was independently invented in the Mediterranean and China, or was diffused from the West to the East, although the reverse seems unlikely given the current state of the evidence.

Beast mills By the first half of the second century BCE, donkeys and mules were being used to turn larger versions of a mill based upon the same principle as the rotary quern. The mola asinaria, most frequently described by modern scholars as the “Pompeian” mill, is hourglassshaped and works through the direct drive of the millstone, much like the horizontal-wheeled watermill. It has been found in archaeological digs throughout the former Roman Empire, from Britain, France and Italy to Malta, Greece, the Middle East and North Africa [Fig. 1.6]. It has been argued that the precursor to the mola asinaria was a human-driven mill of similar size, turned by one or more men using a lever or capstan. Examples of this type of mill are reputedly dated to as early as the first half of the fourth century BCE in the southern and eastern Mediterranean.20 A second, more powerful type of beast mill is documented in Western and Northern Europe from the early middle ages onwards, although there is no reason to assume that it was not also used in Roman times.21 These mills incorporated gearing, much like a verticalwheeled watermill, and were usually driven by horses. The geared beast mill, known in Europe as the horse mill, remained in wide geographical use until well into the nineteenth century [Fig. 1.11].22 In ancient China, the earliest reference to animal-powered mills purportedly dates to c. 175 CE. Frequent references to mills turned

19

Needham (1965), pp. 188–191. See Lewis (1997), pp. 13–16, who persuasively argues that the Greek term onos aleton or onos aletes was used to denote such a human-powered mill. 21 See Wikander (1984), pp. 34–7, especially his comments on the Edict on Prices of Diocletian (301 CE), which distinguishes between four types of mill, i.e., handmills, horse mills, donkey mills and watermills. The Edict suggests that there was a difference between the technologies deployed in horse mills and donkey mills. 22 See Moritz (1958), pp. 92–5. 20

milling technology in the ancient world

23

Fig. 1.11. One of three illustrations depicting different types of geared horse mill by Agostino Ramelli, 1588. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers.

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by horses (ma mo), or by blindfolded mules (mang lo), do not occur until the middle ages. These mills were turned directly by the animals without gearing, or indirectly via a belt-drive. Oxen were also sometimes used [Fig. 1.12].23 While this brief survey provides a fair indication of the relative chronologies of development, a considerable amount of work remains to be done to establish a firmer evidentiary basis for the early history of the rotary handmill and beast mill.

Compartmented waterwheels Although the compartmented waterwheel is a kind of water-lifting device used for irrigation rather than a mill, key elements of its design appear to have been adapted and incorporated into the design of the vertical-wheeled watermill. It is therefore of interest to us in tracing the origins of the various types of ancient mill. There were two basic types of compartmented water-lifting wheel in classical times. Both types consisted of a large, vertically-oriented wheel with the lowest part of the wheel immersed in a river or stream. Known in Arabic countries to this day as the noria, it would seem that the second type is the only one that is still in widespread use. The first and probably the oldest type was known as the tympanon or tympanion to the Greeks, and tympanum to the Romans (i.e., “drum”). Literally shaped like a drum, the wheel was made of a wooden framework whose “skin” on both sides consisted of tight fitting planks. The inside of the “drum” was broken up into eight self-contained pie sections, each of which was sealed on the inside with pitch. As the wheel turned on its heavy axle, the water entered through equidistant “slots” in the wheel’s rim. As each compartment reached the horizontal level of the axle, the water emptied into a trough through a circular hole located close to the axle on one of the side walls. This meant that although this type of waterwheel could raise a large volume of water, it could only lift it less than half the diameter of the wheel. Furthermore, because the whole apparatus was so heavy,

23

Needham (1965), pp. 193–4.

milling technology in the ancient world

25

Fig. 1.12. Chinese ox-driven cereal-grinding mill without gearing (mo). From Thien Kung Khai Wu, ch. 4, p. 12a (1637). Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

it had to be turned by men treading on its perimeter, or by animals using a saqiya gear.24 The second type of water-lifting wheel was not enclosed and was of a much lighter construction. It could therefore be moved automatically by the water in which it was immersed, depending on the 24 Vitruvius, De architectura, X 4.1–2. Oleson (2000), pp. 229–30. Oleson describes the saqiya gear as a drive mechanism “based on a pair of large gear wheels, in Antiquity usually heavy wooden wheels with short, thick, radial cogs that were oriented at right angles to each other in order to mesh and change the direction of the torque by ninety degrees. In most ancient and recent manifestations, a draft

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strength of the water-flow. There are examples in Asia and North Africa to this day, however, which are driven by animals using a saqiya [Fig. 1.13]. Resembling a wagon- or bicycle-wheel, it had long spokes supporting either a segmented hollow rim of compartments open to the water, or a rim to which were fixed a series of pots or buckets. The water entered and discharged through a single hole in the perimeter of each compartment, or through the open mouth of each pot. As the water was carried upwards, it was emptied into a trough at the top of the wheel [Fig. 1.14]. The Greeks appear to have referred to this device with the term polykadia (“many bucket”). More generic Greek and Roman terms included trochos or rota, kyklos or kyklas (all of which mean “wheel”), antlia (“bailer” or “pumper”) or sometimes simply organon or mechane (“device” or “mechanical contrivance”).25 Some Islamic examples of the compartmented waterwheel could reputedly lift water as high as thirty meters.26 The earliest manuscript evidence for the compartmented waterwheel is from Egypt and is dated to the third century BCE, with the earliest archaeological evidence dating from a century later.27 That both types of waterwheel were probably in common use throughout the Roman Empire by the end of the first century BCE is attested by Vitruvius’ description of them and a chain of pots in De architectura.28 He tells us that such devices were used for irrigating gardens or diluting the salt in salt pans.29 It was known in China by at least the second century CE,30 and was common throughout the eastern Mediterranean by the fifth century.31 While some historians of tech-

animal or pair of draft animals (depending on the amount of work to be performed) walked in a circle around a central pivot that carried a horizontal gear wheel. This wheel, in turn, meshed with a second wheel oriented vertically, turning around a horizontal beam mounted either above the treading circle or in a machine pit and trench below it.” See ibid., p. 267. 25 Vitruvius, De architectura, X 4.3. Oleson (2000), pp. 231–2. 26 Reynolds (1983), p. 13. 27 Neuberger (1969), p. 418; Oleson (1984), p. 325; idem (2000), pp. 233–4. The source for Reynolds’ claim that the compartmented waterwheel originated in the Near East around the beginning of the second century BCE is unclear [Reynolds (1983), p. 14]. 28 Vitruvius, De architectura, X 4.1–4, 5.1. 29 Ibid., X 4.2. 30 Needham (1965), pp. 358 & 362. However, the use of vertical waterwheels by the Chinese is attested in manuscripts from the Han Dynasty, on which see Jizhu (1983), pp. 425–6. 31 Al Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 40.

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Fig. 1.13. Saqiya gear, a right-angled gearing mechanism for lifting water from a waterwheel or pot-chain pump, as seen in this diagram redrawn from al-Jazari’s book on ingenious mechanical contrivances (1206). The gear-wheels, pot-chain and waterwheel are all drawn in semi-perspective, a common convention in early Arabic pictures of machinery. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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Fig. 1.14. Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a waterwheel with external containers, 1588. In most versions of this type of waterwheel, the strength of the waterflow at the base of the wheel was sufficient to turn it. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers.

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nology have disagreed over whether it was a precursor to the vertical-wheeled watermill, it now seems fairly clear that it was.32 The earliest explicit reference to a device operating according to the same principle appears in an Arabic version of one of Philo of Byzantium’s mechanical treatises (i.e. the Pneumatica), the original of which is dated to the third century BCE. The device is supposed to have consisted of a wooden or copper drum mounted on a horizontal axis, the lower third being immersed in water. The drum was divided into internal compartments and rotated by a water stream directed by a chute above the periphery of the wheel; as the drum was rotated, air was trapped in chambers inside the drum and expelled by the force of the water through tubes with whistles at the ends. While there is some reason for disputing the attribution of this device to Philo, as it only appears in later Arabic editions of Philo’s treatise, there are equally plausible reasons for believing that it genuinely belongs to Philo’s corpus.33

Vertical-wheeled watermills The mechanical parts of the earliest vertical-wheeled watermills consisted of a waterwheel that rotated in a vertical plane which in turn drove a horizontal wheel-shaft at the opposite end of which was attached a vertical cog-wheel. The vertical cog-wheel drove a horizontal cog-wheel, forming a right-angled gear. The relative diameters of the cog-wheels could be varied to suit the speed and variability of the water-flow, and could in turn be used to increase or decrease the speed of rotation of the millstones.34 The horizontal cog-wheel was attached to the end of a vertical shaft, that rose up through a hole in the centre of the lower millstone and was fastened to the upper millstone with an iron sleeve or rynd. The lower millstone was thus fixed, while the upper stone performed the work of grinding, as with the rotary handmill. The mechanical assembly, and 32 See Reynolds (1983), pp. 14–27, for a detailed discussion of the various positions taken by different historians of technology. 33 See Drachmann (1948), pp. 64–6; Schiøler (1973), pp. 65–6, 163, for the negative case, and Lewis (1997), esp. pp. 20–36 for the positive. 34 The contention by some historians of technology that the tendency in Roman watermills was to gear down the rotation of the millstone relative to the waterwheel rather than to gear up is solely based on the manuscript text of Vitruvius.

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sometimes even the waterwheel itself, were contained inside a millhouse. Since at least the first century BCE, the Greeks had routinely used gearing in astronomical clocks, toys, and instruments,35 but the verticalwheeled watermill was one of the first machines that used gearing to transmit power for productive purposes. In the right-angled gearing employed in the vertical-wheeled watermill, the cog-wheel on the axle projects pins on the perimeter of its outer face that engage with the spaces between bars on the circumference of the other. This mechanism allows the horizontal rotary movement of the axle to be converted into the vertical rotary motion of the spindle driving the upper millstone. The use of such right-angled drives in verticalwheeled watermills is significantly more efficient than the drive in the horizontal-wheeled watermill. The two most common types of vertical-wheeled watermill are known as overshot and undershot watermills. A third type is known as the breastshot mill. It is generally accepted that the overshot watermill is more efficient than the undershot watermill, as it relies on gravity rather than the force of the water-flow, even though it is more expensive and complicated to build. The breastshot mill is an intermediate design that retains some of the mechanical advantages of the overshot mill [Fig. 1.15]. In the simplest, undershot type, the lower perimeter of the waterwheel is immersed in the flowing water of a river, stream or artificial water-channel, with the speed of the water-flow determining the rate at which the wheel turns. The speed of rotation can be controlled to some extent by artificially increasing the “head” of the water hitting the wheel (i.e., the distance that the water falls before striking the wheel). Alternatively, the amount of water flowing through sluice gates located in the water-channel (also known as the mill-race or leat) leading to the wheel can also be regulated. In the overshot type of vertical-wheeled watermill, water is delivered to the top of the wheel, usually through some kind of water diversion system from the feeder stream or river.36 This might be 35 The standard references remain Singer, et al. (1958), Drachmann (1948), (1963), and Price (1975). But see Foley, et al. (1982) and Lewis (1997), for important reassessments of this material. 36 In some cases, both vertical-wheeled and horizontal-wheeled watermills were located at the base of natural waterfalls or cascades. See Wikander (1985a), for a comprehensive discussion of the mill-channels, weirs and ponds that were constructed in association with ancient watermills.

Fig. 1.15. Diagrammatic representation of the operations of A) undershot, B) overshot and C) breastshot vertical-wheeled watermills. Courtesy of Antiquity.

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via a specially constructed mill-race or, where already available, an aqueduct.37 The rotation of the wheel is driven by the weight of water collecting in containers built into the outer perimeter of the wheel structure, in what is essentially a reversal of the process seen in a compartmented waterwheel or noria. It is possible that both undershot and overshot versions of the vertical-wheeled watermill were invented at around the same time, as the roughly contemporaneous description of what would seem to be an overshot, vertical-wheeled watermill in a poem by Antipater of Thessalonica (c. 12–1 BCE),38 and Vitruvius’ detailed description of an undershot watermill in De architectura (c. 25 BCE)39 would suggest. The archaeological evidence for overshot watermills is about a century later than that for the undershot type. The earliest remains of an undershot watermill to date were discovered at S. Giovanni di Ruoti in southern Italy (early first century CE), while another at Avenches in Switzerland has been firmly dated to 57/58 CE.40 On the other hand, recent work on the Roman overshot watermills of Barbegal in southern France have dated this large milling complex to the early second century CE, and not the fourth, as had previously been thought,41 while a re-excavation in 1980 of an overshot watermill in the basement of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, firmly

37 On the use of aqueducts to conduct water to watermills, see Wikander (1979), esp. pp. 15–21; idem (1991). 38 See Antipater of Thessalonica in the Anthologia Graeca, 9:418. Antipater’s work has often been wrongly attributed to the early first century BCE (i.e., c. 85 BCE). Although some scholars have questioned whether Antipater was in fact referring to a vertical-wheeled watermill, suggesting that the relevant passage could equally plausibly be interpreted as referring to a horizontal-wheeled watermill, this now seems increasingly unlikely given the lack of any evidence for such an early date for the latter device. See, for example, Blaine (1976), p. 164, for a brief summary of the arguments pro and contra. 39 Vitruvius, De architectura, X 5:2. There is an interesting discussion of this and related passages in Drachmann (1963), pp. 150–2. The claim made by Reynolds (1983), p. 18, that the earliest artefactual evidence for an undershot watermill dates to the first century BCE has no validity, as the site to which he refers, in Venafro, Italy, has not been accurately dated. See Wikander (1985), p. 159. 40 Wikander (2000), pp. 374–5. 41 Leveau (1996). In the late 1960s, Kiechle proposed a date for the Barbegal mills of the middle of the third century, on which see Wikander (1985), p. 157, citing F. Kiechle, Sklavenarbeit und technischer Fortschritt im römischen Reich, Wiesbaden (Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei, herausgegeben von J. Vogt und H.U. Instinsky, 3), 1969, pp. 124–5, n. 45 & 175, n. 16.

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dated the operating life of this mill to between c. 275 and 537 CE.42 The third type of vertical-wheeled watermill, the breastshot mill, is rarer than the other two kinds. It is powered by water being delivered to the back of the wheel. The earliest archaeological examples of it have been firmly dated to the late second century CE at Martresde-Veyre (Puy-de-Dome).43 While estimates of the power output of these early watermills varies somewhat, three to six horsepower seems a reasonable estimate of their average output. As much as fifty horsepower could be generated by vertical-wheeled watermills of the Victorian period that were mechanically very much the same as their ancient counterparts, although they substituted metal for wooden parts.44 Some scholars have argued that the mechanism of the quern was simply adapted to water-power in both the horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled types of watermill,45 but this explanation cannot fully account for the complexity of the two types of watermill. While others have agreed that the horizontal-wheeled watermill is indeed derived from the quern, they have argued that the vertical-wheeled watermill is not, being derived instead from the compartmented waterwheel or noria.46 Still others have also accepted the derivation of the horizontal-wheeled watermill from the quern, but have maintained that the compartmented waterwheel was a distinct and separate invention from the vertical-wheeled watermill.47 As we will see below, the consensus over the derivation of the horizontal-wheeled watermill from the quern is based on what would now appear to be an erroneous assumption about its chronological precedence over the vertical-wheeled watermill. With regard to the derivation of the

42 Schiøler (1984), neglects to provide any dates for this site within the paper, although Schiøler & Wikander (1983), pp. 61–4, and Wikander (1985), p. 159, do. The claim made by Needham (1965), p. 367, without reference, that the earliest overshot watermills date to the fifth century CE, is probably derived from White (1964), p. 82. It is nevertheless incorrect. Gimpel’s claim that the earliest overshot watermills date to the end of the twelfth century is not credible. See Gimpel (1988), p. xv. 43 Wikander (2000), p. 375. 44 Burstall (1963), p. 98. 45 For example, Bennett & Elton (1898); Curwen (1944); Forbes (1956). 46 See Needham (1965), pp. 360–2; Reynolds (1983), p. 23. 47 Usher (1988), p. 161. See Reynolds (1983), pp. 20–3, for a tabular representation and discussion of the various positions taken by some of the more prominent scholars on the subject.

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vertical-wheeled watermill, however, it would seem that each account has at least some consistency with the current evidence. We have already seen that the manuscript evidence suggests that the compartmented waterwheel pre-dates the vertical-wheeled watermill by at least two to three centuries, making a conscious incorporation of the former into the design of the latter seem highly probable. Nonetheless, the development of gearing to transmit the motion of a waterwheel rotating in the vertical plane to a millstone rotating in the horizontal plane is also a necessary prerequisite for the invention of the watermill. It would seem, therefore, that the separate inventions of the quern, the compartmented waterwheel and gearing were all incorporated into the design of the vertical-wheeled watermill, making its likely first appearance within the Graeco-Roman eastern Mediterranean some time between the beginning of the second and the end of the first centuries BCE, or possibly a little earlier.48

Horizontal-wheeled watermills The horizontal-wheeled watermill is also sometimes called a “Greek” or “Norse” mill, depending on which country is attributed with its invention [Figs. 1.8 & 1.16]. Consisting of a vertical spindle with a set of radial paddles situated at its lower end, and the upper millstone fixed to the spindle at its upper end, the paddles are placed either fully submerged or half-submerged within a stream, with the force of the water directly turning the millstone. The most efficient designs utilize a mill-race and chute—known as a flume or penstock—to direct the water flow onto one side of the wheel, and in places with a limited water supply, this design appears to have been further enhanced by the use of a funnel (known in Arabic as an arubah) rather than a chute, directing a concentrated jet of water against the base of the wheel [Fig. 1.17].49

48 This is based on the assumption that it cannot pre-date the earliest known simple geared devices, recorded by Ctesibius c. 280 BCE and Archimedes c. 250 BCE, or be much earlier than its earliest detailed description by Vitruvius in c. 25 BCE. See Price (1975), pp. 53–6. For more recent surveys of the relevant literature on gearing, see Foley, et al. (1982) and Lewis (1997). 49 See Keller (1984); also Rynne (2000), pp. 24–30, 47–9, in which he describes some double-flume mills from Ireland, the Balkans, the Alpine regions and the Caucasus, as well as flumes with lids from early medieval Ireland.

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Fig. 1.16. The basic mechanism of a horizontal-wheeled watermill: a) millstones; b) spindle; c) shaft; d) vanes; e) gudgeon. Courtesy of Antiquity.

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Fig. 1.17. Twin-flume horizontal-wheeled watermills at Littleisland, Cork, c. 630 CE. Reconstruction of the mill complex, showing two fully enclosed penstocks carrying water to two separate horizontal-wheeled watermills located in the same millhouse. Courtesy of Dr Colin Rynne, University College, Cork.

Generally limited to operating on fast flowing streams in mountainous or hilly regions, the horizontal-wheeled watermill is best suited to utilizing small quantities of water moving at high velocities. However, the discovery in Ireland in the early 1980s of two early seventh century horizontal-wheeled watermills operated by tidal power forces us to rethink how early and in what contexts such mills were used. Like other horizontal-wheeled watermills, these early tide mills were fed water from purpose-built channels, the difference being that in this sub-type the feeder channel diverted and concentrated part of the tidal flow (rather than a stream) onto the waterwheel.50

50 See: Wikander (1985), p. 155, Rynne (1992), Anon. (2000), Williams (2000). A third tide mill of the vertical-wheeled type was also found in Ireland and dates

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In the past, it has generally been assumed that because the horizontal-wheeled watermill is the simpler of the two types of watermill, it is also the oldest.51 But the archaeological and literary evidence tends to favour the opposite conclusion. Furthermore, although a number of quite distinct geographical locations have been credited with its origin, including Greece,52 northern Europe,53 China,54 the Near East55 and Palestine,56 it now seems fairly clear that either the Middle East or North Africa is its point of origin. While the most credible research until recently had suggested that the earliest horizontal-wheeled watermills were from the second century CE in the region around Palestine,57 radio-carbon dating of the to the middle of the seventh century. What would appear to be an even older vertical-wheeled tide mill was recently discovered in Killoteran, County Waterford, and has been tentatively dated from the fourth to seventh centuries. These discoveries are discussed in more detail in Chapters Two and Three. 51 In chronological order from the earliest publication, all of the following scholars have put forward this view: Bennett & Elton (1898), Vol. 2, pp. 8–9; Usher (1988, first pub. 1929), p. 161; Wailes in Vowles (1930–1), p. 12; Mumford (1963, 1st pub. 1934), p. 114; Curwen (1944), pp. 130, 134; Forbes (1956), pp. 589–90; White (1964, first pub. 1962), p. 80; Needham (1965), pp. 361–2, 405; Hay (1969), p. 322; Derry & Williams (1970), p. 250; Gade (1971), p. 44; Gimpel (1988), p. 7; Major (1990), p. 229. 52 See, for example, Bennett & Elton (1899), pp. 6–11, 31–6. Armytage (1961), p. 34, and Burstall (1970), p. 108, who proposes an unsubstantiated date for its invention of c. 400 BCE. 53 See Mac Adam (1856), p. 10; White (1964), p. 81; Blaine (1966), p. 12. Blaine (1976), pp. 165 & 167, also entertains the possibility that it originated in China. 54 See Curwen (1944), p. 145; Needham (1965), pp. 369, 405–7. If they are correct, however, it seems somewhat strange that the horizontal-wheeled watermill never appears to have been known in Japan. See Hay (1969), p. 321. Needham’s statement (in op. cit., p. 369, n. f.) that the insertion of paddles at right-angles to the plane of the waterwheel in Chinese versions of the horizontal-wheeled watermill are “a primitive trait which may indicate great antiquity” is simply asserted without being backed up with any hard evidence. 55 See Forbes (1956), p. 594, citing P. Mayence, Bulletin for the Museum of the Royal Art Society, I, 5, 1950, p. 250. Later, on p. 617, Forbes says more specifically, “the mountain-range of north-west Persia.” See also Derry & Williams (1970), pp. 250 & 254. 56 Avitsur (1969), pp. 391 & 393. 57 See Wikander (1984), p. 37, n. 137, citing Avitsur, op. cit. Wikander, (1980), pp. 36–7, (1984), p. 22, n. 68 & (1985), p. 154, also points out that claims for a supposed find of the remains of horizontal-wheeled watermills at an excavation in Jutland, Denmark, dating from the first century CE are not credible. See, e.g., Blaine (1976), p. 164, for a brief description of this dubious find, which White (1968), p. 66, amongst others, uncritically cites. In a personal communication of November 2002, Wikander noted that the earliest calibrated radiocarbon dates for mills in Jutland are for c. 800 at Nørre Omme and c. 960 CE at Ljørring, both of which are cited in A. Steensberg, “The horizontal water mill: A contribution to its early history”, Prace i materialy muzeum archeologicznego i etnograficznego w Lodzi, Seria Archeologiczna, Vol. 25, 1978, pp. 349–52, fig. 6.

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various sites that had been thought to be this early have not revealed any certain examples from before the seventh century, i.e., around the same time as the horizontal-wheeled tide mills from Ireland. Nonetheless, one mill that was recently excavated on the Crocodilion River in Palestine (Ma"agan Michael) has been dated to CE 345/380, although this date is yet to be confirmed.58 More surprising, however, is the discovery of two triple-helix turbines dating from the late third or early fourth centuries that were excavated at Chemtou (in the late 1970s) and Testour (in the early 1990s) in Tunisia. Both were horizontal-wheeled watermills, but the existence of such a sophisticated device in the late Roman Empire was completely unexpected, as the turbine is traditionally thought to have been first invented in the sixteenth century. In both examples, “the waterwheel was placed in the bottom of a water-filled, cylindrical pit entered tangentially by the inflow channel. The rotating water column makes this mill a true turbine.”59 These two discoveries further problematize conventional chronologies of watermill development, as it now seems fairly certain that the more complex vertical-wheeled watermill not only preceded the horizontal-wheeled watermill, but the most advanced and efficient form of horizontal-wheeled watermill has proven to be the earliest type yet to be discovered. While the extent to which the principle of the turbine was known elsewhere in the late classical period remains unclear, its indisputable existence at such an early date provides those who would argue that the path of technological development always proceeds from the simple to the complex with considerable cause for concern. Other than the finds in Tunisia, the earliest evidence for horizontalwheeled watermills of the arubah type come from Palestine, where at least eight mills have been dated to the fifth or sixth centuries. Another nineteen late Roman-era arubah mills have been excavated in Jordan. On the Arabian peninsula and in Iraq and Iran, the earliest examples date from the eighth to tenth centuries.60 In Ireland, a relatively large number of horizontal-wheeled watermill sites dating to the early medieval period have been excavated. 58 Wikander (2000), pp. 375–7. None of the examples cited by Avitsur have been demonstrated to pre-date the Arab conquest. 59 Wikander (2000), p. 377. See also Wikander (1985), pp. 159–60, and idem (1985a), p. 152, regarding Chemtou. 60 Wikander (1985), pp. 162–3.

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Until very recently the earliest of these were the seventh century tide mills mentioned earlier.61 Although only a handful of horizontal-wheeled watermills have been discovered in England that date to the early medieval period, of those watermills that have been excavated, more than two-thirds were of the horizontal type. Of the more than 6,000 watermills in lordly tenure recorded in the English Domesday survey of 1086, some of them were probably horizontal-wheeled watermills, as the low value of some of the mills, as well as occasional references to parvum molendinum (“small mills”), would appear to suggest.62 Given the nature of the records, however, it is nonetheless impossible to determine what their exact proportion was. It has been suggested that the horizontal-wheeled watermill arrived in Ireland by way of the Balkans and Northern Europe, while its arrival in Spain was by way of North Africa as the result of the Arab conquest.63 The problem with this argument is that there are 61 Ibid., p. 155. These finds, as well as the most recent discoveries, are discussed in more detail in Chapters Two and Three. 62 See Holt (1988), p. 122. In The Mills of Medieval England (1988), Holt discusses the difficulties in assessing exactly how many horizontal-wheeled watermills existed at that time, but points out that they seem to have all but disappeared by the thirteenth century. See Holt (1988), pp. 118–22; also Rahtz (1981), p. 7. In my own work on English ecclesiastical mills in the high middle ages, I have come across only one example of what may have originally been a horizontal-wheeled watermill. The mill concerned was held by Beaulieu Abbey, and is referred to in several documents dated c. 1225–30 as “Clak” mill (the Orkney Island term for a horizontal-wheeled watermill). It was located in Rockstead (Hampshire). However, the high value of the mill suggests that it had been replaced by a vertical-wheeled watermill at some stage previously. See: Beaulieu Abbey Cartulary, mss. 184, 185 & 187. The archaeologist M. Davies-Shiel and colleagues have located what they believe to have been horizontal-wheeled watermills from the high middle ages in the Lake District of Northern England, an area occupied by Norse settlers in the early middle ages. See, for example, J.D. Marshall & M. Davies-Shiel, Industrial Archaeology of the Lake Counties, David & Charles, 1969, p. 52; M. Davies-Shiel, “Watermills of Cumbria”, The Dalesman, 1978. Thanks to Philip Hudson, University of Lancaster, for drawing my attention to this latter work. See also Langdon (2004), pp. 72–4 on the vexed question of horizontal-wheeled watermills in Domesday Book. 63 Keller (1984), p. 136. While Forbes (1953), p. 51, wrongly states that the horizontal-wheeled watermill did not appear in Ireland until the tenth century. McCutcheon (1966–7), p. 67, claims that it was “probably introduced [to Ireland] from Scotland during the third century AD”, although he cites no evidence in support of this statement. It is, however, probably based on a story told in a poem by Cuan O’Lochain, which is dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century, on which see Mac Adam (1856), p. 10, Curwen (1944), pp. 138–9 and Rynne (2000), pp. 18–19. However, the earliest reliably dated sites and documents from Ireland date from the seventh century, as Keller has correctly noted. On the strength of the evidence cited by Keller and Wikander, it is hard to understand why Sorondo

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certain stylistic elements of medieval Irish horizontal-wheeled watermills that are more akin to recent examples from the central and eastern Mediterranean than they are to anything from Northern Europe. Cultural links between the Mediterranean and early medieval Ireland are further indicated by finds in Ireland of certain types of exotic Mediterranean pottery from the late Roman period and early middle ages, as well as the establishment of Egyptian monasticism in Ireland via direct contacts with Gallic monasteries from the Loire Valley as early as the sixth century. It therefore seems more likely that Ireland received its horizontal-wheeled milling traditions from the Mediterranean via south-eastern Europe, possibly by way of mainland Britain (as Irish legend would have it), rather than from other parts of northern Europe.64 It has been claimed that, depending on the design, the power output that can be derived from a horizontal-wheeled watermill ranges from less than half a horsepower (around the same as that required to operate a donkey mill) to as much as eight horsepower.65 If this upper range of performance is correct, it would imply that a welldesigned and positioned horizontal-wheeled watermill can generate as much power as an average vertical-wheeled watermill. Furthermore, the horizontal-wheeled watermill is easy to construct and cheap to build and operate, requiring minimal maintenance. There is nevertheless fairly good evidence to suggest that the use of horizontal-wheeled watermills had spread throughout the Eurasian land-mass by the end of the first millennium CE, there being examples from as far afield as Western Europe, Iran and China, and pos-

(1984), p. 467, claims that the horizontal-wheeled watermill “is not recorded prior to the thirteenth century”, unless he is only referring to the Basque country which is the subject of his paper. Similarly, Uccelli (1945), pp. 3–4, and Florentiis (1968), p. 342, had sufficient material at their disposal to demonstrate that Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a horizontal-wheeled watermill from 1509 cannot possibly have been the earliest reference to this machine. 64 See Rynne (1988), Vol. I, pp. 176–86, 188–91, 201–6, & Vol. II, p. 236. Also Rynne (2000), pp. 47–50. On direct contacts between Irish and Egyptian monks, see White (1978), p. 243, n. 102. This conclusion is further supported by the recent find of a vertical-wheeled watermill in Killoteran, which has been tentatively dated to the late Roman period and is discussed in more detail in Chapter Two. 65 See Keller (1984), p. 138, citing Avitsur (1969). In a personal communication of September 2004, John Langdon expressed scepticism that a horizontal-wheeled watermill could generate eight horsepower. To the best of my knowledge, however, there have never been any systematic efforts to test the power outputs of various designs of watermill.

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sibly North India and Nepal.66 For example, the earliest records of the horizontal-wheeled watermill in Europe outside Italy and the British Isles are from Spain and Denmark in the ninth century.67 The technology was introduced by the Spaniards to the Central Andes in the mid-sixteenth century, and to the rest of Spanish America by the turn of the seventeenth century.68 It remained popular for grinding small amounts of grain in remote parts of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia wherever a suitable water supply was available, well into the twentieth century. It would seem that horizontal-wheeled watermills remained most popular in those regions where mill ownership was not exclusively a privilege of lordship, and members of the lower social orders, whether they be clan-based, peasant or urban communities, were permitted to operate their own mills without the threat of legal sanction. In those regions where there was no lordly compulsion or capitalist competition to enforce or encourage the use of the verticalwheeled watermill, the simpler and cheaper technology predominated.69 This observation has received further support in relation to evidence from Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Spain and South America. In times and places where lordship was weak, populations dispersed and capital restricted, but an adequate water supply existed to site watermills, the horizontal-wheeled watermill predominated over the vertical-wheeled type.70 In terms of its origins, however, both the triple-helix turbines of Roman Tunisia and the yet-to-be-confirmed millsite on the Crocodilion River in Palestine strongly suggest that the horizontal-wheeled watermill first emerged in North Africa and/or the Middle East during the first half of the fourth century CE.

66

Pacey (1990), p. 11. See Rynne (2000), pp. 13, 36, 50, on the earliest examples of horizontalwheeled watermills in Scotland, Denmark (ninth century), Spain (ninth century), Portugal, Romania and Iran. 68 Gade (1971), pp. 44–5. 69 See Bryer (1980), pp. 405–11; Holt (1988), pp. 120–1. 70 See: Rynne (2000), pp. 4, 43–4, & 50 on Ireland and Spain; Jespersen (1957–9), p. 301 on Denmark; Muendel (1990), pp. 511–12 and Squatriti (1999), pp. 133–9 on Italy; and Gade (1971) on South America. According to Jespersen, in Denmark, a commercial monopoly on milling was introduced around 1600, with the result that the firmly established horizontal-wheeled watermill used by peasants was forbidden. These issues will be explored in more detail in Chapter Two. 67

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part one ‒ chapter one Was technological stagnation a characteristic of the ancient world?

It has been widely accepted in scholarly circles until quite recently that the ubiquitous institution of ancient slavery, combined with negative attitudes towards the mechanical arts and manual labour amongst ancient ruling élites, impeded the development of technology in the ancient world. Economic and technological stagnation were generally held to characterise both the Greek and Roman social orders. The perceived lack of innovation and utilization of any innovations that did occur was an important sign of this stagnation; the failure to widely disseminate and use watermilling and other labour-saving technology being most frequently cited as perfect examples. Both economic historians and historians of technology have championed this view. In the former discipline, Marc Bloch and Moses Finley have been two of its most well-known proponents, and Robert Forbes, Bertrand Gille and Lynn White Jr. in the latter.71 Over the last twenty years, however, a growing body of evidence has emerged to demonstrate that a number of the assumptions that have informed this view are not credible, and require that a fundamental revision of our understanding of the classical period be undertaken. The economic views of Finley in particular have been the subject of detailed criticism by economic historians since the early 1980s. These criticisms have ranged from empiricist critiques of the factual details of Finley’s arguments, to those who have pointed to his uncritical evaluation of literary sources without balancing these against material evidence, and others who argue that he paid insufficient attention to the discursive practices of the actors responsible for constructing the conventional categories used to study the ancient economy. It has nevertheless remained the case until quite recently that the technological aspects of Finley’s claims (and those of his supporters) have received less attention.72 71

See Note 11 above. See Greene (2000), pp. 29–33, for a lively summary of this literature. I thank Steve Walton from Pennsylvania State University for drawing my attention to Greene’s important work. H.W. Pleket (1967), (1973) is another historian of the ancient world who has supported the technological stagnation thesis, although Pleket’s view is more sophisticated than Finley’s. He argues that it was primarily the shortage of manual labour per se, rather than simply slave labour, from the late third century onwards which led to the wider dissemination of labour-saving technologies in the ancient world. Armytage (1961), pp. 33–5, makes a similar argument. However, see Wikander (1984), pp. 11, 24–32, 38, in response. 72

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While the work of Kenneth White, John-Peter Oleson and Örjan Wikander in the late 1970s and early 1980s sought to relieve studies of Roman technology from the relative obscurity into which they had previously fallen,73 their respective views on Roman technological innovation are quite different. Whereas White generally avoided entering into the broader debate on this issue in his Greek and Roman Technology of 1984, he did conclude the book by noting that the evidence he had compiled might give pause to those who had previously taken an unfavourable view of the technological achievements of the Greeks and Romans.74 Oleson, on the other hand, tended to side with many of his predecessors in his important book of the same year, Greek and Roman Water-Lifting Devices, arguing that while a considerable number of innovations to traditional techniques did take place during the classical period, few of them were widely applied in a practical context. Like Finley and H.W. Pleket, Oleson argued that the reasons for this were due to social factors. Wikander’s deliberately provocative monograph, Exploitation of water-power or technological stagnation? A reappraisal of the productive forces in the Roman Empire, also published in 1984, sought to overturn the largely negative appraisal of Roman technological prowess that had prevailed to that time. It is largely to the work of Wikander and his more recent contemporary, Kevin Greene, that I will now turn in providing a summary of the case against what may be described as the “technological stagnation thesis”.75 As previously stated, the supposed lack of widespread adoption of water-powered milling in the late classical period was supposed by many proponents of the technological stagnation thesis to be emblematic of their case. Bloch’s famous paper, “Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau” of 1935, neatly summarises what remains in some quarters the prevailing view: The lords of the great latifundia, who were much less sympathetic to the burdens of humble people, had no reason to instal expensive machinery when their markets and their very houses were overflowing with human cattle. As for the more modest households and for bakers,

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See in particular, White (1984), Oleson (1984), Wikander (1984). White (1984), pp. 172–3. Michael Lewis’ work, especially Millstone and Hammer (1997), pushes this debate in some important new directions. Lewis’ research will be discussed in more detail at various points in the book, especially Chapters Three and Six. 74 75

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part one ‒ chapter one who would in any case have been unable to afford such heavy expenditure, many of them were quite well enough off to have their own domestic slaves; or else they did their own work themselves.76

However, as the previous survey of mill-related evidence from the late classical period suggests, the construction and use of verticalwheeled and horizontal-wheeled watermills appears to have been far more widespread than was previously thought, the vast expanse of the Roman Empire providing a conduit for their diffusion to its farthest reaches and an example to the later Byzantine and European powers.77 The technological stagnation thesis has been particularly influential within the history of technology, providing the basis for many an observation on the benighted attitudes of the ancients towards technological development. Numerous publications between the early 1940s and late 1980s have espoused such views.78 76 The quote is taken from the English translation of Bloch’s paper by J.E. Anderson, in Bloch (1967), p. 146. 77 As Wikander (1985), pp. 158 & 160, n. 74, has noted, the claims made by Reynolds (1983), pp. 48–51, that watermills did not reach Spain until the eighth or ninth centuries, and the Balkans between 500 and 1000 CE, is, in the first instance, very unlikely given the economically advanced state of the region in Roman times, and, in the second instance, simply incorrect. Similarly, Reynolds’ efforts (in idem, p. 50, fig. 2–1) to map the isochronal diffusion of vertical-wheeled watermills throughout Europe based on his view that they spread from a few isolated pockets which survived the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, has been effectively rebutted by Richard Holt (1988), p. 10, on the basis that much of the information which Reynolds drew upon was either incorrect or out-dated. 78 For example, Lewis Mumford proposed that the increasing mechanization of labour that occurred with the growing application of water- and wind-power during the middle ages was accompanied by the diminution of slavery as an institution. See Mumford (1967), p. 271. Around the same time, Burstall argued in his book on the history of mechanical inventions that the vertical-wheeled watermill lessened “the daily labour of grinding corn, though it was not universally adopted in Rome until the advent of Christianity led to the freeing of the slaves.” See Burstall (1970), pp. 97–8. Lynn White Jr. has also argued along these lines. According to White, “[t]he chief glory of the middle ages was not its cathedrals or its epics or its scholasticism: it was the building for the first time in history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves or coolies but primarily on non-human power [i.e., wind- and water-power].” See White (1978), p. 22. The same passage is quoted in Holt (1988), p. 147, n. 7, and in Reynolds (1983), p. 47. Reynolds defers to White in idem, pp. 47–9. See also White (1968), pp. 63–4. Most recently, Jean Gimpel claimed that “[t]he availability of slaves and, in Mediterranean countries, the scarcity of streams flowing all year round restricted the use of water mills in antiquity.” See Gimpel (1988), p. 7. Other proponents of the technological stagnation thesis (most of whom are historians of technology) have included: Curwen (1944), p. 132; Lilley (1948), pp. 27, 34–5, 36–7; Klemm (1959), pp. 28, 52; Larsen (1961), pp. 20–1, 27; Horn (1975), pp. 227, 252–3; Basalla (1988), pp. 143–7.

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Robert Forbes’ position as expressed in Singer’s History of Technology (1956) is probably the most sophisticated version of the technological stagnation thesis, in that he provides six different reasons as to why this stagnation supposedly occurred.79 The first is that the geography of the Mediterranean region militated against water-power. The second is that the practical ingenuity of the Hellenic Greeks and Romans was dedicated primarily to the design and construction of war machines. The third is that the Roman state needed to provide labour for the poor in order to maintain social stability. The fourth is that there was a social and intellectual split in the ancient world between theoretical and practical studies. The fifth is that the ancient institution of slavery inhibited the need or desire to widely use labour-saving devices; and the sixth is that the rise of Christianity destroyed ancient animistic (and therefore irrational) attitudes towards nature that inhibited the desire to harness its forces.80 None of these arguments stand up to a sustained analysis, however.81 Forbes’ first point is simply an exaggeration, as there are many regions close to the Mediterranean in which watermills can be sited.82 The second point is rendered dubious by the extensive list of technological innovations achieved by the Hellenic Greeks and Romans. As Wikander has pointed out, these include “the saqiya,83 the noria, the dough-kneading machine, the trapetum,84 new olive presses, the reaping machine (vallus), the barrow, more effective hoists, better aqueducts with water-towers and lead-pipes, hydraulic pumps . . . [the] mass-production of tiles, moulded pottery (terra sigillata), bread, etc.”85 He also notes that this list could easily be expanded. More recently, Greene has provided a complementary summary of GrecoRoman innovations in relation to river boats, wheeled vehicles, waterlifting devices, watermills, horizontal looms, the use of brick and

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Forbes (1956), pp. 602–6. Lynn White Jr. echoes these views in White (1980), p. 251. 81 Most of the counter-arguments listed below are derived from Wikander (1984), with some additional material provided by myself. 82 See Wikander (1984), pp. 12, 19–20, 26–7. 83 The saqiya was a water-raising device which consisted of a chain of pots driven about a central axis by the force of the water-flow beneath it. 84 The trapetum was an olive-crushing mill that consisted of two vertically-oriented hemispherical stones through the centres of which passed a horizontal beam, all of which in turn rotated on an iron pivot that was fixed to a concave mill-trough. 85 Wikander (1984), p. 38. 80

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concrete in construction, war machinery and agricultural technology. He concludes that Wikander’s position has much to recommend it.86 Forbes’ third and fifth points are rendered dubious by the fact that donkey mills were in extensive use throughout the Roman world by the first century BCE,87 and watermills from the beginning of the second century CE at the very latest.88 His fourth observation, while no doubt accurate, did not prevent all of the innovations described above from being developed and put into widespread use. The sixth point is a gross overstatement of how religious beliefs affect practical behaviour. Animistic beliefs, while undoubtedly widespread in the ancient world, as well as many other pre-modern societies, have done nothing to ameliorate the exploitation of nature within those societies when there was a perceived need (or simply an opportunity) for them to do so.89 It is important to note that the most rapid growth in the use of powered milling technologies in the Roman world took place in three different settings: cities and large villages, military camps, and country estates, or villae rusticae. In the first instance, the growth of watermill technology was a direct response to the commercialisation of flour production and the growing demand for flour from a growing and increasingly urbanized population.90 In the second instance, the widespread use of handmills and animal-powered mills was a response to the strategic and geographical problems of siting watermills within military camps.91 In the third instance, the siting of watermills within the estates of country villas was to provide a less expensive alternative to handmilling by slaves or coloni.92 In the light of this evidence, it would appear that the technological stagnation thesis should be seen more as an ideological construct 86

Greene (1990). Wikander (1984), pp. 34–6. 88 Ibid., pp. 6–7, 15–23 & 26–8. Wikander reviews the archaeological evidence during the Roman period in Wikander (1985), pp. 155–64, and in Wikander (2000). For example, eight Roman watermills have been found in archaeological digs throughout Britain, including sites at Essex, Hampshire, Kent, Wiltshire and Hadrian’s Wall, as well as many more in other parts of the Empire, from such diverse areas as southern France, Bavaria, Central Italy, Tunisia, Palestine, Turkey and Rome itself. Archaeological papers in English which cover some of these sites include: Avitsur (1969); Sellin (1983); Schiøler (1984); Spain (1984). 89 See Flannery (1994). 90 Wikander (1984), pp. 24–7. 91 Ibid., pp. 27–8. 92 Ibid., pp. 28–30. 87

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supporting western notions of progress than a credible effort to explain the barriers to technological development in the ancient world. It has become increasingly evident over the last few decades that ignoring advances in the technologies of everyday life amongst pre-modern cultures, or belittling their importance, has helped to reinforce a general perception amongst the apologists of western progress that slavery and an undemocratic polity are incompatible with both technological and economic growth. It is commonly argued by proponents of so-called “liberal democratic values” that if there is a need and therefore (presumably) a latent demand for a particular type of technological innovation, liberal constitutional democracies are the best type of political structure to encourage such innovation. Ergo, slave societies governed by absolute rulers, or feudal societies governed by the Church and nobility, are not, nor could they possibly be. To the extent that any of them may have been innovative technologically, this was supposedly due to their anticipation of certain key attitudes towards manual labour, labour-saving devices and accounting practices that we find in Christian democracies. However, the many historical examples of slave societies governed by a variety of political systems that developed advanced technologies during their existence places somewhat of a cloud over such rhetoric. As will become clearer as the discussion progresses, the stimulus provided by a few different sets of more generic social and economic conditions offers a more plausible explanation of why the various milling technologies discussed so far proceeded down the developmental pathways that they did.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed the technical details and possible origins and paths of diffusion of the rotary handmill, the beast mill, and the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled types of watermill. Covering developments around the ancient Mediterranean, in Europe and in China, it also looked at the social and economic factors that shaped the development of the various technologies concerned. This survey of the currently available evidence has revealed that on a number of key points, our understanding of important developments in ancient technology is in need of serious revision. It now seems fairly likely that all of these innovations originated

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in or near the Mediterranean basin and were subsequently diffused to other parts of Europe and Asia. While the beast mill appears to be simply a scaled-up version of the rotary handmill that probably originated in Central Europe around the end of the fourth century BCE, the vertical-wheeled watermill appears to be an ingenious combination of three separate inventions: the quern, the compartmented waterwheel, and right-angled gearing. Both kinds of mill became widespread throughout the Roman Empire by the first century BCE in the first instance, and the first century CE in the second.93 With regard to the horizontal-wheeled watermill, far from being the earliest type of watermill, all of the archaeological evidence to date points to it having first emerged in the late third or early fourth century CE. This makes it at least three centuries younger than its more complex counterpart, the vertical-wheeled watermill. Both its relatively late appearance and the fact that the earliest types appear to have been the most complex places a serious question mark over the commonly made assumption that technological development usually proceeds from the simple to the complex. The technological sophistication embodied in the triple-helix turbines of Tunisia also problematizes naive notions that practically useful technologies will always be culturally preserved and passed on to future generations. The discovery of turbine technology in the late Roman period was completely unexpected, and demonstrates that there is still much to learn about the technological sophistication of the Romans and their contemporaries. Clearly, the collapse of a major civilization can create serious discontinuities in the growth and spread of human knowledge, as is also becoming increasingly apparent with respect to the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Amazon and Bolivia that have only recently come to light.94 Although the exact time and place of their invention have so far eluded us, we do know that the social and economic milieu in which the earliest animal- and water-powered milling technologies arose was one of urban expansion in cosmopolitan, mercantile societies that were just beginning to commercialize baking. By the time that Jesus of Nazareth was born, Rome’s population was around a mil93

Wikander (2000), pp. 397–8. See, for example, the work of Clark Erickson from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, at: 94

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lion people, and the Roman state had come to rely upon the mass production and distribution of bread to the poor as an important means of providing social stability. Mechanized milling became more widespread in an imperial state that had not only instituted its law and peace over a vast area of Eurasia and North Africa, but which partially relied upon large-scale bread production to maintain its legitimacy. The extensive but diffuse power exerted by the Roman state continued to stimulate the kinds of social processes that had first generated the need for these new milling technologies, ensuring that by the time that the Empire began to crumble, the similarly extensive but diffuse technological system of powered milling in cities, towns, military camps and rural villas provided the seeds for new developments during the postclassical period.95 In terms of what could therefore be interpreted as the direct stimuli to innovations in milling technology, we know that they all occurred during a period of imperial expansion and relative political stability throughout the Mediterranean. The dynamics of urbanization, militarization and agricultural consolidation stimulated a wide range of technological developments and their diffusion throughout the region. Advances in milling technology during this period can therefore be seen as having taken place within a cultural complex that stimulated increased efficiencies in certain sectors of the economy that satisfied everyday needs. Water supply, housing, transport, food production, entertainment: these were the areas (apart from warfare) in which technological advances took place throughout the Graeco-Roman world between the third century BCE and the second century CE. These are sectors of economic activity that have generally been overlooked by modern exponents of progress, but did, nevertheless, indicate real transformations in the way in which a number of important activities were undertaken. As has already been indicated, such innovations also contributed to the maintenance of social and political stability. At the tail-end of this innovative period, the horizontal-wheeled watermill appears to have first emerged in North Africa in the most precocious form imaginable; as a fully-enclosed triple-helix turbine,

95 The notions of diffuse and extensive forms of social power derive from the work of Michael Mann. See Mann (1986).

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a mechanical advance that was previously thought to have only been conceptualized and built during the modern period. It is clear from this and all of the other technologies covered in this chapter that the ancient institution of slavery and the general absence of a democratic polity throughout the ancient Mediterranean appears to have done little or nothing to retard either the invention or widespread use of these new technologies, despite the received wisdom on the subject.

CHAPTER TWO

MILLING TECHNOLOGY IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM CE

Introduction At about the same time that the earliest technical descriptions of water-powered automata appear in the Pneumatica of Philo,1 there is documentary and archaeological evidence for the compartmented waterwheel in Egypt.2 However, it is not until more than two centuries later that the earliest technical descriptions of the watermill and related hydraulic technologies appear in the writings of the Roman engineer, Vitruvius, and the Chinese engineer, Master Huan. As we saw in Chapter One, clear evidence for causal relationships between the earliest descriptions and the later devices remains absent. It is not until the first millennium of the common era that we find a growing body of evidence for the widespread use of a range of hydraulic technologies to process grain and other materials around the Mediterranean and in China. In this chapter, the evidence compiled by a number of researchers on milling across the Eurasian landmass during the first millennium is summarised and compared. The regions covered by that evidence include China, the Near and Middle East, North Africa, and southern and western Europe. Although the Byzantine Empire clearly played an important role in the adoption and diffusion of milling technology during the first millennium, the extant evidence is poor and has not been examined in any detail here.3 The discussion to follow is therefore largely shaped by the nature and limitations of the current state of the evidence. That evidence is, nevertheless, sufficiently abundant to illuminate the social, economic and environmental processes that contributed to the development of a variety of regional milling economies and traditions during the first millennium. It is also sufficiently abundant to reveal some 1

Lewis (1997), pp. 20–48. Neuberger (1969), p. 418; Oleson (1984), p. 325; idem (2000), pp. 233–4. 3 See Lewis (1993), (1997) for some valuable insights into the role of the Byzantine Empire in the development of milling technology. 2

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common elements or features of those developments that shed light on broader theoretical questions in the history and sociology of technology.

The sources There is a wide variety of different kinds of evidence pertaining to milling from the regions concerned. To the extent that these sources reveal similar types of information, that information can be meaningfully compared from one region to the next. In China, we find legal tracts, administrative papers, diaries and mechanical treatises, the earliest of which are dated to the first century BCE. A wide variety of water-powered mechanisms are revealed by these documents, some of which remained peculiar to the region, while others appear to have been adopted or adapted over many centuries by the Turkic, Arabic and other Aseatic societies with whom the Chinese traded. Early Islamic societies appear to have developed a number of important new techniques for delivering water to run water-powered devices. They also appear to have provided a conduit for a number of Chinese (and possibly Roman) innovations in milling technology that were later adopted in medieval Europe. The early Islamic use of water-power is inscribed in archaeological remains from the seventh century onwards, and in mechanical treatises and geographical accounts from the eighth and ninth centuries onwards. In Western Europe, the roughly contemporaneous evidence from Italy, Ireland and England provides some insight into the similar social settings in which milling took place across geographical boundaries. In early medieval Italy, watermills are mentioned in charters and legal codes dating from the sixth and seventh centuries onwards, although archaeological evidence is absent until the eighth and ninth centuries. Early medieval legal and religious texts from Ireland indicate that watermills were commonplace at that time, and are said to date from at least the late sixth century onwards. Of greater certainty is the dating of several archaeological remains dating from the early seventh century onwards.4 A century or so later in England, 4 What would appear to be the earliest site to date, however, was recently discovered by Donald Murphy and colleagues at Killoteran, County Waterford. It features a vertical-wheeled undershot watermill and has been tentatively dated to between the fourth and seventh centuries CE; Brady (2005).

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we find archaeological remains for both types of watermill, and slightly later than that, charters recording their existence. A number of Roman sites in England are, however, dated to between the second and fourth centuries.5 Although the body of evidence from these various regions continues to grow, it has by no means reached the threshold at which it is possible to decisively settle questions relating to the origins and diffusion of the different technologies deployed. Nevertheless, one question that can be settled is whether water-powered milling in early medieval Europe pre-dates the arrival of organised Christianity. We now know that in the former Roman provinces of Italia, Gallia, Hispania and Brittania, vertical-wheeled watermills were in widespread use long before Christianity became the dominant religion. However, while there was continuity in the use of waterpower by postclassical communities, the type of watermilling technology that became commonplace appears to have changed profoundly during two quite distinct phases at the beginning and at the end of the early medieval period.6 In at least two of those regions where water- and animal-powered milling had first been established by the Romans (i.e., Italia and Brittania), the more egalitarian traditions of milling that were developed in the scattered chiefdoms and micro-states that emerged after the fall of the Empire were in turn supplanted as various forms of feudal relationship were forged between lords and their social inferiors from the ninth or tenth centuries onwards.7 The discussion in this chapter reveals that there were a variety of different kinds of

5 See Wikander (1985), pp. 154–7, for a summary of the Irish and English evidence, and pp. 158–9 for the Italian evidence. 6 This issue is discussed in more detail in Chapter Five in the context of the role of the monasteries in the spread of powered milling during the medieval period. 7 On the topic of recent debates about what constitutes feudalism and its various manifestations, and whether such a term is warranted at all, while I agree with the contextualist aspects of the argument made by Susan Reynolds in Fiefs and Vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted (1994), her radical scepticism about the meanings of medieval terms arguably renders vacuous scholarly attempts to make sense of socio-historical developments occurring across (medieval) space and time. Given that I agree with her about the interpretative flexibility of the meaning of medieval terms, but insist that it is nevertheless possible to compare developments across space and time, I find myself most in agreement with the positions elaborated by Thomas Bisson and Chris Wickham, especially in Bisson (1994), (1997), and Wickham (1994). Having stated that, however, I am still somewhat reluctant to endorse Bisson’s notion of a “feudal revolution”, although it should be noted that Bisson is himself somewhat uncomfortable with it.

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milling economies in the regions examined, and that their structures changed as the social power relations in the societies in which they were embedded changed. The evidence from the first millennium suggests that in the absence of legal or martial compulsion, different social groups will favour the kinds of milling technologies that best suit their economic and cultural interests and the local environmental conditions. The influence of the state upon the development of milling technology is most evident in those regions where ruling élites successfully exerted their authority on the lower orders to gain a financial and/or political advantage over them, and were able to preserve such advantages over time through their institutionalization in law. In the discussion to follow, a brief outline of the political history of each region provides some context for the technological developments that are subsequently described.

China The Chinese imperial state was first established by Cheng, king of Qin, who adopted the title of Qin Shi Huangdi (first emperor of Qin, from which the name “China” is derived) in 221 BCE. Cheng united the seven major kingdoms and several smaller states that had been at war with one another since 483 BCE. The first empire extended from Cheng’s Great Wall and the present-day Korean peninsular in the north, to northern Vietnam in the south. One of the great contributions of the first emperor to Chinese civilization was the institution of a unified system of writing, currency, weights and measures that was to endure for centuries. After the death of Cheng in 202 BCE, the Western Han dynasty was established: the Han emperors ruling until 9 CE from their seat in Chang’an. It was under the Western Han emperors that the “Silk Road” was established and trade between China and the Mediterranean began. Following more than a decade of civil war, the Eastern Han dynasty was established in 25 CE with its seat in Luoyang. The empire remained unified until 220 CE, when civil war again broke out and resulted in the creation of three separate kingdoms ruled by the Jin dynasty. By 386, the empire had split again between the

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north and the south, a situation that was to last until 589 CE when the empire was reunited by Wen di, the first Sui emperor. In 618 CE, the Tang dynasty came to power, ushering in a period of cultural and artistic renewal. By the beginning of the tenth century, the dynasty had collapsed after years of war that continued until the reunification of China by the Song dynasty in 960 CE. The evidence for the existence of the watermill and related hydraulic technologies in China during the first millennium is somewhat difficult to interpret due to the relative inaccessability of the relevant source material to non-Chinese speakers. One of the more perplexing problems relates to the precise nature of the hydraulic technologies that are described in the earliest manuscript sources, a problem that has caused some confusion amongst mill historians.8 Were the devices described identical to contemporaneous technologies found around the Mediterranean, or were they unique to China? Is it possible that some or even all of the water-powered technologies with which we are now familiar were invented in China? Although we have already seen the answers to some of these questions sketched out in Chapter One, it is worthwhile focussing upon them in a little more detail here. Perhaps the most informative place to begin is with Joseph Needham’s claim that both the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled types of watermill were known in China as early as the first century BCE.9 While there is no strong evidence for either, this leaves us with the problem of determining what kind or kinds of device are being described in the ancient Chinese manuscripts, as there clearly were water-powered machines being used in China at the beginning of the first millennium. As indicated in Chapter One, the work of Zhao Jizhu offers a cogent explanation of this apparent dilemma. Jizhu suggests that the earliest water-powered devices were in fact gearless vertical waterwheels employing cam-operated trip-hammers. He argues that the earliest mention of these devices—that were used for hulling rice—is in the Huan Zi Xin Lun (New Discourses of Master 8 Such as the speculation by Terry Reynolds that the earliest water-powered bellows recorded by Needham were powered by tilt-hammers, or water-levers, rather than vertical-wheeled watermills. See Reynolds (1983), p. 26. Colin Rynne, however, has pointed out that water-levers cannot move at the speed required to operate bellows (personal communication, May 2002). 9 Needham (1965), pp. 369–70, citing the Hou Han Shu.

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Huan), written by Huan Than during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE– 9 CE). Jizhu points out that the strength of the water-flow determined the number of trip-hammers that could be powered in this way.10 It seems likely, therefore, that the water-powered bellows dated to 31 CE and recorded in the Hou Han Shu described by Needham were also powered directly by vertical waterwheels.11 According to Jizhu, it was not until the Jin Dynasty (between the late third and early fifth centuries CE) that the horizontal- and vertical-wheeled types of watermill began to be used to grind rice, wheat, beans and other seeds and cereals in China.12 This observation finds support in the fact that the mechanicians to whom some early Chinese texts attribute the earliest use of watermills are Tu Yü (222–284 CE), Chuu Thao (c. 240–280 CE) and Wang Jung (235–306 CE).13 Such a modified chronology also helps to explain why the Chin Shu says that Tu Yü introduced a new design for water-powered bellows around 260 CE.14 All of those sources that Needham cites as describing “watermills” in the early Chinese metallurgical industry are, in fact, easier to reconcile with Jizhu’s chronology.15 To be more specific, while it would seem that vertical waterwheels were being used by the Chinese to directly drive bellows and triphammers from the first century onwards, and that such machines were commonplace from the third and fourth centuries,16 the earliest clear manuscript evidence for the widespread use of geared, verticalwheeled watermills of the Vitruvian type in China dates to the early seventh century under the first Tang emperors.17 Given that the Chinese appear to have used two quite distinct types of water-powered device that incorporated vertical waterwheels, it would therefore seem appropriate to make a clear distinction between the older type of machine (presumably originating in China) that applied the vertical

10 Jizhu (1983), pp. 425–6. Cf. Needham (1965), p. 392, who dates the Huan Zi Xin Lun to c. 20 CE and translates the relevant passage. 11 Needham (1965), p. 370. 12 Jizhu (1983), pp. 427–8. 13 Needham (1965), p. 396. 14 Ibid., p. 370. In other words, the earliest type of water-powered bellows were directly driven on cam-operated shafts using vertical waterwheels, but later designs employed vertical waterwheels with right-angled gearing as in the Vitruvian watermill. 15 Ibid., pp 370–3, 377–8 16 Ibid., pp. 392–3, 398–400. 17 Ibid., pp. 400–1.

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waterwheel to industrial processes—what we might call the “industrial waterwheel”, to distinguish it from the compartmented waterwheel used for raising water—and the vertical-wheeled watermill with which Westerners are more familiar from the Graeco-Roman and medieval European sources. Making such a distinction resolves a number of problems with chronology and terminology that were noted by Needham. One of the major problems with determining exactly what kinds of device are being described in the ancient and medieval texts is that they rarely provide a detailed description of the mechanisms involved: the earliest Chinese illustrations date to the early fourteenth century. For example, metallurgical bellows powered by a horizontal waterwheel with right-angled gearing are first illustrated and described in the Nung Shu of 1313 CE.18 Vertical and horizontal waterwheels for grinding corn are also first illustrated in the Nung Shu.19 Similarly, the earliest illustrations of the Chinese use of vertical waterwheels (without gearing) to power recumbent trip-hammers date from 1300 onwards.20 Although Jizhu does not record the date for the earliest illustration of a complicated vertical-wheeled watermill using three sets of cog-wheels to drive nine mills simultaneously,21 Needham notes that an illustration of a similar animal-powered mill is likewise recorded in the Nung Shu.22 While precise chronologies of development for the various devices concerned remain elusive, we do know from the work of Needham that there were four powerful social groups that were the main owners of what he generically describes as “watermills”: imperial concubines, high-ranking eunuchs in the imperial bureaucracy, Buddhist abbeys and wealthy merchants. All of these groups drew significant incomes from their mills. Needham also points out that the Thang Liu Tien (an imperial legal code), a fragment of which survives as the Shui Pu Shih (“Ordinances of the Department of Waterways”), from 737 CE provides clear indications that “watermills” were not to interfere with water-conservancy. The Shui Pu Shih states that mill owners “are to construct adequate sluices and to ensure no interruption 18

Ibid., pp. 371 & 373–6. Ibid., pp. 396–9. 20 Ibid., p. 390. Needham only reproduces the illustration from the Thien Kung Khai Wu of 1637, and not any of the earlier ones. 21 Jizhu (1983), p. 428. 22 Needham (1965), p. 399. 19

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of traffic (Article 7), [and] they must remove silt and sandbanks on pain of demolition (Article 13).” In some cases, the use of watermills was only allowed during certain seasons (Article 23). If there was insufficient water for irrigation, the mill was to be rendered inoperative and the millstones confiscated by the local government.23 Needham reports that a number of disputes are recorded in the manuscript sources from the eighth century, in which government officials distinguished themselves by persecuting millers and having their watermills destroyed because they threatened irrigation.24 He points out that by the end of the tenth century, “the whole milling industry [was] . . . co-ordinated with the bureaucratic water-control” following the appointment of two Commissioners of Watermills for the eastern and western regions, an administrative development that, to the best of my knowledge, never took place anywhere in medieval Europe.25 All of this evidence demonstrates a commitment on the part of the Chinese state to subordinate the use of water resources for powered milling to what the Confucian bureaucracy regarded as the more essential purposes of transportation and irrigation.26 It also demonstrates the strength of lordship in China during this period, as well as the power of the imperial state relative to its subordinates in the ruling élite. Unlike most of its European counterparts until the high middle ages, the Chinese imperial state was obviously more than capable of summarily imposing its will upon recalcitrant members of various élites, a situation that would no doubt have incited envy amongst European monarchs had they been aware of it. While various rights pertaining to water resources for milling were certainly of concern throughout northern Europe in medieval times, and the source of some litigation (especially with regard to the obstruction of watercourses by mills and the flooding of arable land by the waterworks pertaining to mills), water for the purposes of irrigation was generally of much less concern due to the higher rainfall and lower population density. For example, Rynne points out that although Ireland never required irrigation for agricultural purposes, “[i]n many parts of Europe, from the Roman period onwards, agriculture was 23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 400. Ibid. Ibid., p. 401. Cf. Reynolds (1983), pp. 116–7.

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only possible through the construction of complex irrigation networks.” He is presumably referring here to the lower rainfall regions of southern Europe.27 As we will see shortly with respect to Islamic Spain, the need to accommodate milling and irrigation was resolved in a less conflictual manner because of the different power relations at work. Reynolds has suggested that greater oversight and regulation of milling in China and the higher population density acted as dampeners on its development, but this seems unlikely given that milling almost undoubtedly grew in economic importance in China over the centuries that led up to the end of the first millennium.28 As elsewhere across the Eurasian landmass during the middle ages, political and economic stability (under the Han, Tang and Song dynasties) enabled population growth. In the Chinese socio-political context, the growing population translated into ever larger markets for milled products. Chinese ecclesiastical élites, like their lay counterparts, regarded mills as valuable assets that required ongoing maintenance and investment to meet the demands of the growing populations in their locales.29 They would not jeopardise that investment lightly in favour of the interests of irrigators for whom access to the water resource was a direct challenge to their own and thus a source of conflict. In short, it is hard to imagine why milling would warrant the appointment of two Commissioners of Watermills were it not for the fact that it was a sector of the economy that was growing rapidly and interfering with another important economic sector, and therefore needed to be administered more effectively. Were it not for the large flows of taxes into state coffers from both sets of activities, regulation of that conflict may not have been so pressing. None of this evidence is, however, inconsistent with the opinion already stated that the Chinese appear to have derived their own watermilling technology from the Mediterranean, and that it did not arrive there until as late as the third century CE.30 Nevertheless, the industrial use of vertical waterwheels in China from as early as the 27 Rynne (2000), pp. 3, 15. Thomas Glick has indicated in personal communications that this was indeed the case in medieval Spain. 28 Reynolds (1983), pp. 116–7. 29 Needham notes that “historians are now recognising that mill dues (wei kho) were one of the richest sources of income for great abbeys during the Chinese Middle Ages”; Needham (1965), p. 401. 30 Cf. Reynolds (1983), pp. 26–8. Wikander (1985), p. 163.

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first century CE clearly indicates that the Chinese were making innovative use of water-power well before knowledge of the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled types of watermill had arrived there. Given the relative chronological evidence for the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled types of watermill in and around the Mediterranean, it would seem most likely that the former was the earliest to be put to use in China. While evidence for the use of the donkey mill and the compartmented waterwheel dates to the second century CE, given the existence of industrial waterwheels in China at least a century earlier, it seems likely that the compartmented waterwheel must have also been known in China before the second century, the knowledge of which most likely arrived there via the recently established Silk Road anything up to three centuries previously. Industrial waterwheels also appear to have been far more ubiquitous in China than they were in Western Europe during the early middle ages. To conclude this section, a few brief comments should be made about the evidence for the use of watermills in Japan. It has been argued that there is no evidence that the horizontal-wheeled watermill was ever known there.31 The first reference to vertical-wheeled watermills was reputedly “by a priest from the Kingdom of Koma in Korea in 610”, while “[t]he Nihou-shoki . . . mentions that in 670 a watermill was constructed and used in the making of iron”. The latter was apparently introduced from China.32 From the seventh century onwards, the vertical-wheeled watermill was reputedly employed in Japan to fulfil a number of different tasks, including grinding cereals and husking or polishing rice, although the latter application supposedly preceded the former.33 Given the evidence cited, it would appear that substantially more work needs to be done on the early history of Chinese and especially Japanese water-powered technology. In the case of China, however, it would probably be more accurate to note that existing Chinese scholarship on the subject needs to be made known to the broader scholarly community by Chinese-speaking archaeologists and historians.

31

Hay (1969), p. 321. Ibid. See also Needham (1965), p. 401, which is presumably the source of Hay’s information. 33 Hay (1969), p. 322. 32

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Islamic societies Within two hundred years of the foundation of Islam by Muhammad in the early seventh century, the first Muslim Empire of the Ummayad dynasty had fractured. The Ummayyad Emirate held most of modern Spain and Portugal, the Idrisid Caliphate held modern Morocco and most of Algeria, the Aghlabid Emirate held parts of modern Algeria, all of Tunisia and most of Libya, while the Abbasid Caliphate extended from modern Libya to the Arabian peninsular, Persia, and the shores of the Caspian and Black Seas. Islamic trade routes extended from the North Sea through the Eurasian steppes to India and China, and from the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Central Africa.34 Embracing aspects of the cultural heritages of the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Chinese, early medieval Islam was a dynamic, syncretic religion with an egalitarian ethic that encouraged learning, trade and technical prowess. With regard to the use of water-power in early Islamic societies, there is clear archaeological evidence for the use of watermills from as early as the seventh century. The remains of thirty-one mills that are now thought to date from between the seventh and thirteenth centuries have been located at two sites in Iraq and Iran, while the sites of twelve horizontal-wheeled watermills in Oman have been dated to between the eighth and tenth centuries.35 The extant evidence suggests that both horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills were in widespread use from as early as the ninth century.36 While it is difficult to determine which kinds of watermill predominated in different areas due to the vagaries of the literary references, Donald Hill argues “that the relatively cheap, low-powered horizontal mills were used by small communities, whereas the vertical types were located on the larger rivers and served cities and major towns.”37 Hill’s observation is certainly consistent with the

34

Matthew (1983), pp. 49–51, 68–71. Wikander (1985), pp. 162–3, and Wikander (2000), pp. 376–7, in which he states that none of the Iranian and Iraqi examples can be firmly dated to before the Arab conquest. 36 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 53. 37 Hill (1998), p. XVIII-9. 35

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extant evidence from Islamic and early Christian Spain (as we will see shortly) as well as early medieval Italy and France.38 A wide variety of different kinds of milling technology were deployed by medieval Islamic societies, some of which were derived from neighbouring cultures and their predecessors, while others appear to have been Islamic innovations. For example, the Graeco-Roman vertical-wheeled watermill was adopted in a variety of guises, from conventional land-based mills to ship mills and bridge mills. Ship mills were built on top of barge-like platforms with the waterwheel turned by the flow of water beneath [Fig. 2.1], while bridge mills were built into the superstructure of a bridge [Fig. 2.2].39 Although the earliest ship mills were reputedly built by Belisarius during the Goths’ siege of Rome in 536–7 CE,40 the earliest record of them in Islamic countries is from tenth century Arabia, where ship mills were reputedly “moored to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates from Mosul and Raqqa down to Baghdad”.41 Such mills are also recorded as having operated at Murcia in Islamic Spain, while the earliest record of a bridge mill is reputedly from Cordoba in the middle of the twelfth century.42 The ingenuity of Islamic engineers is further attested by at least three innovations in delivering water to watermills that appear to have been largely unknown outside the Muslim world. In Persia, horizontal-wheeled watermills were situated in front of dams so that water could be conducted from the back of the dam through a large pipe to drive the waterwheel.43 The Persians also situated watermills 38 The Italian evidence is discussed later in this chapter and in Chapter Five. The French evidence is briefly canvassed in Chapter Five. 39 For details of the the different technologies involved, see Reynolds (1983), pp. 55–62; Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 192–3. 40 Procopius, Guerra Gotica 1.19. See also Squatriti (1998), pp. 129–30. 41 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 54. 42 Hill (1998), p. XVIII-9; Reynolds (1983), p. 59. On bridge and boat mills in medieval France, see Nice Boyer (1982). 43 Pacey (1990), p. 33, citing information provided to him by Norman Smith, al-Hassan and Hill, and Wulff. Interestingly, a similar technique was used in the construction of some French tide mills, such as the mill of Trégastel discussed in Chapter Three. According to Needham (1965), pp. 402–3, Ibn-al-Muhaldil describes a similar set-up around 940 AD using water flowing through a conduit along the top of the city walls of Sandabil on the Old Silk Road. Channels running from the top of the walls to the bottom powered vertical-wheeled watermills at the head and tail of each channel. A Chinese scholar named Tshen Chung-Mien has argued that Sandabil is the extant city of Shantan in Kansu province, and that most of the waterworks which ran the mills existed until the early 1950s.

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Fig. 2.1. A) Ship mills on the River Tiber, Rome, in a painting by Giuliano di San Gallo, c. 1490; B) Ship mills on the River Rhône, Lyons, in a drawing from 1550. In the centre, the Pont de la Guillotière (Pont du Rosne), built before 1180, and in the bottom right hand corner, part of the Hôtel Dieu, where Francois Rabelais practised as a physician. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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Fig. 2.2. Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a bridge mill, 1607. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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within underground irrigation tunnels, or qanats, in order to exploit the flow of water in the tunnels.44 In Islamic Spain, watermills were located on the main canals of valley-floor irrigation systems [Fig. 2.3].45 It is not yet clear, however, when any of these innovations first occurred. By the time of the Crusades, there are supposed to have been “mills in every province of the Muslim world from Spain and North Africa to Transoxiana [i.e., modern Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan].”46 These mills were engaged in a wide variety of tasks, including grinding grain, fulling cloth, hulling rice, sawing timber, preparing pulp for papermaking, and crushing mineral ores and sugar-cane.47 The adoption of industrial watermills by Islamic societies is supposed by some scholars to have taken place as early as the eighth century in the case of paper manufacturing, and there are reputedly references to Islamic fulling mills in the tenth century and to orecrushing mills in the eleventh.48 On the Iberian Peninsular, papermaking was introduced into Andalusia by the mid-tenth century, and the industry was almost undoubtedly using water-powered mills in Játiva during the subsequent period. According to Donald Hill, fulling mills and paper mills appear frequently in the Catalan documentation from the mid-twelfth century onwards, as do water-powered forges at the end of that century.49 Large milling installations from this period are recorded at Merida, Almería, Jaén and on the banks of the Guadalquivir between Seville and Cordoba.50 From the ninth or tenth century onwards, there are records of the new invention of the horizontal windmill being put to a variety of uses, from grinding grain to pumping water and crushing sugar-cane in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.51 44 Pacey (1990), p. 87, citing Wulff, The Traditional Crafts of Persia, 1966, p. 282. See also Reynolds (1983), p. 119, citing Guy LeStrange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur, Cambridge, 1905, p. 277, and Norman Smith, A History of Dams, London, 1971, p. 81. 45 Glick & Kirchner (2000), pp. 280–4. 46 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 53. See Reynolds (1983), p. 117, for a detailed set of references indicating the widespread dissemination of medieval Islamic watermills. 47 See: Pacey (1990), pp. 10–11; al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 54; Hill (1998), p. XVIII–10. 48 Hill (1998), p. XVIII-10. Hill repeatedly neglected to cite the documentary evidence for these claims. 49 Ibid., p. XVIII-10. 50 Ibid., p. XVIII-9. Cf. Glick & Kirchner (2000), pp. 301, 310–12. 51 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), pp. 54–5. The horizontal windmill will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

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Fig. 2.3. Horizontal-wheeled watermill fed by valley floor irrigation system in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain). Courtesy of Brill Academic Publishers.

With respect to who owned and operated watermills in early Islamic societies, the only substantial work that appears to have been done to date is by researchers on Islamic Spain (al-Andalus). Thomas Glick and Helena Kirchner have summarised this research in their recent paper, “Hydraulic systems and technologies of Islamic Spain” (2000). They argue that most watermills in al-Andalus were built and operated by the Berber and Arab tribal groups that settled the region after the Muslim colonization of Spain in 711. The majority of these mills had horizontal wheels fed by vertical penstocks (known as masabb or arubah in Arabic, cup in Catalan and cubo in Castilian).52

52 Glick & Kirchner (2000), p. 309. Vertical-wheeled watermills were also in use, such as those between the arches of the Roman bridge in Cordoba in 971. See idem, p. 311.

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These watermills were integral parts of larger irrigation systems that were typically owned and operated collectively by clan-based settlements.53 In order to avoid conflict over preferences for milling over irrigation, as appears to have been commonplace in medieval China, the Berber and Arab clans placed mills downstream from irrigated parcels, or outside the irrigation system altogether.54 The social and political organization of these groups tended to impede the consolidation of wealth (including the ownership of mills) in the hands of a few of their members.55 Citing the research of Miquel Barceló, Glick and Kirchner note that in Majorca, “except for two mills each owned by the state (makhsan), pious foundations (hubus), and an unidentified shaykh . . . the rest appear to have been owned by alquerias [i.e., communally operated peasant farms] or individuals associated with them.”56 They also note that as many as 90% of the mills recorded in the Repartiment of Valencia were owned by communities of peasant farmers. When organizing the new kingdom of Andalusia in the mid-thirteenth century, the Christian James I of Aragon did not grant any mills within Muslim communities to any individuals as feudal monopolies, “lending substance to the conclusion that mills were regarded as a public service by Muslims, whatever the details of their ownership may have been.”57 Interestingly, the law code of the new kingdom specified that “irrigation systems were to continue functioning as they had ‘in the time of the Saracens’, with water rights of Muslim landholders secured and passing intact to Christian successors.”58 Glick and Kirchner describe in detail the transition to, and exemptions from, seigneurial control of mills, irrigation systems and alquerias that took place in Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia following the Christian conquest in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Significantly, in Andalusia and Catalonia, feudal control of mills and water was relatively rigid and strict, whereas in Valencia, although seigneurial monopolies tended to be enforced early on, by the end

53

Ibid., p. 267. Ibid., pp. 281, 314. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of the conventions followed in different rural and urban contexts are provided by the authors at pp. 279–300, 305–7. 55 Ibid., p. 293. 56 Ibid., p. 315. 57 Ibid., pp. 315–6. 58 Ibid., pp. 325–6. 54

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of the thirteenth century, a slow movement towards commercial milling had begun to take place. The construction of mills by any party was encouraged by James I’s successor, Peter III, as long as they paid a share of their income to the Crown: “whosoever might want to mill wheat, olives, henna, linen, rice or anything else, may do so where he wishes”.59 Apart from indicating a royal preference for the relatively unfettered expansion of milling, Peter’s decree indicates that industrial uses of water-power were already well established in Spain by the end of the thirteenth century. Significantly, Glick and Kirchner identify the various industrial applications of water-power by the Muslims in Spain as being Chinese in origin: A number of commercial and industrial products such as rice, sugarcane, and paper formed a unified package of Chinese techniques that included processing by means of vertical, trip-hammer mills, wherein hammers attached to the axis of the vertical water-wheel pounded the product to the point where the process could be continued manually. Thus paper and sugar-processing diffused simultaneously. Therefore, with regard to the perplexing problem of whether the paper mills of Xàtiva [or Játiva] were hydraulic, if it can be determined that there were rice-husking mills in al-Andalus at the time of the Christian conquest, there is a prima facie case for the presence of vertical paper mills: the two machines were, in effect, identical.60

Glick’s and Kirchner’s argument about the technical details of such early industrial waterwheels in China thus parallels my own in the previous section and in Chapter Six. The evidence from Islamic Spain therefore lends further credence to the idea that horizontal-wheeled watermills were a favoured technology in regions where lordly monopolies did not exist or were not rigidly enforced, and/or competition for milling custom was limited, a point that will be elaborated upon in the next section with respect to early medieval Italy. The Spanish evidence also suggests that there is some cause for believing that a number of water-powered milling techniques were either adapted from Chinese industrial milling techniques or first developed in early medieval Islamic societies.

59 60

Ibid., p. 326. Glick & Kirchner (2000), pp. 311–12.

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Italy Italia was the last of the western Roman provinces to be subjected to barbarian rule. By the end of the sixth century, it had been split between three different powers: the Lombards, the Eastern Roman Empire, and the papacy. The Lombard duchies of northern Italy were separated from their southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento by the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Duchies of Rome and Naples. The political instability caused by the jockeying for territorial supremacy by successive emperors, popes, dukes and kings throughout the early medieval period was counteracted to some extent by the growing influence of the Roman Church, first amongst the Lombards, and later, under Gregory the Great, amongst the pagans of northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsular. Despite these political and territorial complexities, it is now clear that the use of watermill technology in early medieval Italy was a continuation of practices that had begun during Roman times. The extant evidence suggests that there was considerable growth in the use of watermills throughout the Italian states in the wake of the barbarian invasions, but to what extent this growth was dependent on the growth of monasticism (as has been claimed by a number of earlier scholars) remains under-determined.61 Nevertheless, the extensive research on the subject that has been conducted over the last few decades provides a firm basis for being sceptical of the technological stagnation thesis as outlined at the end of the last chapter. It is now very clear that by the fourth century, when the Roman agronomist Palladius wrote his well-known treatise on agriculture, watermills were a familiar site throughout the Roman Empire, and were similarly commonplace throughout the Italian states by the early middle ages.62 However, what distinguished the Roman period of mill construction and utilization from the early medieval period was the different social and political climate that prevailed during the first few centuries after the collapse of the Empire. Whereas political power was highly centralized during the imperial period, during the postclassical period, power was fragmented along regional lines, making élite

61 62

This issue will be examined in detail in Chapter Five. Squatriti (1998), p. 127.

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attempts to impose centralized authority upon the rural population difficult to enforce. The relatively weak lordship that was characteristic of this time appears to have stimulated the construction and ownership of horizontal-wheeled watermills by a broad social spectrum, while the technology preferred by the Romans, i.e., the verticalwheeled watermill, prevailed in population centres and on major waterways.63 Farming, urban and mercantile communities, local magnates, ecclesiastical institutions, kings and emperors shaped the development of milling technologies in postclassical Italy. These social groups, combined with the extraordinary ecological and geographical diversity of the Italian Peninsular, ensured the emergence of heterogeneous technological solutions to the population’s growing demand for milled grain.64 The manuscript evidence for milling in early medieval Italy consists of legal texts (such as Carolingian court documents and the Edict of the Lombard King Rotharis in 643), hagiographical literature, and monastic legislation (such as Pope Gregory’s Dialogues and the Rule of St Benedict) and charters, especially for the period after 750. These latter documents in particular often provide precise and detailed descriptions of a variety of hydraulic technologies, including mills, ditches, cisterns and aqueducts, although they tend to deal with rural properties, rather than urban ones. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons related to geography, geology and cultural issues, the archaeological evidence for watermills in early medieval Italy remains sparse.65 While it is clear that the Romans made extensive use of rotary handmills, animal-powered mills and vertical-wheeled watermills in different social and environmental contexts, it is not so clear that horizontal-wheeled watermills were as common during Roman times as has often been assumed. As we saw in Chapter One, only a few examples of such mills have been discovered during the Roman period, the earliest of which are the triple-helix turbines of Chemtou and Testour that date to the late third or early fourth centuries.

63

Ibid., pp. 127, 133–6. Magnusson & Squatriti (2000), p. 216. See idem, pp. 264–5 for a discussion of the varieties of milling technology deployed in different regions of Italy during the second half of the middle ages. 65 Ibid., pp. 218–9. 64

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Apart from these very early finds, the earliest firm evidence for horizontal-wheeled watermills dates from fifth and sixth century Palestine and Jordan. It would therefore appear that the use of horizontalwheeled watermills in early medieval Italy cannot be more than contemporaneous with such finds, suggesting that rather than having been commonly used on the Italian Peninsular from the beginning of the first millennium, they probably first came into widespread use during the postclassical period.66 Squatriti has suggested that the horizontal-wheeled watermill predominated in the first few centuries after the collapse of the Empire, when lordship was relatively weak and mill ownership was more common amongst the lower orders of society.67 Partible inheritance of mills is recorded as early as 710, and persisted throughout the middle ages. Ownership of portions or moieties of mills (as they were known in medieval England) was commonplace, and allowed doctors, merchants and other laymen to enter into milling ventures with ecclesiastical officials and members of the aristocracy.68 As social and economic power once again became consolidated in fewer hands during the Carolingian period (particularly after 800), the ownership of watermills and the water rights attached to them increasingly became the sole preserve of the Church and magnates.69 Squatriti believes that the more expensive and larger vertical-wheeled watermills were favoured by these élites, implying that as a consequence, they gradually displaced their smaller, cheaper and easier to build counterparts in those areas where élite rule prevailed.70 Such trends appear to have also been evident in Ireland, England and France at around the same time, although the Italian situation is far better documented. A few final comments should be made about milling monopolies and mill income in early medieval Italy. As is well known from the later feudal period, mill ownership conferred authority and prestige on those who held them. However, there was a clear difference in the status and function of manorial mills held by lords and commercial 66 This conclusion is somewhat at odds with those of Squatriti, who appears to have been unaware of the lack of evidence for horizontal-wheeled watermills until the late Roman period when writing on the subject. 67 Squatriti (1998), pp. 133 & 138. 68 Ibid., pp. 142–4. 69 Ibid., pp. 144–5. 70 Squatriti (1997), pp. 132–4.

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mills operated by those of varying social status. For some religious houses, for example, the certainty of a stable and regular income from a manorial mill was more important than extracting the maximum possible income from variable harvests in lean and prosperous years. Such strategies might involve drawing a fixed render of grain from the manorial mill from year to year, or renting the mill to an intermediary for a fixed term and a fixed cash or grain rent. In Italy, such intermediaries were not necessarily aristocratic, but they were often wealthy, and not infrequently usurped lordly rights to themselves over their manorial customers. In other cases, mills were directly managed by lords, with a fixed render of grain paid by mill users. While some of these strategies were abandoned or lost favour over the centuries, Squatriti has argued that their primary purpose was to avoid risk, rather than to maximise profits.71 Commercial milling ventures, on the other hand, were primarily geared towards conferring an economic benefit to those who owned them. If the mill was held in shares, the income to be drawn from them had to be easily divided between the share-holders. Like secular and ecclesiastical lords, commercial owners of mills directly managed their mills, or rented them to millers who then sought to derive a living from them by charging a fee for use, or to third parties who did not operate the mills themselves, but who drew an income from their management. As Squatriti notes, “[m]ill income [in general] . . . depended on the type of mill, its management style, its location and accessability, and its size.”72 The construction of mills in early medieval Italy by a variety of social groups was motivated by their ability to free up household labour (especially that of women), the reliable income that could be drawn from long-term investment, and the prestige they conferred on their owners.73 The influence of such factors in the milling economy of later medieval England will be discussed in detail in Chapter Five.

71 72 73

Squatriti (1998), pp. 145–8. Ibid., pp. 145–6, 149. Squatriti (1997), p. 135.

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England Roman governance of the province of Brittania officially ended in the first decade of the fifth century, as the western provinces succumbed to a series of rebellions and barbarian attacks. The influence of Roman mores on life in Britain persisted until well into the fifth century, however, during which time the Britons lived under the rule of local potentates drawn from the former landowning and military classes. Although the Angles, Jutes and Saxons first arrived as mercenaries under Roman rule, their earliest arrival in large numbers in Britain dates from the 430s onwards. Dispersed from southern England and the Channel Islands to as far north as Northumbria, the Germanic settlers lived side by side with the native Britons in many parts of the island, but pushed their strongholds into the western extremities. Sharing the same culture as the people of southern Scandinavia, Germany and northern France, the Anglo-Saxon warrior tribes that settled post-Roman Britain were tied by kinship and a fierce loyalty to their lords. By the end of the sixth century, the invaders had gained control of half of Britain, and ruled from thirteen or more kingdoms: East Anglia, Middle Anglia, Mercia, Magonsaete, Hwicce, Essex, Wessex, Sussex and Kent in the south, and Lindsey, Elmet, Deira and Bernicia in the north. The Britons, for their part, had control of the kingdoms of Dumnonia (modern Cornwall and Dorset), Dyfed, Powys, Gwynedd (Wales), and Rheged and Gododdin in the north (modern Lancashire, Cumbria and southern Scotland). The end of the sixth century also saw the first Christian mission in England, led by the Roman monk Augustine, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. By the end of the eighth century, Offa had united most of the southern English kingdoms, although the political stability that he achieved was shortlived. It was not until the Anglo-Saxons faced a new threat from Norse and Danish invaders that Alfred the Great (871–99), managed to re-unite the southern kingdoms over the course of many years. Alfred also played an important role in establishing a network of planned, fortified towns that became centres of local commerce for centuries. It seems likely that this was also a period during which a significant number of watermills were built to serve these towns and their surrounding communities.

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By the middle of the tenth century, Alfred’s successors in the house of Wessex had managed to reconquer most of the vast swathe of eastern and northern England that had come under Viking control during the ninth century. Under the reign of Edgar (959–75), the English county system and the new coinage of pennies were established, and reform of the monastic system undertaken. In the century leading up to the Norman conquest of 1066, the united kingdom of England was subjected to successive waves of attack by the Danes, culminating in the displacement of the house of Wessex from the English throne by the son of King Swein of Denmark, Cnut (1016–35). Cnut’s legacy was to be shortlived however, with the election of Aethelred’s son Edward “the Confessor” as king in 1042. It was during this period that the highly efficient tax system used to raise huge sums of money to pay off the Danes— known as the “Danegeld”—was established and later used to maintain standing armies. It also provided the basis for William the Conqueror’s rigorous tax survey of England, Domesday Book. Domesday Book provides an unprecedented insight into the structure and economy of Anglo-Norman society in the late eleventh century, including the role of mills in the medieval English economy. William’s survey records more than 6,000 watermills that were held in lordly tenure in 1086.74 It would therefore seem reasonable to infer that the numbers of watermills in Britain, like those in Italy, steadily increased after the withdrawal of Roman governance. However, there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of either horizontal- or vertical-wheeled watermills in post-Roman Britain between the early fifth and the late seventh centuries, with only six or seven sites having been identified during the Anglo-Saxon period leading up to the Norman Conquest in 1066. Documentary evidence is similarly lacking until the middle of the eighth century. At only two of the archaeological sites that have so far been excavated have verticalwheeled watermills been discovered, suggesting that the majority of early medieval watermills in England were of the horizontal type, as they also appear to have been in Ireland.

74 Darby (1977), p. 361, calculates a figure of 6,082 based on a thorough analysis of the mill entries in Domesday Book. See also the discussion in Holt (1988), pp. 5–16, where he provides a critique of the earlier figure of 5,624 mills provided by Hodgen (1939), a figure that is almost universally quoted by historians of technology when writing on the subject.

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All of the archaeological finds of Anglo-Saxon mills have occurred since 1957, and include sites at Old Windsor on the Thames in Berkshire (late seventh–ninth centuries),75 Tamworth in Staffordshire (eighth–ninth century),76 Stroud in Gloucestershire (no date),77 Wharram Percy in Yorkshire (tenth–eleventh centuries),78 Castle Donnington in Leicestershire (late eleventh century),79 West Cotton in Northamptonshire (ninth–twelfth centuries),80 and Corbridge, Northumberland.81 Another possible site is at Bonhunt Farm at Wicken Bonhunt in Essex.82 Of all these sites, only the royal ones at Old Windsor and Castle Donnington revealed vertical-wheeled watermills. The charter evidence for Anglo-Saxon England is a little more extensive. About fifty different mills are referred to in the charters from the eighth century onwards.83 The oldest of these is a charter dated to 762 CE by Aethelbert, co-king of Kent, referring to an existing mill in the town of Chart in Kent.84 Donald Hill’s map

75 See: “Medieval Britain in 1957”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 2 (1958), pp. 183–5; Baillie (1980), p. 63; Wikander (1985), p. 157. 76 Tamworth was the seat of the Mercian king, Offa. See: “Medieval Britain in 1971”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 16 (1972), p. 161; “Medieval Britain in 1978”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 23 (1979), p. 245. Also: Rahtz & Bullough (1977), pp. 16, 17, 30; Rahtz (1981), pp. 3–6. Baillie (1980), pp. 62–3, points out that although the radiocarbon dates for Tamworth centred around the middle of the eighth century, dendrochronology revealed a more reliable date of the middle of the ninth century. See also Wikander (1985), p. 156. 77 See Rahtz (1981), p. 6; also Wikander (1985), p. 165. 78 See Hurst (1984), pp. 101–2. 79 See “Medieval Britain in 1985”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 30 (1986), p. 157. 80 See “Medieval Britain in 1988”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 33 (1989), pp. 205–6. 81 Snape (2003). My thanks to Colin Rynne for drawing my attention to this recent find, which I have not yet had an opportunity to study in detail. 82 The excavation of this site revealed a post-Roman settlement of the mid-Saxon period, including a large channel south of the site which “may be the leat of a watermill” of the same date. See “Medieval Britain in 1973”, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 18 (1974), p. 176. Langdon (2004), p. 72, n. 26, provides a slightly different list, including a find at Ebbsfleet in Kent. 83 See Hill (1981), p. 114, for a map with all of their locations and dates marked. For some published examples, see Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands, pp. 80, 83; Early Charters of the Thames Valley, pp. 36, 37, 51, 54, 63–4, 92. The places and dates for these are, respectively: 966 AD, the site for a mill on the R. Avon near Stratford; 988 AD, a mill at Bluntesige near Clopton; 943 AD, a mill on the R. Lambourn; 945 AD, a mill north of Wallingford; 955 × 959 AD, the same mill cited earlier on the R. Lambourn; 963 AD, a mill at Hirdegrafe (Hurgrove) in Drayton; 1002 × 5 AD, a mill at Sutton Courtenay; c. 1062 AD, Westmill near Therfield; 1053 × 1066 AD, a mill at Ayot St. Lawrence. 84 See Cartularium Saxonicum, ms. 191 and Anglo-Saxon Charters, ms. 25. See also: Holt (1988), p. 3, citing same; Hodgen (1939), p. 261, n. 4, citing Bennett & Elton

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documenting these early mills inaccurately dates this same charter to 814 CE, while the earliest of the charters appearing on his map is dated to 737–740 CE at Notgrove in Gloucestershire.85 There is some dispute as to the authenticity of this latter charter, however.86 Nor should this map be taken as an accurate indication of the distribution of watermills during this period.87 It would seem from this evidence that there were at least two periods of growth in the spread of watermills throughout England between the withdrawal of Roman governance and the Norman Conquest. As in early medieval Italy, the first probably involved a displacement of vertical-wheeled watermills by horizontal-wheeled watermills as early as the sixth or seventh centuries as the Roman technical tradition was displaced by one with a less obvious genealogy.88 The second probably involved the construction of increasing numbers of vertical-wheeled watermills from at least the reign of Alfred in the late ninth century onwards. Some scholars have proposed that the tenth century was the period during which the initial expansion of watermilling first began.89 It is, however, extremely unlikely that most of the watermills recorded in Domesday Book were of the horizontal type, as Hodgen and others have suggested.90 Nor is there sufficient evidence to endorse E. Cecil Curwen’s statement that we are “justified in concluding that the English water-mill has always been of the Vitruvian type”.91 Langdon has recently observed that although there may well have been some horizontal-wheeled watermills in England in 1086, most

(1899), Vol. 2, pp. 96–7; and Rahtz & Bullough (1977), pp. 18–23, in which they discuss this and several other Anglo-Saxon charters pertaining to mills at some length. 85 See Hill (1981), p. 114. 86 Richard Holt, personal communication, June 2000. See Cartularium Saxonicum, ms. 165, and Anglo-Saxon Charters, ms. 99. 87 Holt (2000), p. 58. 88 Cf. Langdon (2004), p. 73, n. 32. 89 For example, based on the charter and archaeological evidence to that date, Rahtz & Bullough (1977), p. 29, proposed that it was not until “the tenth century . . . [that] mills multiplied rapidly in England.” Cf. Astill (1997), pp. 198–9. 90 See Hodgen (1939), p. 262. Blaine (1976), p. 167, and Rahtz & Bullough (1977), p. 16, have supported this conclusion, but as already mentioned, Holt (1988), pp. 118–22, has cast severe doubts upon its reliability. However, Rahtz (1981), p. 6, appears far less sanguine about this issue four years after the earlier cited paper. 91 Curwen (1944), p. 133.

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likely they were located in “marginal” areas of forest and heathland in the North and far West. Nevertheless, the documentary evidence suggests that there were none only a century or so later.92 With respect to which social groups were primarily responsible for building these mills, Jean Gimpel’s assertion that “the landlords” (i.e., lay and ecclesiastical lords) built “among other achievements . . . the 5,634 watermills of the Domesday Book” is not a statement that can be verified.93 As in early medieval Italy, there may well have been a substantial number of watermills that were built by peasants and other minor landholders that were subsequently appropriated by the new feudal élite. Unfortunately, we have no way at present of determining for certain whether or not this was the case, but there certainly is some suggestive evidence, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Five. Finally, while it is still not clear when horse mills first began to be used in England, there is some archaeological evidence to suggest the existence of animal-powered mills during Anglo-Saxon times. An excavation of Saxon and medieval palaces at Cheddar in Somerset during the late 1950s and early 1960s revealed the remains of a structure that appears to have been a horse mill, as does the find nearby of a millstone that was too large to have been used for a handmill. A map of the site lends further weight to this observation, showing as it does that the site of the mill was well away from the stream nearby.94 This structure has been dated to some time during the tenth century.95 Outside Italy, Spain, France and the British Isles, the earliest records of the vertical-wheeled watermill in the Netherlands date from the twelfth century, although it appears to have been uncommon there until the seventeenth century.96 By the tenth or eleventh

92 Langdon (2004), p. 72. See also Chapter One, n. 62, for post-Domesday evidence for horizontal-wheeled watermills. 93 See Gimpel (1988), p. 229. Relying as he does on Margaret Hodgen’s paper of 1939, “Domesday Watermills”, Gimpel’s figure for the number of watermills at Domesday is incorrect. 94 Colvin (1963), ii, p. 909. 95 Holt (1988), pp. 17–19, citing P.A. Rahtz, The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar: Excavations 1960 –62, BAR, British ser., 65, London, 1979, pp. 124–32, 234–6; P.A. Rahtz, “The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar”, Medieval Archaeology, Vols. 6–7, 1962–3, pp. 61–2. 96 Gardner (1949–51), p. 199.

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century, it seems to have spread to Scandinavia and possibly also to the Baltic, and to Iceland by around 1200.97

Ireland Ireland was never subjected to direct Roman rule, but had extensive contacts with the Mediterranean from at least Roman times. During the prehistoric period, Ireland’s social and political landscape was shaped by a complex mix of indigenous and continental influences. By the fourth century CE, six principal dynastic territories had emerged. These consisted of Uladh (Ulster) in the north, Cruachain (Connacht) in the west, Breagh (or Braga) in the east, Laigin (Leinster) in the south-east, Caisil (Munster) in the south-west and Midhe (Meath) in the centre. Breagh is generally considered to have held sway over the other dynastic territories during this early period. Christianity first arrived in Ireland in the guise of the bishop of Auxerre, Palladius, in 431 CE, soon followed by Secundinus, founding bishop of Armagh, in 444, and Patrick the Briton a decade or so later.98 These and other early Gallic and British missionaries during the fifth and sixth centuries had a profound impact on early medieval Irish society, establishing a literate culture based around churches and monasteries that was built on the foundations of druidism. However, while Christianity had some civilising influence on the Irish, and Celtic Christianity was exported far and wide throughout pagan Europe from the middle of the sixth century onwards, it did not bring political unity to the island. A number of new territories and dynasties emerged in the century leading up to St Patrick’s arrival. The northern dynasties were dominated for 500 years by three clans that descended from the high king (Ard Ri) of Ireland, Eochu Mugmedón, who ruled in the middle of the fourth century. The three clans were the Ui Niall, Ui Briuin and Ui Fiachra. Between the seventh and early tenth centuries, a federation of dynasties known as the Eoghanachta domi-

97 On the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Baltic, see Forbes (1953), p. 51. According to Wikander (personal communication), there is evidence of verticalwheeled watermills in Scandinavia from as early as the tenth or eleventh centuries. On Finland, see Hirsjärvi & Wailes (1968–9). On Iceland, see Tucker (1972). 98 Ó Cróinin (1995), pp. 14, 22–3.

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nated the south-west, while the Ui Dunlainge emerged as the dominant clan in the south-east by the middle of the seventh century. Two periods of Norse and Danish invasion between 795 and c. 850 CE, and 914 and c. 950 CE witnessed the establishment of Viking settlements at Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Limerick, as well as raiding camps in a number of other places. The Ostmen (Vikings) played an important role in the politics and economy of Ireland over the subsequent centuries, including their participation in a number of Gaelic Irish dynastic disputes that culminated in an alliance with the Gaelic resistance to Henry II’s invasion of Ireland in the middle of the twelfth century. As in other parts of Western Europe and around the Mediterranean, water-powered milling played an important role in the early medieval Irish economy. A number of early Irish manuscripts suggest that water-powered milling was not only a pre-Christian phenomenon in Ireland, but that it was also developed by a number of different groups of varying social status. An early Irish legal compilation dating to c. 600 CE known as the Senchas Mór (“The Great Tradition”) suggests that watermills were already common enough by the end of the sixth century to be the subject of laws of distraint, while a law tract on status known as Crith Gablach (“branched purchase”) dating from c. 700 “specifies the degree of ownership in a mill (i.e. in full or in part) appropriate to the various ranks of society, that clearly indicates that the use of water-powered mills was widespread amongst the early medieval population of Ireland.”99 Both of these documents provide us with reasonable grounds for concluding that it was not the great Irish monasteries built in the middle of the sixth century that introduced water-powered milling to Ireland, and that it had, in fact, arrived by other means. According to Rynne, it was not until the eighth century that Church-owned mills were common enough throughout Ireland to be referred to in contemporary legal texts.100 A sixth/seventh century law tract known as De Ceithri Slichtaib Athgabála (“On the four sections of distraint”) is significant for recording

99 Rynne (2000), p. 4. Cf. Ó Cróinin (1995), Ch. 4, who states that the early Irish laws mention that “the ‘strong’ farmer (bóaire febsa) had both a kiln and a barn, together with part-ownership in a mill; the average small farmer (ócaire), by contrast, had only a share in all three.” 100 Rynne (2000), pp. 4–5.

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“the earliest vernacular terms for horizontal-wheeled mill components in any European language”.101 Another, known as Uraicecht Becc (“Little Primer for law students”) contains the first reference to millwrighting as a specialised craft from anywhere in medieval Europe.102 These two documents clearly indicate that water-powered milling was a well-established tradition in Ireland by the sixth or seventh century. The archaeological record for watermilling in early medieval Ireland is equally significant. According to the latest analysis undertaken by Niall Brady from the Discovery Programme, forty watermill sites from the early medieval period (340–1150 CE) have been dated by dendrochronology. Of the ninety-seven mills that have been identified on these and other sites, only nine are vertical-wheeled watermills.103 These include what may turn out to be the earliest mill site yet disovered in Ireland, in Killoteran, County Waterford, tentatively dated to the fourth to the seventh centuries, and another from the monastery of Nendrum in County Down from the early seventh century. It should also be noted that the biggest cluster of mill sites can be found in the period from c. 750–850 CE, a period associated with agricultural development, population growth and artistic achievement—Ireland’s “Golden Age”.104 The find from Killoteran is highly significant for a number of reasons. First, if the initial dating proves accurate, it suggests that watermilling was introduced to Ireland during the Roman occupation of Britain, well before the arrival of Christianity and the monasteries.105 Second, it appears to have been a tide mill, which will make it the earliest tide mill yet recorded, again if the initial dating proves accurate. Third, it suggests that although vertical-wheeled watermills were possibly the earliest type of watermill to be introduced to Ireland, it was the horizontal-wheeled watermill that was more commonly built.

101

Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 6. 103 Horizontal-wheeled watermills continued to be built until well into the later medieval period, however. See Rynne (1998), for a discussion of the site of a horizontal-wheeled watermill dated by dendrochronology to 1228 in Corcannon, Co. Wexford. 104 Brady (2005). 105 Citing a comment made by Michael Duignan in an article on early Irish agriculture from 1944, Brady notes that the Old Irish word for watermill, muilenn, was a Latin borrowing from molina; Brady (2005). 102

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Examples of both horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills date from as early as the first half of the seventh century in Ireland. Colin Rynne notes that “[t]he sites dated by dendrochronology include the earliest-known tide mills, the earliest close association of vertical and horizontal-wheeled mills in Post-Roman Europe and the earliest European twin-flume horizontal-wheeled mills.”106 Brady notes that the archaeological finds of extensive mill complexes at Nendrum, Little island in County Cork and more recently, Raystown in County Meath, suggests that the early Irish economy was perhaps more active and vibrant than has hitherto been accepted.107 Future research will hopefully shed more light on this topic. The much larger number of archaeological finds of watermills in Ireland when compared to England during this period requires some elucidation. We know that mainland Britain experienced wave after wave of migration and invasion from continental Europe between the early fifth and early eleventh centuries, as well as a series of political and economic crises. While the larger number of Irish finds may simply reflect the larger amount of work that has been done there, it seems more likely that it has more to do with the history of the island. The lack of mechanisation of Irish agriculture up to the 1860s explains the lack of disturbance of excavated sites, but the sheer number of sites suggests that watermills may have been more common in Ireland in the early medieval period than in most other parts of Europe.108 The existence of female grinding slaves within the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms up until the ninth century may also have provided an institutionalised alternative to watermilling within preConquest England until that time.109

106

Rynne (2000), p. 14. Brady (2005). 108 Colin Rynne, personal communication, March 2005. 109 See Bennett & Elton (1898), Vol. I, pp. 163–8; Bloch (1967), pp. 150 & 164, n. 33; Rahtz & Bullough (1977), p. 27. Despite the beliefs of some historians of technology, slavery remained an institution within England and other parts of Europe until well into the middle ages and the arrival of Christianity. See, for example: Hale (1865), p. xiii, Hilton (1965), p. 8, and Leiston Abbey Cartulary & Butley Priory Charters, ms. 51, on England, where slaves attached to monastic estates are described; Verhulst (1991) on France; Squatriti (1998), pp. 151–2 on Italian miller-slaves. The authoritative text on the subject of slavery in early medieval England is Pelteret (1995). 107

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This chapter has examined the development of the watermill and related hydraulic technologies in early medieval China, Japan, Italy, Islamic countries, England and Ireland. The evidence suggests that the pathways of development of these various technologies were very much dependent upon the kinds of social and economic conditions that prevailed within the societies concerned. In the mercantile-agricultural imperialist states of China and the Near East, there is archaeological and/or primary textual evidence to suggest extensive use of vertical- and/or horizontal-wheeled watermills from at least the early seventh century in the case of China, and from the seventh or eighth centuries in Oman, Iraq and Iran. It would seem, however, that the Chinese were utilizing cam-operated mechanisms powered by gearless vertical waterwheels from as early as the first century BCE, and vertical-wheeled watermills as early as the third century CE. In the primarily agricultural pre-feudal societies of early medieval Italy, Ireland and England, the horizontal-wheeled watermill appears to have been the preferred powered milling technology from between the fifth or sixth century until at least the ninth century. It was after this period that political and economic power became increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, and secular and ecclesiastical lords began to build vertical-wheeled watermills in ever greater numbers. In China, watermills appear to have been privately owned by imperial concubines, powerful eunuchs, Buddhist monasteries and rich merchants, but were considered of secondary importance to the irrigation system by local and imperial governments. They were consequently brought under imperial bureaucratic control by the end of the tenth century, something that does not appear to have happened anywhere else in the world. In the Near East, on the other hand, it would seem that some kind of government oversight of watermill operation and construction was involved, as their location below dams and within irrigation tunnels, both of which were presumably constructed and operated by the state, would suggest. There is no evidence, however, that either animal-powered mills or verticalwheeled watermills existed as early in China as they did in the Mediterranean. To the contrary, it would seem likely that the former only arrived in China by the end of the second century CE, and the latter in the early third century. It is not clear when the

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horizontal-wheeled watermill first appeared in China, although its appearance in the Near East is dated to the late third or early fourth century. In Italy and Ireland, the breakdown and absence of centralized political authority appears to have stimulated the widespread use of the horizontal-wheeled watermill. Both societies appear to have begun building large numbers of these mills during the fifth century, so that by the turn of the sixth century, the Irish had developed a formal legal framework for handling mill-related disputes and purchases. In Italy, these mills were owned and operated by individuals and collectives from diverse social backgrounds, including those from the lower orders of society. In Ireland, although the right to own watermills was mainly restricted to lords and wealthy commoners, there is evidence from the early Irish legal tracts that it was not uncommon for small farmers to have a share in a mill. Nevertheless, the arrival of watermill technology in both societies happened before Christian institutions such as monasteries had established themselves, contrary to the assertions of many historians of technology. In Italy, there is some evidence for the displacement of horizontal-wheeled watermills by vertical-wheeled watermills from the ninth century onwards when monasteries and the nobility began to assert their presence throughout the region. In other words, far from reintroducing watermill technology to Western Europe per se, the Church and nobility reintroduced and imposed upon their social inferiors a form of watermill technology that was advantageous to their own social and economic interests; a form of technology that had in the interim fallen into disuse in many areas, or had only previously been used in limited contexts. These observations are given further support by research conducted on Islamic Spain, where similar clanbased social structures as those in early medieval Ireland and the Lombard-controlled regions of Italy favoured horizontal- over verticalwheeled watermills until the Christian conquest and the imposition of seigneurial monopolies. In England, although vertical-wheeled watermills were established throughout Britannia by the Romans, there is no evidence for either vertical- or horizontal-wheeled watermills in the post-Roman period until the late seventh century in the case of the archaeological evidence and the mid-eighth century in the case of the manuscript evidence. However, only a third of the small number of archaeological finds revealed vertical-wheeled watermills, suggesting that the construction

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and operation of horizontal-wheeled watermills in early medieval England was also more common there during this period, presumably due to the weaker lordship and greater diversity of mill ownership that was characteristic of that time. It is far from clear, however, how many of the mills recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 were of the horizontal- or vertical-wheeled types, although it seems likely that most of them were of the latter kind. It is also important to note that the kinds of applications to which water-powered devices were put were somewhat different in the western and eastern societies studied. The Chinese and Japanese appear to have used industrial waterwheels and watermills for powering forge bellows, husking rice and beating iron, as well as grinding grain, while early Islamic societies used them for an even wider range of tasks, including fulling cloth, preparing pulp for papermaking, crushing mineral ore and hulling rice. In Italy, Ireland and England, however, watermills appear to have been used exclusively for grinding grain until the second half of the middle ages, when the industrial waterwheel and watermill also made their first appearances. Once again, the range of applications to which water-powered devices were put appears to be a function of the relative sophistication of the economy and modes of production within the societies concerned, an observation that is even more clearly borne out with respect to the discussion of industrial mills later in the book.

CHAPTER THREE

TIDE MILLS AND WINDMILLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Introduction In one very important respect, tide mills and windmills served a similar technological function for medieval societies: to provide milling capacity where the local watercourses were insufficiently powerful or regular to run a conventional horizontal- or vertical-wheeled watermill. The movements of the tide and the wind could be harnessed as viable substitutes for the flow of water down a stream or river. Like a stream or river, the movements of the tide could be made more dependable by the creation of ponds, leats and sluices, but stormy weather or the close proximity of the moon were potentially serious hazards for tide mills. Windmills similarly faced damage or destruction in a storm, but unlike conventional watermills and tide mills, whatever means used for channelling the force which powered them had to be incorporated into the mill machinery and housing, and this is indeed what happened as two quite distinct windmill technologies were developed, i.e., the horizontal and vertical types of windmill. This chapter will argue that climatic and geographical considerations were of central significance to the initial genesis and location of these three distinct but related kinds of milling technology, but it was economic considerations that primarily shaped their respective fates as providers of milling capacity for communities with limited water flow. For Lynn White Jr. and those influenced by him, including Jean Gimpel, Walter Minchinton and Edward Kealey, the origins of both the tide mill and the vertical windmill were to be found in Western Europe between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and were paradigmatic of the “interest in additional sources of power” that supposedly characterized European inventiveness during the middle ages in general.1 The evidence presented in this chapter paints a far more 1 See White (1964); Gimpel (1988, 1st pub. 1976); Minchinton (1982); Kealey (1987). Richard Holt was the first scholar to systematically critique these views in Holt (1988), (1989), (1996).

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complex and uncertain picture, however. Archaeological fieldwork and research conducted on the medieval manuscript sources over the last few decades has revealed that tide mills are at least five centuries older than has generally been believed, while the geographical origins of, and technical traditions which inspired, both windmills and tide mills are far from being settled. This chapter examines the evidence for the earliest tide mills and windmills. It draws on material from England, Ireland, France, Italy, the Low Countries, Spain, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, as well as medieval Persia, China, and other parts of Asia. It looks at the earliest evidence for the tide mill and speculates on its origins. It examines whether the tide mill constituted a new form of power technology, and if there is any compelling evidence for it having gradually come into more widespread use in the North Atlantic from the eleventh century onwards. It similarly looks at the earliest evidence for the horizontal windmill and whether it might have been a direct progenitor of the vertical windmill. It also examines whether there is any evidence for the earliest version of the vertical windmill before the late twelfth century. The design of each technology and the materials used to construct them is also discussed.

Tide mills One aspect of milling which has remained very much under-researched is the history of the tide mill. Although one might get the impression from the work of White and Gimpel that the technology of the tide mill was somehow radically different from that which had existed previously,2 tide mills are simply conventional watermills that are operated by tidal power. Both horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills were adapted for use in tidal waterways. The main difference between the technologies employed in conventional watermills and tide mills was the manner in which their respective ponds, dams and leets were constructed. In all other respects, however, the technology of the mills themselves was identical.3

2

See White (1964), pp. 84–5; Gimpel (1988), pp. 23–4, 267. My thanks to Richard Holt for pointing out that these clarificatory points need to be made. 3

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Tide mills relied on a system of channels and ponds to capture the water from the flood tide, which was then released to power the mill as the tide ebbed. They were severely restricted with regard to the kinds of places in which they could be situated. Rivers and streams that were relatively close to the sea and therefore subject to tidal variation, as well as estuaries and coastal harbours, were typical locations at which they were sited. Areas with a low tidal range were probably unsuitable, although this has not been conclusively established.4 When tide mills were built near the mouths of estuaries or in harbours, there was always the possibility that they could be inundated during storms or during an abnormally high tide. This meant that they had either to be built with earthworks to protect them, or sited in places where they were relatively protected by offshore islands.5 Such problems posed severe limitations upon their long-term viability in other situations.6 Although they could not operate as consistently as conventional watermills, six to twelve hours of work per day could be expected from a well-functioning mill. Medieval English tide mills were usually built with a millpond or ponds that were fed from a channel which led to the tidal zone, while the ponds of French tide mills were generally formed by the construction of an embankment or dam across a river, stream or small bay. In both cases, however, the millpond admitted the incoming tide through a swinging gate or gates (known in southern England as a “sea-hatch”) which were closed by the greater pressure inside the pond once the tide had reached its peak. When the miller was ready, he or she would open the sluice gate to the mill-race and allow the dammed water to drive the waterwheel, which subsequently flowed back out to sea through a separate channel. Some (postmedieval?) tide mills were constructed with two waterwheels driving millstones at each end of the millhouse. One channel feeding water into the millpond from the incoming tide drove the first mill, while a channel taking the water back to the sea on the ebb tide drove the second mill.7 4

Holt (1988), p. 133. Cf. Rynne (1988), Vol. I, pp. 258–60. See Royle (1982). 6 Holt (1988), pp. 34, 88–9, 133–7; Holt (2000), pp. 68–9. 7 One such example is reported by Minchinton (1982), p. 347, at Falmouth in Cornwall. The set-up is illustrated on p. 346 of his article. Based on Minchinton’s chronology of English and Welsh tide mills, the Falmouth tide mill appears to be dated to c. 1670–c. 1910. 5

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White and Gimpel both argued that the earliest tide mills are from eleventh century Europe,8 although there was already evidence to the contrary with respect to tide mills in Basra in the late tenth century.9 According to White, the earliest tide mill was “operating in the lagoons at the head of the Adriatic” in 1044, while another existed in Venice in 1078.10 A third operated at the entrance to the port of Dover that was built between 1066 and 1086.11 Forbes mentions a fourth early tide mill “near the mouth of the Adour” dated to 1125–33, but provides no source.12 With regard to the Italian examples, it has been argued that these were floating mills rather than tide mills that were located on ships “which were powered by the ebb and flow of the tidal current.”13 However, if such mills existed, it is hard to see how the gearing of a vertical-wheeled watermill could have been set up to work the millstones when the tide was coming in as well as going out. While this would not have been a problem with a horizontal-wheeled watermill, there is still the issue of how the dressing (or grooves) of the millstones could efficiently cut the grain if they had to rotate in both directions.14 It has been argued, furthermore, that there is insufficient tidal range within the Mediterranean to power tide mills,15 although Colin Rynne has noted that the report of a French traveller named Greffin Affagart after a trip to Venice in 1533 suggests that there may be some basis for believing otherwise. Affagart recounted that he had seen a watermill on the island of Murano that was moved “by water from the sea on a wheel when the sea swells and subsides”,16 clearly

8 White (1964), p. 84; Gimpel (1988), p. xiv. Gimpel’s only source of information on tide mills (pp. 23–4) appears to be Wailes (1938–9), to whom he characteristically provides no acknowledgement. 9 See Forbes (1958), p. 614, for one of the earliest (uncited) references to the tide mills of Basra in the history of technology literature. These mills are discussed in more detail shortly. 10 White (1964), p. 85, citing G. Zanetti, Delle origini di alcuni arti principali presso i Veneziani, Venice, 1841, pp. 65–6. 11 Ibid., citing Domesday Book, ed. A Farley, London, 1783, I, p. 1. Forbes (1956), p. 610, wrongly states that the reference is to a mill “dating from before the Conquest”. 12 Forbes (1956), p. 610. 13 Minchinton (1979), p. 778. See also Bennett & Elton (1899), p. 63, for a similar interpretation. 14 I thank John Langdon for noting these problems. 15 For example, Minchinton (1979), pp. 778–9, 785. 16 Rynne (1988), Vol. I, pp. 246–7.

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indicating that conventional tide mills could have operated within the Mediterranean, and that there were examples of them in Venice in the sixteenth century, if not earlier. As Rynne has also pointed out, “there are indeed some very clear indications that Italian Renaissance engineers were fully aware of the tide mill.” These include the earliest technical description of a tide mill in Mariano Taccola’s De Ingeneis (early fifteenth century), and a design for a horizontal-wheeled tide mill in Faustus Veranzio’s Machinae Novae (1617).17 With regard to the watermill cited by White that is supposedly mentioned in Domesday Book at Dover, Larking’s translation of the relevant passage is as follows: In the entrance to the port of Dover, there is one mill which shatters almost every ship, by the great swell of the sea, and does very great damage to the king and his men; and it was not there in the time of King Edward. Concerning this, the nephew of Herbert says that the bishop of Bayeux granted leave for its erection to his uncle, Herbert, son of Ivo.18

While some scholars have argued that it is not clear that this was, indeed, a tide mill,19 most now accept that it was.20 Up until the early 1980s, the earliest tide mills that were wellattested in the sources, and the only medieval tide mills which had been documented outside of Europe, were situated at Basra in modern-day Iraq, which is a town on the Shatt al Arab near the Persian Gulf.21 The source for this reference is the great Muslim geographer Al-Muqaddisi, from his book Ahsan al-taqasim fi Ma"rifat al-Aqalim, dated to c. 990 CE:

17

Ibid., pp. 249–52. Larking (1869), p. 93. 19 Minchinton cites a paper by George M. Meyer, in which the latter suggests that it may have been a conventional watermill that was sited at the end of a jetty and which utilized an extended mill race from the mouth of the River Dour along that jetty to maximize the head of water reaching the mill at low tides. Although Meyer’s theory may help to explain the turbulence created by the mill, Minchinton concedes that tide mills in other areas were known to cause such turbulence. See Minchinton (1979), pp. 779–80, citing George M. Meyer, “Early Water-Mills in Relation to Changes in the Rainfall of East Kent”, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 53, No. 224, 1927, pp. 407–19. 20 See, for example, Rahtz & Bullough (1977), p. 24, Holt (1988), p. 133, Holt (2000), p. 68. 21 Minchinton (1979), p. 777, wrongly states that Basra is a coastal town, when it is actually about 80 km inland, although still obviously subject to tidal variation. 18

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part one ‒ chapter three The tide is a marvel and a blessing for the people of Basra. The water visits them twice every day, and it enters the rivers . . . And when the tide ebbs it is also useful for the working of mills because they are situated at the mouth of the river and its tributaries.22

Apart from the earlier cited Italian references from the eleventh century, the only other documentary evidence for the early use of tide mills in Europe is an Anglo-Saxon charter dated to 949 which refers to what may well have been a tide mill in Reculver, Kent, which would make it roughly contemporaneous with the Basra tide mills.23 However, the remains of the earliest tide mills that have yet been discovered are in Ireland. In the early 1980s, a horizontal-wheeled watermill and a vertical-wheeled watermill were excavated on Littleisland in county Cork, which were subsequently established by dendrochronology to date from 630 CE in the case of the horizontalwheeled mill, and shortly afterwards in the case of the vertical one.24 A few years ago, another find was made which has proven to be even earlier. During an inter-tidal survey of Strangford Lough conducted between 1995 and 2000, a team of archaeologists from the University of Ulster discovered the remains of a horizontal-wheeled watermill and dams in a partially silted-up bay at the site of Nendrum monastery on Mahee Island on the east coast of Northern Ireland.25 Nendrum was a major early Christian monastery which flourished between the seventh and tenth centuries. Archaeological evidence at the site, including that for the tide mill, dates back to the early seventh century.

22 See Minchinton (1979), pp. 777–8, citing Mark J. de Goeje (ed.), Ahsan altaqasim fi Ma"rifat al-Aqalim, Leiden, 1906, pp. 124–5. See also Hill (1998), pp. V-183, and al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 53, where the same mill is cited without reference. 23 Rahtz & Bullough (1977), p. 24, citing Anglo-Saxon Charters, ms. 546. See also Holt (1988), p. 133. The reference is to a mylenfleotes mu"pan, i.e., literally “mouth of the mill fleet”, a fleet being a tidal stream, river or creek. 24 See Wikander (1985), p. 155; Rynne (2000), pp. 13, 17, 19, 27, 30, 40, 42, 49. 25 All of the information cited here is drawn from Anon. (2000), and Williams (2000). My thanks to Richard Morrison, Environment Australia, and Richard Holt for almost simultaneously drawing my attention to this material.

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Excavation on the seaward-side of a massive stone structure— which included a 140 meter long stone wall with a clay core— revealed the base of a wheelhouse from a horizontal-wheeled watermill. Pottery found at the site was dated to 787 CE. Archaeologists were able to excavate the parts of some early timber flumes or penstocks, as well as a later sandstone flume, a complete pair of granite millstones, some panels from the collapsed millhouse, and the morticed oak hubs and several paddles from three waterwheels. They also found a quantity of grain thought to be barley, and the remains of a timber-revetted mill dam that was much larger than the other they had found, which was dated by dendrochronology to 619–621 CE [Fig. 3.1].

Fig. 3.1. Reconstruction of the wheelhouse of an early medieval horizontal-wheeled tide mill at Nendrum, Mahee Island, Northern Ireland, early 7th c. CE. Courtesy of Mr Tom McErlean, University of Ulster.

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A manuscript from the eighth century reports that there was a community of four hundred monks at Nendrum. Based on a comparison with English monasteries for the same period, it is probably reasonable to assume that there were at least as many dependent retainers. Considering how much labour would have been required to produce enough flour to feed all of these people from handmills, i.e., between two and three hundred man-hours per day, or more than twenty-five full-time grinders, there was obviously a strong incentive to come up with some kind of technological solution. Monasteries were one of the locations in which watermill technology was first extensively applied in the early medieval period (both in Europe and in China), so there were already many precedents for the Nendrum monks to follow. However, because the monastery was sited on a small island with no streams, the only solution appears to have been to develop a mill that was driven by the tide. As already noted in Chapters One and Two, what appears to be an even earlier find of a vertical-wheeled undershot mill at Killoteran that may also have been a tide mill has been tentatively dated to the fourth to seventh centuries. However, details of the find by Donald Murphy and colleagues are yet to be published.26 Whether these very early Irish tide mills represent the origins of this technology remains an open question. As with the origins of the rotary handmill and the horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills, it may well be that the principle of using the tide to run conventional watermills was conceived independently in more than one geographical location. It is, of course, not inconceivable that necessity proved the mother of invention for those who built the mills of Killoteran and Nendrum, and that these were indeed the first locations in the world to harness the power of the tides to run watermills. Certainly such an interpretation would do much to bolster claims for the inventiveness of early medieval Irish society. The most information that we have subsequent to these early tide mills is for England, France, Portugal and Spain, and has been compiled by a handful of scholars from very different disciplinary backgrounds. This material is worth examining in some detail. The first scholar to do any extensive work on the subject was the pioneering mill historian Rex Wailes in the late 1930s, who identified

26

Brady (2005).

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twenty-three tide mills in England and Wales, of which sixteen were firmly dated to before 1500. Thirteen of these sixteen mills were located on the Thames or one of its tributaries. At least half of the sixteen mills, most of which were on the Thames, do not appear to have survived the middle ages. The locations, owners and earliest recorded dates for them are reproduced in Table 3.1 and discussed in more detail below. Wailes did not provide dates for six of the mills listed. The tide mill at Beaulieu to which he refers is not mentioned in the abbey’s cartulary, but as the abbey was founded in 1205, it was presumably built at around that time to serve the monks and their retainers.27 With respect to the Eling tide mill, the earliest reference to a mill on the royal manor of Eling is from Domesday Book, and there seems little cause to doubt that this mill was indeed a tide mill from this early date.28 A better idea of the dates for the tide mills held Table 3.1. Dates and locations of sixteen tide mills in England and Wales before 1500 Location

Date

1–3

Bromley-by-Bow, River Lea, London

>1135

4

Woodbridge, Deben Estuary, Suffolk Horsley Down, London Baynard’s Castle, Fleet River, London Milton (now Southend-on-Sea), Essex St Osyth Creek, Essex Corringham & Mucking, Essex Purfleet, Mar Dyke, Essex & Walton on the Naze, Essex Beaulieu, Beaulieu River, Hampshire Eling, Eling River, Hampshire

5 & 6 7 & 8 9 10 11 & 12 13 & 14 15 16

Source: Wailes (1938–9)

27 28

See The Beaulieu Cartulary. Southgate (1999), pp. 3–4.

Owner

William de Montfitchet/ Stratford Langthorne monastery >1170 Baldwin de Ufford/ Woodbridge Priory 1239–1307 ? >1307 Knights Templar >1299

?

>1491 n.d. n.d.

St Osyth’s Abbey Barking Abbey Knights Hospitaller idem Beaulieu Abbey

n.d. n.d.

Crown/Winchester College

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by the Knights Hospitaller and Barking Abbey could no doubt be determined by a search of their extant records, but I have not had an opportunity to do so. William de Montfitchet apparently held three mills next to the causeway at Stratford in Bromley that were given to Stratford Langthorne monastery in 1135 at the bequest of Queen Matilda, one of which was removed during the reign of Edward VI after an act was passed to make the River Lea navigable. The two remaining mills were rebuilt in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and were still operating in the late 1930s.29 The Hospitallers’ mill at Purfleet must have been close to the mouth of the Mar Dyke in order for it to have been able to harness the tidal flow as a tributary of the Thames. Their tide mill at Walton on the Naze was at the head of Walton Channel in Pennyhole Bay, where it would have been protected by a number of islands. Wailes reports that it had a pond of about 12 hectares and was demolished in 1921.30 Barking Abbey’s tide mill at Mucking was presumably close to the mouth of the Thames near the extant village of Muckingford, while that at Corringham was probably located on Holehaven Creek, a little further downstream. The tide mill at Southend-on-Sea was at the mouth of the Thames, and was destroyed by the sea in 1327, although Wailes notes that it is not recorded as operational in a survey of the manor of Milton completed shortly after 1284. A windmill was built in 1299 to replace it.31 The Templars’ tide mills at Baynard’s Castle in London were destroyed by flooding in 1307.32 Those at nearby Horsley Down stood at the time of Edward I, although there appears to be no subsequent record of them.33 The tide mills at Woodbridge, Beaulieu and Eling still stood and were operational in the late 1930s, but had obviously been substantially, if not totally, rebuilt. The Woodbridge mill had a pond with an area of about 3 hectares and a head of 2 metres, and was operated as both a breast shot and an undershot mill via a sluice operating independently in two horizontal sections.34 29

Wailes (1938–9), pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 4, citing The Engineer, Feb. 26, 1909. 31 Ibid., citing Trans. Southend-on-Sea and District Antiquarian and Historical Society, Vol. 2, 1932, pp. 113–167. 32 Ibid., citing Patent Roll, I John. 33 Ibid., citing Old and New London, Vol. 5, p. 46. 34 Ibid., p. 3. 30

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The Eling tide mill is a brick construction located at one end of a 60–70 metre long causeway. Located on a tidal creek leading to Southampton Water on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire, it was restored in the 1980s and is currently operating as a tourist attraction. Its head is about 3 metres and it can mill grain for a maximum of about 12 hours per day. The earliest surviving lease relating to the mill is from 1418, when the site of the former mill was let by Winchester College to Thomas Mydlington of Southampton for 13s. 4d. per annum after the first year. Thomas was obliged within two years to rebuild the mill and restore the causeway using stonework. The site was again extensively rebuilt in the early seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries.35 As mentioned earlier, the original tide mill may date back to the late eleventh century, as there is a reference in Domesday Book to a mill at Eling.36 The Beaulieu tide mill recorded by Wailes still stands and is built on the bridge across the Beaulieu River in the New Forest. It used both fresh water and the tide. At some stage in the past, there were two wheels operating in the one house. Unfortunately, there are no clear references to this mill in Beaulieu Abbey’s extant manuscripts, although a tanning mill and fulling mill within the abbey’s precincts that are recorded in its account book of 1269/70 may well refer to this site.37 Interestingly, Wailes notes that most of the tide mills in the east and south-east were made of timber, while those on the south coast were made of brick and those in the south-west and west of stone.38 Whether this was also true in the middle ages is not clear. The significance of all this material with respect to the debate about the efficacity of tide mills will be discussed in more detail shortly. In a research note published in Technology and Culture in the late 1970s, Walter Minchinton compiled evidence for a number of tide mills in England, France, the Low Countries, Portugal, Spain and Italy.39 In France, he found that a number of different scholars had uncovered evidence for the use of tide mills from the early twelfth

35

Southgate (1999), pp. 3–4, 16. Ibid., p. 3. 37 See The Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, pp. 210, 219, 221; Lucas (2003), Ch. 5, sn. 6.0. 38 Wailes (1938–9), p. 23. 39 Minchinton (1979). 36

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century in the Nantes region,40 as well as at Bayonne, the Labourd area, and in the barthes area of the Adour on the Nive.41 The Knights Templar apparently owned two “seawater” mills between Merquel and Mesquer in the Quimiac channel of Brittany in 1182.42 In the thirteenth century, tide mills are cited at St Bernard, and in Esbouc before 1251,43 as well as Fécamp Abbey at Veules in 1235 and at Ponte d’Ouve near Carentan in 1277.44 In the fourteenth century, the archbishop of Rouen owned two “mills of the sea” at Dieppe, and the Templars held one at La Rochelle before 1325.45 Minchinton does not provide details of how long these various mills continued to operate. In the mid-1980s, André Gaucheron published a detailed description of the extant tide mill of Trégastel in Brittany. The material in Gaucheron’s paper is worth summarising in some detail as an example of the kind of technology deployed in France as a contrast to that used in England. The Chevalier Bryant de Lannion apparently built the mill of Trégastel in 1373 on a manor given to him as a reward by Charles V for services rendered during the conquest of Brittany. The mill and dam are solidly built of large granite blocks, with the mill located about half way along the dam wall. The dam is over 100 metres long, and is 10 metres high at its highest point, with an 8 metre wide causeway running along the top of it. It is well-protected by a long, narrow harbour in which is located a string

40 Ibid., p. 780, citing George Beauchesne, “Les Possesions en Bretagne aux XIe et XIIe siècles des abbayes benedictines de Touraines, d’Anjou et de Normandie”, summarized in Positions des theses presentées a l’Ecole Nationale de Chartes pour l’annee 1935, Paris, 1935, p. 10. 41 Ibid., citing Eugene Goyhenêche, “Bayonne et la region Bayonnaise du XIIe au XVe siècle”, summarized in Ecole Nationale de Chartes: Positions des theses soutenues par les eleves de la promotion de 1949, Paris, 1949, p. 75. 42 Ibid., p. 781, citing Claude Rivals, “Tidemills in France”, Third Transactions of the International Molinological Society, ed. M. van Hoogswaker, 1973, p. 160. Royle (1982), p. 243, claims that there were “fourteen small tide mills that operated in that [Rance?] estuary [in Brittany] from the twelfth century onwards”, although he does not cite any evidence. 43 Ibid., citing Goyhenêche, op. cit. 44 Ibid., citing for Veules, Cartulaire de Fecamp, fol. xxxvii, 2 (viam que ducit ad molendinum maris); and for Ponte d’Ouve, Archives Nationale, Paris: Trésor des Chartes, Carentan no. 1, Carton J.222. 45 Ibid., citing for Dieppe, Manuscripts des Archives du Département de la Seine Inférieure: Cartulaire de Philippe d’Alencon, fol. cccxlvi; for La Rochelle, Henri Goblot, “Les Moulins à mer de La Rochelle”, L’Onde: Bulletin d’information no. 2 de l’Association les Meuniers d’Eau, Winter 1977–8, p. 12.

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of islets and shoals. Three openings in the dam wall allow the tide to ebb and flow. It operated for two periods of six hours per day until the early 1930s.46 In the Netherlands, Minchinton found that there is evidence of the use of tide mills from 1220,47 and at Rupelmonde in Flanders from the fourteenth century.48 In Portugal, there are some indications of a tide mill in the Algarve in 1290 and in the Targas estuary by 1313, as well as Aveiro near the mouth of the River Vouga by 1449.49 More recently, W. Th. van der Veur and E. van Wijk have mapped known tide mills around the Channel, including Dutch mills from the middle ages, although I have not had an opportunity to read their paper.50 According to Antxon Sorondo, in Spain, “[t]here used to be a large number of tide mills in the Gulf of Gascony, i.e., Lequeitio, Arteaga, Murueta, Busturia, Cortezubi, Plencia, Lejona, Somorrostro, Baracaldo, Zumaya, Orio, San Sebastian, Pasajes, Fuenterrabia, SaintJean-de-Luz, Sojoa, Bayona, etc.”51 This area encompasses the north coast of Spain down to Portugal. He also notes that among the Special Laws of Vizcaya, there is a law dating to 1528 which orders measures to be taken for the construction of tide mills.52 In the early 1980s, there was a tide mill still working at Arteaga in Vizcaya. This mill, known as “Ozollo-Errote” was, at the time, the only tide mill still functioning in the Euskal-Herria region.53 While Sorondo’s article suggests that tide mills were certainly commonplace in the Gulf of Gascony, he provides no clear indication of when most of these mills were built or for how long they continued to operate.

46

Gaucheron (1984). Minchinton (1979), p. 781, citing A. Tutein Nolthenius, “Getij- en watermolens in Vlaanderen”, Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Vol. 73, 1956, p. 186. 48 Ibid., citing Nolthenius, op. cit., pp. 162–7. 49 Ibid., pp. 781–2, citing Fernando Castel-Branco, “A Plea for the Study of Tide Mills in Portugal”, First Transactions of the International Molinological Society, Lyngby, Denmark, 1978, pp. 80–4. 50 W. Th. van der Veur & E. van Wijk, “De getijmolens van Middelburg”, Waterstaats-geschiedenis, Vol. 2, 1999, pp. 57–66. I thank John Langdon for pointing out the existence of this article to me. 51 Sorondo (1984), p. 467. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., p. 468. See also Curwen (1944), p. 37 for some brief references to tide mills of northern Spain. 47

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We have already seen that the earliest tide mills in Ireland were a mixture of horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills. The medieval English and Welsh examples seem to have all been vertical. Those from France were apparently a mixture of the two types, while those that have been cited in the Americas were imports from Spain, and had horizontal wheels.54 In the late 1970s, Minchinton proposed that there was a steady rise in the number of tide mills along the Atlantic seaboard of Western Europe from the eleventh century onwards, a claim whose lineage can be traced back to White and Gimpel.55 Including the sixteen English and Welsh tide mills located by Wailes in the late 1930s, Minchinton claimed to have found evidence for fifty-three tide mills throughout England and Wales between Domesday and c. 1500.56 Most of these sites are clustered around the Thames and Tamar estuaries, as well as the Southampton region.57 There seems little reason to doubt that tide mills were indeed a fairly common feature in medieval England and Wales, particularly in areas where there was limited capacity to site watermills on local rivers and streams. However, Minchinton’s argument that there was a steady rise in the number of tide mills between the medieval and modern periods is based on the assumption that a cumulative total of all documentary sources that he was able to uncover represents such a steady rise, and the additional assumption that tide mills were more profitable or just as profitable as conventional watermills.58 Both of these assumptions are flawed. As Holt pointed out in The Mills of Medieval England (1988), Minchinton’s list “shows no sign of the substantial decline in milling activity that took place after 1350”.59 Although there is a severe drop in the numbers of “new” tide mills recorded by Minchinton from twenty-seven in the thirteenth century to eight in the fourteenth cen54 See: Minchinton (1982), p. 343; idem (1979), p. 782; Rynne (1988), Vol. I, p. 254. 55 See White (1964), pp. 84–5, Gimpel (1988), p. 23. 56 Minchinton (1982), pp. 343, 348–52. Including those mills discovered by Wailes, he cited a single tide mill from the eleventh century, ten from the twelfth century, twenty-seven from the thirteenth century, eight from the fourteenth century, six from the fifteenth century, and another seven which could only be described as “medieval”. 57 Ibid., p. 342. 58 Minchinton (1979), pp. 785–6. 59 Holt (1988), pp. 134–5.

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tury and six in the fifteenth century, he nevertheless glosses his own findings and bases his reasoning on a cumulative total. Holt’s observation that there was a general increase in the documentary sources for the sixteenth century onwards may well account for Minchinton’s higher figures for the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as would the general decline in manorial documentation during the fifteenth century as demesne agriculture rapidly disappeared.60 Holt was also the first scholar to look at the relative profitability of medieval tide mills in any detail. Examining the mixed fortunes of four tide mills at Walton in Suffolk, Milton Hall in Essex and Lydden in Kent, he argued that tide mills were developed in places in which the demand for milled grain could not be met by conventional watermills.61 However, because they were quite expensive to build and were subject to damage from flooding and storms, as soon as a cheaper alternative came along, i.e., the vertical windmill, their utility came under increasing scrutiny. Many lords who were forced to rebuild such mills were soon convinced that the economics of doing so did not stack up when compared with constructing windmills. For example, Battle Abbey and Blythburgh Priory both appear to have owned tide mills that were later replaced by windmills.62 Given the evidence from Battle and Blythburgh, as well as the fact that half of the medieval tide mills discovered by Wailes do not appear to have survived the middle ages, Holt’s argument that “there was no steady growth in [the] numbers [of tide mills] from the eleventh century onwards; indeed it appears that by the thirteenth century their value was being called into question”, is difficult to dispute.63 While Minchinton was arguably unsuccessful in his attempts to rebut Holt’s criticisms,64 Langdon has pointed out more recently that there is evidence that tide mills continued to be economically viable, and perhaps even thrived, in more densely populated areas such as the lower Thames basin and estuary and certain areas of the south coast of England.65

60

Richard Holt, personal communication, June 2001. Holt (1988), pp. 88–9, 133–7. These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. 62 See Chapter Four for more details. 63 See Holt (1988), p. 135, also Holt (2000), p. 68. 64 Minchinton (1990). 65 Langdon (2004), pp. 78–9, citing recent work by Martha Carlin and Derek Keene on the Thames estuary. 61

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For example, there were a number of what appear to have been tide mills that were held by the Crown at the Tower of London and Hadleigh Castle in Essex which continued to operate well into the fourteenth century, despite what would appear to have been the very high costs of operating and maintaining them. Nevertheless, given that they were all royal mills and served quite large populations, they were arguably atypical in the overall scheme of tide mill ownership during the fourteenth century. In the first instance, what appear to have been two or three tide mills on either side of the Tower of London were worked by the sluices of the moat beneath them, but it has not yet been determined whether there are any records of how much they cost to construct or how long they continued operating.66 In the second instance, the Edward II Pipe Rolls make frequent reference to the mill of Hadleigh Castle, which was situated at the edge of the estuary beneath the castle’s walls. Beside the mill was the castle wharf, with regard to which there are a number of references made to the difficulty of transporting goods during bad weather between the castle and the ships at wharf because of the steep slope and marshy ground.67 A new watermill was built in 1350 to replace the old one,68 and was again rebuilt between July 1375 and Michaelmas 1377 at a cost of £162 5s. 3d. This included work on the dam, floodgates, bays and wharf.69 This is a very large sum to have been spent on reconstructing a watermill, and is comparable with the £143 13s. spent in the 1290s on the reconstruction of the Lydden tide mill in Kent described by Holt.70 The economics of building and maintaining tide mills will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. It is nevertheless fairly clear from all this that while climatic and geographical considerations appear to have motivated the invention and construction of tide mills in areas with inadequate supplies of running water to site conventional watermills,71 the technological

66

Colvin (1963), ii, p. 718. Ibid., p. 662, citing SC 6/843/5 & 6; 1124/5, rot. 2, m.ij. Colvin is the first to have suggested that this was a tide mill. 68 Ibid., citing Pipe Roll 31 Edward III, rot.comp.5d; cf. E 101/502/7. 69 Ibid., p. 666. 70 Holt (1988), p. 88. 71 Michael Lewis has recently drawn my attention to an article of his titled, “The Mills of Meaux” from Industrial Archaeology Review, Vol. 18, 1996, pp. 165–79, in 67

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innovation of the vertical windmill and economic considerations with respect to the expense of maintaining tide mills played a major role in the subsequent rationalisation of their use in England and probably elsewhere along the Atlantic seaboard. As we will see clearly in Chapter Four, the comparative costs of building and maintaining tide mills as opposed to windmills were far higher, leading investors to carefully consider whether a much higher investment in a tide mill would reap the economic returns to represent a viable alternative to the much lower level of investment required to build and maintain a windmill.

Horizontal windmills The horizontal windmills of Persia differ markedly from the vertical windmills that proliferated in Europe from the thirteenth century onwards. The earliest detailed description of the design and construction of a horizontal windmill is given by the Arabic writer AlDimashqi around 1271, although the technology was already at least three centuries old by that stage. According to Al-Dimashqi, each windmill complex consisted of a two-storey structure that was built at the top of a tower, mountain or hill. The upper part of the structure contained the millstones, while the lower part contained a vertical spindle from which between six and twelve radial arms projected at regular intervals. These were in turn covered with fabric that was allowed to bulge in order to catch the wind. In the walls of the lower part of the structure containing the wind-wheel were apertures which were wider on the outside than on the inside, forcing the wind to increase its velocity as it entered the wheelhouse. As the wind-wheel rotated it directly drove the (upper?) millstone.72 According to a later Arabic historian, a series of shutters was used (presumably on the outside of the structure) to admit or shut out the wind, and thereby control the velocity at which the windmill turned. The which he discusses the contruction of two conventional watermills by the Cistercians on inadequate watercourses near Hull in the thirteenth century. Both were converted within a decade or two to tide mills (or rather, tidally-assisted mills) by enlarging the storage capacity behind them. 72 Forbes (1956), pp. 615–6, quoting Al-Dimashqi, Muhammad Ibn Abi Talib, Manuel de la Cosmographie du Moyen Age, trans A.F. Mehren, Leroux, Copenhagen/Paris, 1874, p. 247.

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whole structure does not appear to have had a roof. It was also reliant on a steady prevailing wind from one direction, usually the north [Fig. 3.2].73 The earliest literary reference to wind-wheels “which are customarily used by the people”, is contained in a text by the Banu Musa brothers from the early ninth century, titled Kitah al Hiyal (Book on Mechanical Devices).74 In the mid-tenth century, the Muslim geographers Al-Istakhri, Ibn Hauqal and Al-Mas’udi provided the earliest descriptions of the horizontal windmills of Sistan in modern-day Iran.75 Several other references from Arabic writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are also extant, all of which point to the use of these windmills for grinding grain, pounding rice with vertical stamps, and raising water for irrigation by means of “lifting wheels”.76 According to White, similar kinds of horizontal windmill are known to have existed in China from the late thirteenth century, where they were “applied solely to pumping or to hauling canal boats over lock-slides, but not for grinding grain.”77 While the existence of such windmills in the region where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet is well-attested by the medieval sources, these sources also suggest that the horizontal windmill soon spread to other Islamic countries. Lewis argues that there are reports, for example, of scattered specimens both west of the Sistan region and “east as far as Kabul, Ghazni and the present Pakistani province of Dera Ismail Khan in the Indus valley”.78 There is also some evidence for their existence in the Indonesian archipelago in 1154 and 1340, and in India in

73 Ibid., citing A. Mez, Die Renaissance de Islams, ed. H. Rechendorf, Winter, Heidelberg, 1922, p. 439. 74 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 54. 75 See Forbes (1956), pp. 615–6, citing: Al-Istakhri, Ibrahim Ibn Muhammad AlFarisi, “Das Buch der Länder”, trans. A.D. Mordtmann, Schriften der Akademie von Hamburg, I, ii, Dieterich, Göttingen, 1845, pp. 110 & 134; Ibn Hauqal, Muhammad Abu’l-Qasim, Viae et regna, ed. M.J. De Goeje, Brill, Leyden, 1873, p. 299; AlMas’udi, Ali Ibn Husain, Les Prairies d’or, ed. & tr. C. Barbier de Meynard & P. de Courteille, Paris, 1863, ii, p. 80. The relevant quotes are reproduced in English in Klemm (1959), pp. 77–9. 76 Ibid., citing Al-Qazwini, Zakariya Ibn Muhammad, Kosmographie, ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Pt. II, Dieterich, Göttingen, 1848, p. 134; Al-Dimashqi, op. cit. See also Lewis (1993), p. 148. 77 White (1964), p. 86, citing G. Bathe, Horizontal Windmills, Draft Mills and Similar Airflow Engines, Philadelphia, 1948, p. 4. 78 Lewis (1993), p. 148.

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Fig. 3.2. Persian horizontal windmill, showing how the shield walls were designed to funnel the prevailing wind onto the sails, which rotated on a vertical shaft (after Wulff ). The earliest mills appear to have been designed with the millstones supported by the shield walls at the top of the structure. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

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1320.79 It would seem that although horizontal windmills were known in Crete from as early as the late fifteenth century [Fig. 3.3],80 they did not come into widespread use in Europe until the seventeenth century, although all of them were substantially different in their designs to the Persian type.81 The argument that the earliest type of windmill found in Western Europe—the vertically-oriented post-mill—was inspired or adapted from the Persian horizontal windmill has a long history. The most common claim has been that the Crusaders brought the idea back

Fig. 3.3. Horizontal windmill from Kandia (Iraklion), Crete, 1486 (after Grünemberg). Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

79 Ibid., p. 152, citing Gabriel Ferrand, Relations de voyages et textes géographiques arabes, persans et turcs relatifs à l’Extréme-Orient du VIII e au XVIII e siècles, I, Paris, 1913, pp. 194 & 418, for Indonesia, and Jannis C. Notebaart, Windmühlen, The Hague & Paris, 1972, p. 221, for India. 80 See Lewis (1993), pp. 155–6. 81 See Wailes (1967–8). See also the next section on the post-mill, in which a windmill in Tarragona is reputed to have existed as early as the tenth century.

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to Europe from the Holy Land in the late eleventh century.82 But very few scholars have ever sought to provide a plausible explanation of how two such dissimilar technologies can have been genealogically related, nor why it took almost a century for Western Europeans to put the idea of the windmill into local practice in the form of the first post-mills. Vowles and Lewis are two of the few scholars to have put forward any kind of systematic argument in favour of the diffusion of windmill technology from Persia to the West; in the first case via Viking traders through Russia and thence to the Low Countries, and in the second via Byzantium and the Greek diaspora. While both theories are plausible, they lack any compelling evidence to support them.83 With respect to the technical traditions which inspired them, White has argued that the original inspiration for the horizontal windmill was the wind-driven prayer-wheel found throughout China and Tibet,84 while Lewis has argued that it was the Alexandrian engineer Hero’s drawings of anemouria, or wind-driven organs, from his Pneumatica (1st c. CE) [Fig. 3.4], combined with principles learnt from the construction of horizontal-wheeled watermills, which remain common in Iran and Afghanistan to this day.85 Forbes, on the other hand, has similarly argued that it was an adaptation of the horizontalwheeled watermill in conditions where there was insufficient rainfall to utilize water-power, but a steady prevailing wind.86 With respect to White’s theory, while it is conceivable that Muslim scholars may have seen Buddhist prayer wheels during their journeys throughout what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and India late in the first millennium CE, any firm evidence for such a connection is yet to be produced. Some evidence for Lewis’ theory can be adduced, however. The Banu Musa brothers’ Book on Mechanical Devices

82 See, for example, Mumford (1967), p. 271. The pre-twentieth century genealogy of the Arab-Crusader diffusion thesis is summarised by Bennett and Elton on pp. 230–4 of the second volume of their History of Cornmilling. A number of other historians of technology, including Klemm (1959), p. 77, Larsen (1961), p. 24, and Gille (1969), p. 429, suggest that the Arabs brought the technology to the West from Persia. 83 See Vowles (1930–1); Lewis (1993). 84 See White (1964), pp. 85–6, in which he places the first appearance of the prayer-wheel in the seventh century CE. Forbes (1956), p. 615, reports the existence of the prayer-wheel as early as 400 CE. 85 Lewis (1993), pp. 142–50. 86 Forbes (1956), p. 617.

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Fig. 3.4. One of Hero’s anemouria, or wind-driven organs. A reconstruction from the 1899 edition of Hero’s Pneumatica, by W. Schmidt. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

not only contains the earliest literary reference to horizontal windmills, it also describes a wind-powered fountain apparently derived from Hero’s anemouria.87 While Lewis’ theory about the diffusion of the horizontal windmill to the Byzantine Empire and its subsequent transformation into the vertical windmill remains the most detailed and ambitious attempt to link the development of the two different kinds of windmill technology to date, like many of the debates about the origins of individual technologies in the pre-modern period, it

87 See Lewis (1993), p. 145, citing Banu Musa bin Shakir, The Book of Ingenious Devices, trans. Donald R. Hill, Dordrecht, 1979, p. 222.

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seems unlikely that the issue will be resolved without the discovery of some persuasive archaeological evidence.

Vertical windmills The oldest type of vertical windmill is almost undoubtedly the European post-mill, the earliest evidence for which appears in the 1180s. Richard Bennett and John Elton were the first scholars to put forward a well-documented case for the earliest examples having appeared in England sometime around 1190.88 Most of the subsequent scholarly work on the origins of the post-mill has tended to support Bennett’s and Elton’s dating, although there remains some debate about the geographical point of origin, as will be explained in greater detail shortly. In the late 1980s, Edward Kealey sought to establish that the post-mill first appeared some decades earlier, although his argument relies on a dubious use of evidence that is ultimately unconvincing.89 It should be noted, however, that Michael Lewis has described a separate tradition of vertical windmill construction in Eastern Europe that was possibly just as old as that of Western Europe, although there is no firm evidence for it from before the first half of the fourteenth century.90 Lewis argues that the eastern tradition centred around the development of what he has called the “paltrok”, after the much later and more sophisticated Dutch windmill of a similar type, for want of a better term. Much like the Western European post-mill, it had a rotatable body turned by a long tailpole at the back, and was secured by a short post [Figs. 3.5 & 3.6]. Its distribution extends from the west of Asia Minor north through Romania, Bulgaria and the other former Eastern Bloc countries “finally branching out east to Omsk beyond the Urals and west to Finland and the Baltic Islands.” The paltrok can also be found in France, Portugal, Madeira and the Azores.91 Lewis’ speculations about the possible origins of the paltrok in the Byzantine Empire are connected to his theory about the relationship between the development of the horizontal and vertical windmills. While these speculations are certainly 88

Bennett & Elton (1899), p. 235. See Kealey (1987), and Holt (1988), (1989) for effective rebuttals of Kealey’s claims. 90 See Lewis (1993). 91 Ibid., pp. 172–3. 89

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Fig. 3.5. Romanian single-bearing “paltrok” windmill. In the simpler form of this Eastern European version of the post-mill, a relatively short post centred the millhouse on its base, the bottom framing of the millhouse simply sitting on top of the framing of the base and causing a great deal of friction. Destruction by fire was the probable fate of many of these mills. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

Fig. 3.6. Romanian double-bearing “paltrok” windmill. In this taller and more stable version, the central post extended higher, while the millhouse pivoted on a centring collar. The additional height enabled the construction of a lower compartment for storage. Courtesy of Dr Michael J.T. Lewis.

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plausible, there is a lack of firm evidence to support them. I will therefore not consider them any further here. The discussion to follow focusses on what is now known of the origins, diffusion and technical details of the Western European postmill, drawing extensively upon manuscript and archaeological sources, as well as the most reliable of the secondary literature. Origins and diffusion of the post-mill As we can see from Table 3.2, at least twenty-six of the earliest authentic records for the post-mill are from England. Although Edward Kealey claims to have identified fifty-six English post-mills dating to before 1200, the earliest of which was dated to “sometime before 1137”, Holt has convincingly demonstrated that only twenty-three of these examples are legitimate. Kealey nevertheless identified nine additional pre-1200 windmills beyond those discovered by previous Table 3.2. The earliest English manuscript references to windmills No.

Date

Location

Owner

1.

1180–11851

Amberley, Sussex

2. 3.

1180–11992 1183–11973

Beeford, Yorkshire Ecclesdon Down, Sussex

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

11854 11875 11896 1189–11997 1189–11998 c. 11909

Weedley, East Riding Yorkshire Dinton, Buckinghamshire Buckingham, Buckinghamshire Surrey Dunwich, Suffolk Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

10.

1191–119810

Huntingdonshire/ Cambridgeshire Silverley, Cambridgeshire Reculver & Westhallimot, Isle of Thanet, Kent Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland Hienhel, Suffolk Attleborough, Norfolk Flockthorpe, Norfolk Hempnall, Norfolk

Chichester Cathedral Priory Abbey of Meaux Chichester Cathedral Priory Knights Templar Godstow Abbey Oseney Abbey Tanrigge Priory Knights Templar Abbey of Bury St Edmunds Ramsey Abbey & Ely Cathedral Priory Reginald Arsic Eastbridge Hospital, Canterbury Robert de Peshale

11. >119411 12–13. 1193–119512 14–15. 119613 16. 17. 18. 19.

119814 119815 119816 119817

Simon de Farnham Ralph de Burg’ Wymondham Priory Abbey of Bury St Edmunds

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110 Table 3.2. (cont.) No.

Date

Location

Owner

20–21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

>119918 late 1190s19 >120020 c. 120021 c.120022 c. 1200–121023

Norfolk Monkton, Isle of Thanet, Kent Renhold, Bedfordshire Wigston Parva, Leicestershire Friskney, Lincolnshire Evershaw, Buckinghamshire

Wymondham Priory William de Wode Newnham Priory ? Ormsby Abbey Ralph the Bastard

1 This mill was built by Bishop Seffrid II sometime after 1180. See Chichester Chartulary, p. 41. 2 References to this mill only date to the late fourteenth century. See Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, Vol. I, pp. 164–5, 224–5. 3 This mill was also built by Bishop Seffrid. See Chichester Chartulary, pp. 42–3. 4 See Records of the Templars in England, p. 131. 5 This mill was granted to the nuns of Godstow by Agnes of Mountchesney who died c. 1187. See Kealey (1987), pp. 213–4. 6 This mill was given to Oseney by one of Henry II’s constables. See Cartulary of Oseney Abbey, v. 209, no. 692. 7 This mill was granted by Odo de Dammertun to Tanrigge during the reign of Richard I. See Bennett & Elton (1899), p. 235, citing Bray, Hord. Ang. II, p. 13. 8 This mill was given to the Templars by Richard I. See Records of the Templars in England, p. 135. 9 This was the famous mill built by Herbert the Dean which so enraged Abbot Samson, who ordered the mill be torn down because it threatened the revenues of his own mills. See Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond, pp. 59–60. 10 The abbot of Ramsey and archdeacon of Ely were ordered to collect tithes from a windmill in one of the two counties by Pope Celestine III some time during this period. See P. Jaffé, Regesta pontificum romanorum, Leipzig, 1888, no. 17,620, to Archdeacon Bertrand of Dol in Brittany; E. Friedberg (ed.), Corpus juris canonici, ii. 563; Du Cange (ed.), Decretales Gregorii IX, Lib. III, tit. 30, cap. 23. See also Cheney (1971). 11 See Kealey (1987), pp. 98–105, 216. 12 The tithes of two mills here were granted to Eastbridge by Archbishop Hubert Walter. See ibid., pp. 225, 227. 13 These two mills were sold by Thomas and Agnes Bigod to Robert de Peshale. See Feet of Fines, 1196–1197, 1. 14 See Feet of Fines, 1198–1199, 32. 15 See Feet of Fines for the County of Norfolk, 1198–1202, 203. 16 Kealey (1987), pp. 237–8. 17 Ibid., p. 238. 18 The grant of two windmills at an unidentified location was confirmed to Wymondham by William de Albini some time before 1199. See ibid., pp. 243–5. 19 This mill was the subject of a long dispute with Holy Trinity Priory, Canterbury. See Curia Regis Rolls, Vol. I, p. 16 & Vol. III, pp. 86–7. 20 See Cartulary of Newnham Priory, 368. 21 See Kealey (1987), pp. 75, 227–8. 22 This mill was granted to the nuns of Ormsby. See Transcripts of Charters Relating to the Gilbertine Houses of Sixle, Ormesby, Catley, Bullington and Alvingham, p. 45. 23 See Luffield Priory Charters, ms. 434.

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scholars.92 I have found at least two other examples through my own research. Most of the twenty-six windmills listed in the table were in East Anglia, while the majority of the rest were scattered along other parts of the east coast. They all indicate dates that are from around 1180 or later. Outside England, a handful of documents making generic and specific references to windmills of a comparable date have been cited for France, Flanders and Belgium. The earliest of these is from Normandy and is dated to around 1180.93 Two others are dated to 118394 and the late 1190s95 from Flanders, while a fourth is dated to 1195 from Belgium.96 The only other pre-1200 reference outside England that has been uncovered to date is from Crusader Syria, and is dated to around 1190.97 While a more detailed examination of the manuscript sources is yet to be undertaken for France, Belgium and Flanders, current scholarship is unable to settle whether the postmill’s origin was in eastern England or the other side of the English Channel. Nevertheless, the research to date clearly indicates that there is no substantial evidence for the existence of the post-mill prior to 1180. Richard Holt has noted that one of the clinching pieces of evidence that the post-mill does not pre-date the 1180s is Pope Celestine

92 See Kealey (1987), pp. 2, 51–8; Holt (1988), pp. 171–5, See also Holt (1990), pp. 54–5. 93 This was probably at Saint-Martin-de-Varreville near the village of Liesville. See Léopold Delisle, Etudes sur la condition de la classe agricole . . . au moyen-âge, Evreux, 1851, p. 514. Also Bauters (1984), p. 113. 94 The relevant document refers to the need for anyone wishing to build a windmill or watermill in Wormhoudt to gain the authorisation of the Abbot of St Winoc in Bergues. Wormhoudt was at the time in the south of the county of Flanders, but is now part of France. See Bauters (1984), p. 115, citing several documents, including Pruvost, Chronique et cartulaire de l’abbaye de Bergues-Saint-Winoc, I, Bruges, 1875, p. 143. 95 This document refers to a windmill in Ypres which was granted to Nonnenbos Abbey by the Count of Flanders, and was located at a site not far from Wormhoudt. See Bauters (1984), p. 115, citing several documents, including L. Van Hollebeke, l’Abbaye de Nonnenbossche, Bruges, 1865, pp. 72–3. 96 The relevant document refers to the co-existence of watermills, windmills and horse mills at Silly in Hainaut Province. See Bauters (1984), p. 115, citing Les Moulins, technique, histoire, folklore, Musée régional de l’Hospice Comtesse, Lille, 1975, p. 43. 97 See Ambroise, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. G. Paris, Paris, 1897, II. 3227–9; tr. M.J. Hubert, New York, 1941.

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III’s decree of 1191–8 to the abbot of Ramsey and archdeacon of Ely that windmills should pay tithes like any other mill. The usual dating for this decree is 1195.98 Because the Papal Curia was successively occupied by some of the most learned and well-travelled men in Christendom, they were hardly likely to let such an important innovation as the windmill escape their attention for much more than ten years, especially when its unlegislated existence had a potentially adverse effect upon the Church’s revenues.99 By the end of the thirteenth century, it would seem that the postmill was in use throughout those regions of the English and French kingdoms that had steady winds and limited water-power—East Anglia, Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Lancashire being some of the main centres in England, and Normandy, Brittany, Champagne, Blésois, Artois, Picardy, and Flanders in France.100 The post-mill had probably reached the Netherlands, eastern Pomerania, Denmark and Bohemia by the thirteenth century, and Poland and Sweden by the first half of the fourteenth century. Variations on the classic post-mill, such as the hollow post-mill (probably invented by the Dutch in the mid-fifteenth century), can be found in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Known as wipmolen in the Netherlands, moulins cuves in Belgium and moulins caviers in the Loire Valley of Anjou in France, the cap of the mill rotated on a fixed square post made out of two or four pieces of oak held together with wood and iron bolts and cotters with a hole of between 23–25 cm diameter running down the centre. The post was built into the top of a conical stone tower and supported at the base of the tower by a solid timber frame. The whole mill sat above two mill rooms built of stone that were surrounded by a masonry retaining wall, the space between being packed with earth. The lower spindle ran through the hollow post into the mill room below the tower to turn the upper millstone. The tail ladder was very heavy and made of hardwood to act as a counterpoise.101 It has been argued that the post-mill was unknown in Spain, Portugal and France some distance south of Orleans,102 but its exis98

For example, Du Cange, op. cit. See Holt (1990), pp. 53–4. 100 On England, see Holt (1988). On France, see Gille (1969), p. 458. 101 See Clark & Wailes (1949–51), pp. 212–4. Also Clark (1928–9) & Wailes (1956), p. 625. 102 Clark (1928–9), p. 59. 99

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tence throughout southern Europe has not been well researched. There is some evidence for the existence of windmills in the Basque region of Euskal-Herria in the late middle ages, but it is not clear whether they were post-mills or tower mills.103 In a book of maps portraying the Great Siege of Malta of 1565 by the Ottoman Turks, one map by Quintinus dating from about nine years earlier, i.e., 1556, depicts two post-mills at a site known as St. Michael’s Bastion at Senglea on the other side of the Grand Harbour from what is now the capital, Valletta. In the later maps dating from 1565 onwards, these same two windmills are depicted as tower mills, so presumably the post-mills had been demolished in favour of tower mills some time during the intervening nine years. The construction of these tower mills is much the same as those reproduced in an article by Lewis from Rhodes and dated to 1483.104 Rhodes is, of course, the island from which the Knights Templar had been forced to take refuge in Malta after that island was captured by the Turks in 1522. So important were the mills of Senglea considered by military strategists that virtually every siege map of the main port, and even maps of the whole island (which is not insignificant in size), show those two mills within the town, even if their exact location is somewhat erratically represented. Whether the post-mills had been built by the Templars or the Spaniards who preceded them as overlords of Malta remains unclear.105 When Sorondo notes that the diffusion of the windmill “does not appear to have really begun to develop until the fifteenth century”,106 he is probably referring to the tower mill, not the post-mill. Nevertheless, all of the work on the best-studied country to date, i.e., England, indicates that the most intense period of windmill-building actually took place in the mid- to late thirteenth century, and that its fortunes suffered a steady decline from the early fourteenth century onwards. 103 One of the few recent papers to discuss the subject is by Sorondo (1984), on p. 469 of which he cites an older work by Julio Caro Baroja, “Disertacion sobre les molinos de viento”, Revista de Dialectologia y tradiciones populares, Tomo VIII, Madrid, 1952. 104 See Lewis (1993), fig. 9. 105 See: Galea (1963); Ganado & Agius-Vadalà (1995); Attard Tabone (1996). I thank Dr Xuereb, Mr Eric German, Mr Anthony Mangion and Dr Anthony Bonanno at the University of Malta for their help in locating this and related material, as well as Mr Joseph Attard Tabone for his friendly and helpful advice. 106 Sorondo (1984), p. 459.

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As we will see in the next chapter, the cost of rebuilding an existing watermill was similar to those for building a new post-mill, and considerably cheaper than building a tower mill. Furthermore, English watermills drew on average twice the revenue of windmills and cost less to maintain. The next section examines the details of construction of a post-mill, followed by those for a tower mill. Post-mill construction and materials As might be expected, given the materials from which post-mills were made, i.e., a number of different varieties of wood with a few iron mechanical parts, it is only the foundation structures, i.e., the mounds and wooden frameworks built to support them, which have survived into the modern era. Consequently, relatively little is known from the archaeological record about their superstructures, let alone their internal mechanisms. Manorial records and manuscript illustrations provide some additional evidence, but, generally speaking, whatever information exists must be cobbled together from the scattered textual sources and more recent millwrighting lore. One of the best summaries of the inner workings, housing and foundations of a medieval post-mill can be found in John Langdon’s recently published Mills in the Medieval Economy. The material below draws partially from Langdon’s work, and was greatly improved by feedback which he supplied on an earlier draft of this section. The two earliest illustrations of post-mills can be found in two different copies of Aristotle’s Meteorologica, both dating to c. 1250–60, where they are used to elaborate the opening letter to the section on wind, thunder and lightning.107 Another illustration from the Windmill Psalter, compiled at Canterbury and dated to c. 1270–1290, shows a post-mill incorporated into the letter “e” in the word “beatus” which frames an illustration of the judgement of Solomon.108

107 The two windmills in Aristotle’s Meteorologica can be found in British Library Harley Ms. 3487, fol. 161, and Cambridge University Library Ms. Ee 2.31, fol. 130. See Kealey (1987), pp. 21–4 for an interesting discussion of these and some of the other early illustrations. Also Salmon (1941) for a more detailed discussion. 108 The illustration can be found in the Windmill Psalter, Ms. 102, fol. 2, held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Kealey suggests that the presence of the windmill and curling leaves “may suggest blowing wind, indicating the presence of God.” See Kealey (1987), p. 147.

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Four other windmill illustrations dated to the fourteenth century can be found in four different manuscripts, including an unnamed one held in the Bodleian Library, and three held by the British Library, including the Stowe Manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter (1340), and another unnamed manuscript.109 On the basis of these and other illustrations, as well as the construction of surviving post-mills, documentary references in medieval account books, and the archaeological work done on the remains of several dozen medieval post-mills, a number of conclusions may be drawn about their technical details. With regard to their size, there is no evidence that the earliest post-mills were any smaller than those built during the modern period.110 Claims that they were smaller are based on nothing more substantial than medieval illustrations of them, which of course paid little attention to scale.111 Indeed, it is well known that scale drawings using perspectival techniques do not emerge until the late fifteenth century. The size of the foundation structures of medieval post-mills also provides a poor indication of their overall size, as the former are more likely to be correlated to the kind of packing used to bury them and/or the caution of the millwright who constructed them.112 Furthermore, one of the few documentary accounts of the length of sailyards purchased for a medieval post-mill indicates that this particular example was no smaller than the post-mills of later centuries, although it was probably set closer to the ground and had shorter sails.113 The earliest post-mills consisted of a wooden millhouse which contained the machinery and carried the sails. The whole structure was in turn suspended (not fixed) upon a central post, which allowed the superstructure to be rotated according to the direction of the prevailing wind [Fig. 3.7]. The massive central post was made from the trunk of an oak, and was generally about a metre in diameter.

109 The details of these various manuscripts are as follows: Bodleian Library Ms. Bodley 264; British Library (BL) Stowe Ms. 17, fo. 89v.; BL Add. Ms. 42130, fo. 158 (Luttrell Psalter); BL Add. Ms. 42130, fo. 158. 110 The mill historian Rex Wailes appears to be one of the few scholars to have claimed that medieval windmills were smaller than modern ones, on which see Wailes (1979), p. 7. 111 Holt (1988), p. 142. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., pp. 142–3.

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Fig. 3.7. Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a post-mill, 1588. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers.

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Known as the “great post” or “standard”,114 it was either buried in the ground, or supported by a cross-tree and quarter struts which formed a kind of four-legged pyramidal base that either sat on the ground or upon brick or stone piers. The base, like the central post, could also be wholly or partially buried in the ground or a mound. While this latter innovation had the advantage of greater stability, it also lowered the overall height of the mill and increased the likelihood of the base becoming rotten. Considering the enormous forces to which the whole structure was subjected, maintaining its stability was of crucial importance. If the central post failed, the whole structure would collapse.115 According to Langdon, this problem became a central focus for adaptive responses on the part of medieval millwrights. Overcoming this particular “reverse salient” in the post-mill’s design—to use the phrase coined by Thomas Hughes—involved experimenting with the methods used to secure post-mills to the ground. Langdon argues that the earliest techniques probably involved simply burying the post deep in the earth, probably with stones and earth packed around it, or supported by diagonal timbers. A later method involved the construction of a cross-tree and quarter struts as described above, which was initially buried in a mound, but later placed on stone blocks or well-secured stone foundations. The most sophisticated technique and probably the latest chronologically involved the construction of brick or stone piers under each corner of the cross-tree. There is no evidence that the cross-tree was ever bolted to the foundations. These developments were characteristic of advances in medieval domestic building construction generally.116 Through the centre of the floor of the millhouse, a horizontal beam, known as the crown-tree, mill-beam or cross-beam, sat on the top of the vertical centrepost in what was probably a kind of iron housing that allowed the millhouse to rotate on the centrepost. Further stability was provided by two horizontal beams called “sheers” or “sheer-trees” that ran in parallel across the centre of the millhouse

114

Langdon (2004), p. 119. See Holt (1988), pp. 140–2, for a discussion of some of the archaeological work on windmill foundations. 116 Langdon (2004), pp. 116–118. 115

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floor, enclosing the iron housing where the crown-tree sat on top of the centrepost.117 Attached to the crown-tree at the foot of the doorway was a tailbeam which enabled the miller to turn the whole mill around to face the wind. This could be done by hand, or with the aid of a donkey or horse. Attached to the end of the tailbeam was a windlass, or rope, which could be tied to any of a number of posts driven into the ground in a circle around the mill. A later innovation involved the attachment of a wheel to the end of the tailbeam which ran along a circular stone (or gravel?) path. The millhouse itself was a fairly conventional wooden structure which had shutters to admit light and air, and a straight-pitched roof, but no roundhouse as a substructure for the storage of grain or flour. The latter appears to have been an eighteenth century innovation.118 The millhouse was entered via a step-ladder which appears to have been fixed. Roofs were covered with wooden boards or shingles, while the walls were usually weatherboarded.119 Holt has argued that these weatherboards were usually painted white or tarred black, and that the most common practice for the millhouse construction was to infill a timber-frame with wattle and daub.120 Kealey claims that some post-mills had wicker walls.121 Presumably, these design variations were a function of the local availability of suitable materials. The windshaft, or sailbeam, was set horizontally, high in the opposite wall to the entrance of the millhouse, just below the roofline, in order to give the maximum length for the sails.122 The windshaft had to be firmly secured within the upper framework of the millhouse to ensure it was not ripped out of the whole structure by the force of the wind, and while there are few indications in any of the extant medieval records of what this entailed, Langdon suggests that iron collars and metal or stone bolsters or “pillows” were used to achieve this.123 117

Ibid., p. 119. Wailes (1959–60), p. 95. 119 Langdon (2004), p. 120, but see also the description of windmill construction in Chapter Four. 120 Holt (1988), pp. 129–30. 121 Kealey (1987), p. 18. 122 In later post-mills, the sailbeam was set at a slight incline to the horizon to gain increased efficiencies. According to Usher (1988), p. 175, this was an early sixteenth century innovation. 123 Langdon (2004), p. 121. 118

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In early post-mills, the drive to the stones was simply an inversion of the right-angled gearing used in vertical watermills, with the upper millstone still performing the work of grinding. The large cogwheel that rotated on the windshaft was known as the brake wheel, which meshed with an upright lantern-pinion gear attached to one of two iron millstone shafts or spindles. According to Langdon, a fairly typical gear ratio was 6.29:1, which was comparable to that found in contemporaneous watermills. The larger and longer of the two spindles was secured at its upper end by a timber known as a sprattle beam. The upper spindle ran down through the centre of the lantern-pinion to which it was attached through the centre of the top millstone and engaged with the iron rynd that ran across the diameter of the lower millstone. Langdon suggests that the upper spindle probably had a fork-like end to ensure a firm connection with the rynd. The smaller, lower spindle appears to have engaged with the rynd from below, with its lower end resting on a support beam known as a bridge-tree.124 Like the bearings in a medieval watermill, those in a post-mill were made of iron, stone or brass. They were used at the points at which the main driveshaft in a watermill and the sailbeam in a windmill were supported within the walls of the millhouse, as well as at the base of the spindle in both types of mill. Holt cites Rex Wailes and archaeological evidence to suggest that medieval bearings could also have been made of glass or hardwood,125 but Langdon has expressed some scepticism about this.126 Medieval illustrations of post-mills consistently depict them with four sails set in a cross, although some late thirteenth century postmills are recorded with six sails.127 In the most common arrangement of four sails, two long timbers or sail-yards were mortised in the shape of a cross to the end of the mill axle.128 According to Wailes, the earliest type of sailyard was a rectangular wooden lattice covered

124

Ibid. Holt (1988), pp. 124–7, citing R. Wailes, The English Windmill, London, 1954, p. 120, and J.R. Mortimer, Forty Years’ Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, London, 1905, p. 206. 126 John Langdon, personal communication, September 2004. Cf. Langdon (2004), p. 93. 127 Such as that at Framlingham in Suffolk first recorded in 1270 and cited by Holt (1988), p. 138. 128 Langdon (2004), p. 120. 125

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with boards, whereas “[s]hortly afterwards the sails were covered with sailcloth, which was laced in and out of the sail bars, and these sails were flat planes inclined at a constant angle to the normal.”129 According to Langdon, a light rectangular framework of alder withies was used to stretch the canvas on the windward side of the sails, with the sail-yard running down the centre of the frame. These sails were usually about 8 metres in length, indicating that most medieval post-mills were at least 8 metres high, the equivalent of a contemporary two- to three-storey building.130 Inside the millhouse, the millstones sat upon a second floor close to the mill axle, with the hopper probably simply suspended by ropes above the millstones. The ground grain was guided by centrifugal force via the grooves in the millstones to a box fitted around the stones, and from there through a spout to a container of some kind. The miller had a separate container for placing toll corn, i.e., the proportion of grain claimed by the miller from his customers as the milling fee (multure, or mulctura in Latin).131 We possess no details of how the millstones were raised and lowered to vary the grades of flour and grist produced. According to Langdon, it is not clear whether medieval English windmills had sack hoists for lifting and lowering grain and flour to and from the mill,132 although Wailes argued that they did and that they were usually located externally.133 According to Holt, oak was the preferred timber for the mechanical parts of most mills, although crab apple is also recorded for making cogs. Black poplar was often used for doors, hoppers and general repairs, while oak, elm, ash and alder are some of the timbers recorded for constructing windmill sailyards, due to the straightness and length of the saplings required to do the job.134 Wailes has argued that the “primitive mills of Sweden and Brittany had no brake and were stopped by quartering the mill, that is to say, turning the sails 90 degrees out of the wind and then stopping them by hand”,135 and that the same procedure was probably also

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Wailes (1979), p. 46. Langdon (2004), p. 121. 131 Ibid., pp. 122–3. The varying rates of multure in different parts of England are discussed in more detail in Chapter Five. 132 Ibid., p. 123. He also notes that some illustrations suggest that they did. 133 Wailes (1979), p. 62. 134 Holt (1988), pp. 128–9. 135 Wailes (1979), p. 58. 130

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adopted for the earliest English post-mills.136 As Langdon has pointed out, however, such strategies did not prevent the sail-cloths being torn from the sail-yards once the wind got behind them, or from causing worse damage in more severe weather.137 The history of the windmill brake is not a subject that has been thoroughly studied with respect to English windmills, although there has been some recent work done by Yves Coutant and Paul Groen on the development of the windmill brake in early Flemish, French, Belgian and Dutch post-mills.138 The basic principle was as follows: In brief outline the system consists of a circular wooden band which is fastened to one end [of the windshaft] at the buck [i.e., the point where it passes through the wall of the millhouse]; at the other end hangs a heavy horizontal lever. The weight of the lever, which rotates round a pivot, provides a tensile force in the brake band. To let loose the brake force and start grinding, the miller lifts the lever and hangs it in the catch. The principle is the same as that of a normal brake, but the action of the lever is negative: by lifting it up, the brake force is cancelled.139

Coutant and Groen have identified two distinct kinds of brake bands: the plank brake and the block brake, both of which “already existed at the beginning of the fifteenth century”, as well as two kinds of fastening systems: the sprag brake and the lip brake. The most efficient (and now the most popular type in Western Europe), known as the Flanders brake, seems to have first appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century. While most of the relevant manuscript sources are from the middle of the fifteenth century, the earliest definite reference is from 1371/2.140 While none of this material tells us anything about what was happening in England at the same time, it is hard to imagine that English millwrights were far behind their Continental cousins.141

136 137 138 139 140 141

Wailes (1957), p. 104. Langdon (2004), p. 123. Coutant & Groen (1997). Ibid., pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 12, in accounts for Eeklo and Waarschot Kaprijke, Belgium. Cf. Langdon (2004), p. 124.

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The second form of vertical windmill to emerge in the later middle ages was the tower mill. Named after the brick or stone tower in which the mill machinery is contained, only the cap which carries the sails rotates according to the direction of the prevailing wind. A typical tower mill was anything from 20–30 metres tall. According to Wailes, the greatest span of sails was around 23 metres [Fig. 3.8].142 A tower mill typically cost around twice as much to build as a post-mill, and was far more durable. Apart from being more resistant to damage in inclement weather, tower mills had the strategic advantage of being able to be built on the walls of towers and castles. Their solid construction enabled them to resist attacks from which a wooden post-mill was far more vulnerable. Tower mills appear to have been particularly common in and around the Mediterranean from the fifteenth century onwards, where they are illustrated in manuscripts, drawings, maps and woodcuts from Byzantium, Rhodes, Crete and Malta.143 They also appear to have displaced the post-mill as the most common type of windmill in England from the seventeenth or eighteenth century onwards. Tower mills from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are still a common site in southern and eastern England, where a number of them continued to operate until the end of the nineteenth century. While detailed research on the tower mill’s genesis and distribution remains to be done, a recent article by Michael Lewis makes some interesting, if speculative, suggestions.144 According to Wailes, at least two different types of tower mill were still operating in southern Brittany until early in the twentieth century. One was a very small form of tower mill that was only around 10 metres tall. Another was what the locals called a petit pied, or ventru, that also stood at around 10 metres and resembled a round haystack.145

142

Wailes (1959–60), p. 95. See, for example, Forbes (1956), p. 624, figs. 565–6; Lewis (1993), pp. 170–1, figs. 15–16. 144 Lewis (1993). John Langdon and Martin Watts currently have an article in press titled “Tower Windmills in Medieval England: A Case of Arrested Development?”, which looks at some of the issues surrounding origins and distribution. 145 See Huard, Wailes & Webster (1949–51). 143

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Fig. 3.8. Agostino Ramelli’s illustration of a tower mill, 1588. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library/Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers.

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Forbes states that the earliest illustration of a tower mill is from the 1390s, and that it is logical to put its origins to the beginning of the fourteenth century.146 What would appear to be the earliest record of a tower mill in England indicates that the mill was built by order of the king at Dover Castle in 1294.147

Conclusion This chapter has looked in some detail at the origins, technical details and diffusion of horizontal- and vertical-wheeled watermills operated by tidal power, and of horizontal and vertical windmills. In the course of the discussion, a number of assumptions about their origins and diffusion have been questioned. Amongst these have been the lack of any evidence for a steady growth in the use of tide mills between the eleventh and twentieth centuries, any clear relationship between the invention of the horizontal windmill on the southern borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the eighth century and that of the vertical windmill on both sides of the English Channel in the late twelfth century, and an earlier origin of the vertical windmill. With regard to the tide mill, considering that the earliest firmly dated examples are from the seventh century in Ireland, and that there is no evidence from elsewhere for more than three hundred years, it would seem plausible to suggest that the tide mill may well have had more than one point of origin. While the earliest tide mills probably originated somewhere along the Atlantic seaboard, and possibly even in Ireland, there may well have been an independent invention of such mills in the Middle East several centuries later, as the Atlantic version does not appear to have been particularly common until the second half of the middle ages. Nevertheless, given some of the recent extraordinary finds in Roman watermill archaeology, we have no reason to believe that the seemingly unique Irish

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Forbes (1956), p. 624. See Colvin (1963), pp. 636, 638. The cost of the mill’s construction is discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Of slightly less vintage, Langdon has recently revised his earlier opinion that a windmill built by Westminster Abbey in 1303 was a post-mill, having subsequently found evidence that it was either a tower mill or a composite tower-post-mill. The original article on the Turweston windmill is Langdon (1992), which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. 147

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innovations were not based on technology known to the Romans but of which we continue to remain ignorant. The first Irish example of a horizontal-wheeled watermill adapted to tidal power post-dates the recently discovered vertical-wheeled version at Killoteran by a few hundred years, but we have no clear idea of when vertical-wheeled watermills were first widely adapted to tidal power. The existing evidence points to the late eleventh century onwards, but this may not be a reliable indication of the real situation. As we have seen, Holt’s assessment that the use of tide mills in England was well and truly on the wane by the thirteenth century due to its displacement by the cheaper post-mill still stands as a valid generalization, even though there is some evidence that tide mills continued to survive near major population centres such as the Thames estuary and the south coast of England.148 With regard to the horizontal windmill, while there is a clear similarity between its design and that of the horizontal-wheeled watermill, there are features of it, such as the construction of the windmill housing, which are undoubtedly completely independent inventions. It nevertheless seems fairly clear that some kind of creative reinterpretation of the principle of the horizontal-wheeled watermill was the original inspiration for its design. It is also possible that Hero’s anemouria and the Buddhist prayer-wheel may have provided some inspiration, although firmer dating of the prayer-wheel’s origins and distribution would help to clarify this issue. The later diffusion of the horizontal windmill to China, India and Indonesia from eastern Persia may be accounted for in terms of direct technology transfer, but its emergence in Crete in a completely different form by the fifteenth century can only be accounted for in terms of some vague knowledge of the general principle having been conveyed to Crete at an earlier time. This process is what the historian of technology Arnold Pacey has called “technological dialogue”.149

148 Although the evidence from Portugal and Spain indicates that tide mills continued to be built in those countries until well into the modern era [Rynne (1988), pp. 254–8], it remains to be seen whether their construction in those countries was similarly on the wane after the thirteenth century. 149 See Pacey (1990), p. 51. The term is used by Pacey to describe instances in which the transfer of technological information is of “a minimal kind . . . when quite vague information from another country, or an unusual artefact, is sufficient by itself to stimulate innovation in the recipient country.” This process is also described as “stimulus diffusion” or “inventive exchange” by some scholars.

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With regard to the superficial conceptual similarity between the horizontal windmills of Persia and the European vertical windmill, it is plausible that vague information about the former made its way back to Europe via trade, scholarly and military links between the two regions, thus amounting to technological dialogue, although there is no firm evidence that this took place. On the other hand, the direct adaptation of right-hand gearing from the vertical-wheeled watermill to the vertical windmill is a clear example of direct technology transfer. In other respects, such as the structure of the windmill sails and how they were fitted into the millhouse, and the mechanism which enabled the whole mill to be rotated, we have clear evidence of what were unquestionably independent inventions of great significance. Like the vertical-wheeled watermill, the vertical windmill therefore appears to have been an ingenious combination of several different inventions, but unlike the vertical-wheeled watermill, some of its components appear to have been specifically developed to make the windmill work more effectively. These “reversesalients” included the foundation structure for the post-mill and the windmill brake. With regard to the earliest documented examples of the European post-mill, it now seems clear that c. 1180 is probably the earliest verifiable date for its first appearance. Most of those pre-1200 examples which have been identified are from eastern England, with a handful of others from southern England, northern France, Belgium and Flanders. The necessity of finding additional sources of power other than water in these dry, flat regions appears to have been a stimulating factor in its development. Because the most rapid growth in the number of windmills in England appears to have occurred during the thirteenth century, this phenomenon could be described as constituting a genuine technological revolution, although the relative lack of profitability of windmills as opposed to watermills seems to have placed somewhat of a dampener upon its subsequent growth. The evidence from England therefore calls into question claims for the technology’s primary growth phase as having occurred after 1500. Finally, a few words need to be said about the conditions in which these various milling technologies appear to have originated. While the social and economic conditions in the places of origin of each of these technologies undoubtedly had a bearing upon where, when and how they first emerged, particularly with regard to the sizes of their populations and the desires of the people in each region to

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consume finely ground grain, it would seem that environmental conditions also acted as a strong stimulus. The early Irish and Mesopotamian tide mills were most likely developed in response to the lack of suitable waterways for siting conventional watermills in places where there was a large demand for ground grain, i.e., a large monastic community in the first instance, and a large town or city in the second. In the case of the development of the post-mill, its region of origin was again in areas which lacked suitable waterways for the siting of a sufficient number of watermills to meet local demands for ground grain. When a sufficient number of windmills had been built to meet this demand, the number of new windmills built began to tail off, and further declined following the growing recognition that they were less profitable to their owners than watermills, and more expensive to maintain. With regard to the development of the tide mill and horizontal and vertical versions of the windmill, in all three cases, demographic pressures for powered milling at locations in which conventional water-power could not be utilized appears to have stimulated a search for alternative technologies to satisfy that demand. The societies concerned must also have been sufficiently affluent to support a class of craftsmen that could pursue the development of such technologies. It is clear from the discussion so far that social, economic and environmental factors need to be taken into account when trying to understand the different pathways of development of these various milling technologies, and that the mere invention or existence of what might appear to us to be a superior or more advanced technology might not necessarily either survive or “take off ” if the social, economic and/or environmental conditions are not conducive.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE COSTS OF CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF MEDIEVAL WATERMILLS AND WINDMILLS

Introduction The richest source of evidence about the economics of milling during the medieval period is undoubtedly Britain, largely due to the fact that during the intervening centuries, it has suffered less from the ravages of war than most of its European counterparts. For this reason, most of those scholars who have examined the subject in detail over the last three to four decades have tended to focus on the British Isles. One of the most important of the economic issues that has been studied in the work on England in particular is the revenues that were drawn from different types of mill, especially water- and windpowered grain mills, and how those revenues varied according to the kinds of technology deployed, as well as regional differences in geography and social and political arrangements.1 Although the focus on revenues has revealed a large quantity of vital information that will be discussed in more detail in later chapters, the costs of constructing and maintaining windmills and watermills have not received nearly so much attention. Determining how much it cost to build and maintain different types of mill allows calculations of profitability to be made, which in turn provides some crucial insights into why different social groups invested in different kinds of milling technology in different times and places. This chapter therefore looks in detail at this important subject. The most thorough research on medieval mill construction and maintenance to date has been conducted by Richard Holt and John Langdon, although Langdon has gone into the subject in the most

1 The most important work on the economics of milling in medieval England remains Holt (1987), (1988), (1989), (1990), (1996), (1997), (2000) and Langdon (1991), (1992), (1994), (1996), (1997), (2004). See also Lucas (2003).

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detail, particularly in his recently published book, Mills in the Medieval Economy.2 John Salmon, Eleanora Carus-Wilson, Ian Keil, H.M. Colvin, Ian Jack and Philip Rahtz have also contributed research that can be usefully brought to bear on the subject.3 For example, Salmon, Keil, Jack and Rahtz have compiled and/or translated material from manuscript sources that had not been previously analysed. This material will be drawn upon extensively in this chapter. Also incorporated is some of the extensive data derived from rentals, account books and compotus rolls of almost a dozen medieval English abbeys and priories, i.e., Battle, Beaulieu, Bec, Bolton, Cirencester, Cockersand, Durham, Furness, Lacock, Lancaster and Sibton.4 In its totality, the research covered in this chapter encompasses most of the second half of the middle ages and the majority of the English and Welsh counties. Beginning with an outline of the various responsibilities of lords and tenants for mill maintenance, the chapter examines in some detail the costs of building and maintaining water- and wind-powered grain mills and fulling mills. It also looks at some of the evidence for the purchase of already functioning watermills, and the relative profitability of water- and wind-powered grain mills. While Langdon has examined this last issue in the context of capital investment generally,5 the analysis here restricts its focus to levels of investment in, and revenues from, mills alone. My findings are, nevertheless, complementary to those of Langdon.

Responsibilities of lords and tenants for mill maintenance When a windmill or watermill was directly managed by a lord in medieval England, he or she was responsible for all of the costs of repairs and maintenance. When a mill was let at farm, however, it was generally the responsibility of the lord to provide only the major timbers, as well as the costs of felling and dressing. There was

2

See Holt (1988), pp. 86–9, 176–7; Langdon (1992), (1996), (2004). See Salmon (1940); Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 51; Colvin (1963); Jack (1981); Rahtz (1981), p. 7. 4 See Lucas (2003). 5 See Langdon (2004), Ch. 5. 3

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nevertheless considerable variety in the kinds of arrangements that were made between lords and lessees. For example, some leases stipulated that it was the lord’s responsibility to provide any ironwork for the mill, as well as new millstones, while some mill farmers in East Anglia were charged a shilling for every inch of millstone used. The mill farmers were, in turn, expected to meet the everyday running costs of the mill, including making minor repairs and supplying canvas for a windmill’s sails, and oil and tallow for lighting and lubrication, as well as fitting and dressing the millstones, and keeping sharp the mill bills used for fitting and dressing.6 In the case of a watermill, whoever held the mill was expected to keep its ponds, leats, sluices, dams and weirs in good repair, and could be held liable if their failure to do so led to damage of a neighbour’s property. Similar conditions were associated with grants of mills made by secular lords to religious houses.7 Given that the main ongoing costs of maintenance and repair were born by the mill farmer, as we will see, the person or persons letting the mill had to have substantial resources behind them in order to have a reasonable chance of ensuring the venture was a success. A few examples of the kinds of maintenance conditions attached to leases and grants of watermills are worth recounting to give a better sense of the arrangements involved. They can be found in grants from at least the middle of the twelfth century, and in leases from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries onwards. It would also seem that these conditions did not change substantially over considerable periods of time, as one of the examples below from Sibton Abbey suggests. Most of the examples cited relate to leases from religious houses to laymen, or grants from secular lords to religious houses. Some time between 1230 and 1250, the canons of Cirencester Abbey granted and confirmed to Thomas the Mercer their mill of Milborne with all of its appurtenances for two marks (£1 13s. 4d.) a year. The appurtenances included a curtilage,8 two acres of open field, and a portion of meadow. The abbey reserved the right of

6

Holt (1988), pp. 99–100. See also Langdon (2004), pp. 193–7. Numerous examples of such arrangements can be found in Lucas (2003), Appendices J–M. 8 A curtilage was a house with stables and/or outbuildings, surrounded by a hedge or enclosure. 7

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free multure for its own grain and obligated Thomas to make any necessary repairs to the mill.9 Around the same time, the canons leased all of their land in Boycott, Oxfordshire, to William of Stratford for life. The lease included woods, meadows and a mill with all of its appurtenances, for which William was to pay £5 a year. William was expected to preserve the liberties of the village of Boycott, and to maintain all of the buildings and structures in the vill, including the millpond. While he was permitted to cut timber from the woods for this purpose, he was also expected to prevent any unlawful cutting of timber, and to bring to justice any of the men of the vill who were caught doing so.10 In a similar fashion, the lease of two watermills at Westbury in Wiltshire by Reynold de Paveley, lord of Brok, to William de Grinstede in 1340 included suit of the mill and pasture for a draught animal as well as timber from Reynold’s woods for maintaining the mills and their waterworks, along with two additional pastures and other lands and tenements, for three years at £10 a year. Reynold also provided straw and thatching for roofing the millhouses, and William was expected to keep the heads of the ponds (capita stagnorum) properly maintained.11 In 1354, Sibton Abbey leased the whole grange of Weybread with its watermills for life to Thomas Schotinhayt of Rishangles for £10 a year under the same kinds of conditions. The lessee was expected to maintain the grange at his own expense, including its “embankments, causeways, dams, bridges and all appurtenances”, and to return it to the abbey at the end of his life in as good or better repair than when he acquired it. The abbey would in turn supply Thomas with “good timber needed for planks, beams and the parts of the mill-wheel”. The abbey also reserved the right to enter and retain the premises if they were damaged in any way, even by accident, and that if the lessee defaulted on the agreement in any way, any goods found on the premises could be confiscated until the debt,

9 The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, ms. 590. The right of free multure was the right to grind grain without paying a toll or proportion of the milled grain to the miller. 10 Ibid., ms. 649. This lifelong lease was probably a reward for services rendered to the abbey. 11 Lacock Abbey Charters, ms. 225.

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waste or damage was made good.12 This kind of agreement was very common in the wake of the Black Death as a means of minimising any financial risk to the lessor. A document of 4 July 1508 records the granting of the most profitable mill in the grange with fourteen acres of land to three men, Richard Wright and Robert Ropere of Brockdish, and Thomas Wright of Syleham, for £3 10s. and a single suit of the court at Instead, with all responsibilities for maintenance. The grant includes similar distraining clauses to the previous one.13 With regard to mill grants to religious houses, Furness Abbey was granted a carucate of land called Stackhouse in Yorkshire, including a mill, along with timber from nearby Giggleswick for making repairs to it, some time between 1150 and 1170. The monks were to pay the grantor and his heirs 10s. annually.14 A charter of Lancaster Priory from 1256 records the grant of a moiety of one-third of the cornmill and fulling mill of Caton by Roger of Heysham to the priory. The grant states that this included a third of the cornmill and its toll, “and all my third part of the mill of Caton for fulling cloth . . . with all its appurtenances, as in the site for the mill, the pond convenient, and the free water course to the said mills, and with free common in the wood of Caton for proper repairing and maintaining of the said mills without contradiction of anyone”.15 Similarly, the canons of Cockersand were granted the fulling mill of Garstang by Richard le Boteler some time between 1246 and 1256. The grant included the mill with its tenter-yard and two perches of land, as well as free access to the mill and suit of the fee of Garstang. Richard also gave the abbey the right to take timber from his nearby wood for the repair and maintenance of the mill and millpool, “and dead wood to store up for burning” without the interference of the foresters.16 12

Sibton Abbey Cartularies, Pt. IV, ms. 1156. Ibid., ms. 1157. The three lessees were almost undoubtedly tradesmen and, judging from two of the surnames, may have been millwrights. 14 Coucher Book of Furness Abbey, Vol. II, Pt. II, Stackhouse, ms. 1. A carucate was a unit of land in the Danelaw corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon hide. It was as much land as could be tilled by one plough in a year. In the three field system, this was 180 acres, in the two field system, 160 acres, but only plough land was reckoned generally. Therefore, a Norman carucate constituted 120 acres or 80 acres, and an English carucate 144 acres or 96 acres, but it could be up to 240 acres. 15 See Materials for the history of the Church of Lancaster, pp. 166–8. 16 Chartulary of Cockersand Abbey, p. 357. 13

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As we can see from these various examples, not only was it common for a watermill to be let or granted with all of the waterworks and land associated with it, but also for the lord concerned to make some contribution towards its upkeep. The section to follow reviews the costs of building and maintaining conventional vertical-wheeled watermills for grinding grain. It is followed by a brief section on the same costs for fulling mills and tide mills, and a longer discussion of the costs of building and maintaining windmills. In the conclusion to the chapter, the relative costs and profitability of watermills and windmills are compared and some tentative conclusions drawn.

Waterpowered grain mills The cost of building a conventional vertical-wheeled watermill from scratch during the middle ages is difficult to determine for two reasons. The first is that there are few detailed accounts of watermill construction prior to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the second is that virtually all of the new watermills that were built from the late eleventh century onwards were located on existing watermill sites where milldams, ponds and leats had already been constructed.17 Langdon has nevertheless found that an allegedly new watermill built at West Farleigh in Kent between 1268 and 1269 cost £20 7s. 10d.,18 whereas during the higher wage period of the mid-fifteenth century, the cost of building or rebuilding a watermill could be in the vicinity of £80, depending on what was required.19 There is some evidence, however, that the cost of rebuilding the mechanism and housing for a watermill was in the vicinity of £9 to £15 in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which was around the same as, or slightly higher than, the cost to build a new windmill. For example, according to Colvin, in February 1296, a new watermill and leat were constructed at Gyffin Castle near Conwy in Wales at a cost of £8 19s. 5d.20 Considering the costs involved and the location, it was almost undoubtedly built on the site of an earlier watermill. On the other hand, Holt records that £47 8s. 11 ½d. 17 18 19 20

Holt (1988), p. 100. Langdon (1996), pp. 43–4. Langdon (1991), p. 436, n. 39. Colvin (1963), i, p. 350.

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was spent in 1336 to relocate and renovate a pair of watermills at Standon in Hertfordshire, £18 3s. of which was spent on constructing new pools and sluices.21 The cost of rebuilding the watermills themselves was therefore around £14 13s. per mill. Langdon similarly records that a new watermill built on the royal manor of Marlborough in Wiltshire in 1237–38 cost £15 4s. 5d., but was probably also built on an existing mill site.22 The compotus rolls for the Abbey of Bec record that a new mill built by the abbey at Ogbourne Minor (now Ogbourne St George) in Wiltshire in 1281–2 was slightly less costly, at £10 7s. The entry in the abbey’s compotus rolls for that year read: “In molendino de Polton’ faciendo et stipendio carpentarii et 1 mola empta £10 7s.”23 While the entry does not make it explicit that this was a watermill, considering the fact that only one millstone was purchased, and the high rental on the mill (£4 in its first year and higher subsequently), this was almost undoubtedly a watermill rebuilt on an existing site, although the original mill may not have been held by the abbey. In Philip Rahtz’s contribution on medieval milling to D.W. Crossley’s anthology on medieval industry, he describes the costs involved in the construction of a watermill on the estate of Kingsland in Herefordshire in 1389. These costs included “labour, the bed of the millstone, carriage of 38 cartloads of timber . . . the hiring of 24 oxen to carry one alder for the watercourse under the mill, bread and ale for the carters, 96 gross of nails, one hoop and spindle, tallow for the mill axle, moss, metal weights and two iron griddles for the mill axle, one cauldron, and two iron hoops.” Although he does not provide a breakdown of these costs, the total was £11 5s. 7d.24 21 Holt (1988), pp. 87–8. One of the dams of the mill had to be repaired at a cost of £1 8s. in the following year after it was damaged by a flood. This compares with £5 3s. 2d. spent on repairs to the dam of Rook’s mill at East Brent in the summer and autumn of 1335. 22 Langdon (1996), pp. 41–2. 23 See “Computus Rolls of the Abbey of Bec”, p. 87. The text reads: “Regarding the mill of Polton for the work and pay of the carpenters and the purchase of 1 millstone £10 7s.” 24 Rahtz (1981), p. 7, citing Woolhope, “The bailiff’s accounts for the Manor of Kingsland, 1389–90”, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists and Field Club, Vol. 35, pp. 168–76. In a paper from Medieval Archaeology, Carus-Wilson notes two other documents pertaining to mill construction, the first to a fulling mill built on the bishop of Winchester’s estate at Taunton in 1218/19 (P.R.O. Eccles. 2.22/159275), and the second pertaining to a mill in Somerset in an article by T.J. Hunt (Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, CI–CII, 1956–7); see CarusWilson (1957), p. 106.

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It seems likely that this was also a reconstructed watermill on an already existing site. That these kinds of costs are fairly indicative for the time is supported by some of the figures paid by Cirencester and Furness Abbeys to purchase a number of watermills around the first half of the thirteenth century. In 1197, Cirencester Abbey paid Jordan and Alice Basset fifteen marks (£12 10s.) to quitclaim all of their rights in a watermill in Hagbourne, Berkshire, known as Blackmill, along with six acres of meadow.25 The payment to quitclaim was effectively the equivalent of purchasing the mill. The abbey purchased a half moiety of Brain mill in Daglingworth (a.k.a. Gildenbridge mill) from Simon and Alice Matson in 1253 for twelve marks (£10).26 In the late thirteenth century, the abbey also purchased Richard the clerk’s mill, known as Clerkesmill (or Barton Mill because it was next to the abbot’s barton), from Walter of Cheltenham for £20.27 Likewise, Furness Abbey acquired a half moiety of Hetton mill in Yorkshire in 1229 after it was “granted” to the abbey by Elias son of Harsqui de Heton following the abbey’s payment of twelve marks (£10 4s.) to three Jewish money-lenders to pay off Elias’s debts.28 Thus we can see that between the early to mid-thirteenth century, the market price for “second-hand” watermills, with all appurtenances, was somewhere between £10 and £20, which was roughly comparable to the cost of rebuilding an existing watermill. A comparison of the cost of maintaining and rebuilding watermills as a proportion of their overall income suggests that the cost was somewhat lower than that for windmills, although Langdon has argued that gross investment rates for windmills were about the same as those for watermills.29 As the evidence cited below demonstrates, the costs of maintaining watermills could nevertheless vary widely depending on the kind of waterway on which the watermill was located and the extent of the waterworks that were needed to keep it running. 25

The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, ms. 118/829. Ibid., ms. 309. The concord was drawn up at Westminster. 27 See mss. 297/154, 298/156, 299/157, 300/159, 195 & 202. 28 Coucher Book of Furness Abbey, Vol. II, Pt. II, Flasby/Hetton, mss. 120–1. Elias nevertheless did well out of the transaction, as he not only cleared his debts and secured the prayers of the monks for his family’s souls, but managed to extract a regular income from the mill, saving for himself and his heirs £1 of rent annually. 29 Langdon (2004), p. 181. See also Langdon (1996), (2004), Ch. 6, for detailed discussions of the labour costs involved in maintaining and running mills in England between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 26

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According to Holt, for example, the cost of maintaining the Bishop of Ely’s watermill at Great Shelford over the period from 1320 to 1348 averaged a little over 12% of its rental income.30 On the other hand, the expenses for twenty-two watermills on twenty-four English manors held by the Norman Abbey of Bec between 1272 and 1289 averaged around 18% of their revenue. Over the broken seventeen year period covered by Bec’s compotus rolls, the costs of maintaining the fourteen mills for which expenses are recorded ranged from 1.3% to 29.8% of their total revenue.31 As the figures and information provided in the compotus rolls are relatively reliable, it seems likely that the low maintenance costs for at least three of these mills were due to them being at farm, with the major ongoing costs of repair being paid by the mill farmer. In one other instance, however, although the mill concerned is not recorded as being at farm, the very low costs incurred in maintaining it over this period would imply that it was either at farm or had recently been rebuilt. The rich mill documentation for the Bishopric of Durham allows two calculations of total earnings to total expenses, the first less accurate than the second, but still fairly reliable. Boldon Buke records total revenues of £239 6s. from between forty-nine and fifty-four mills in seventy-two of its vills for the year 1183.32 The Great Roll of the Exchequer for the years 1208 to 1213 records that total expenses for the maintenance of the bishopric’s mills in 1197 were £19 18s.33 Assuming that there was not too great a fluctuation in the earnings of these mills over the subsequent fourteen years, this would amount to about 8.5% of Durham’s 1183 mill revenues, which is comparable to those for the Bishop of Ely’s mills in the first half of the fourteenth century recorded by Holt. On the other hand, the expenses for one quarter of the year 1307 on thirty-six mills on thirty-five manors recorded on the Great Roll of Durham were similar to those of Bec’s English estates, at 20.5% of revenues for that quarter. Total

30

Holt (1988), p. 99. See Lucas (2003), Appendix I, and the more detailed discussion of Bec’s mill holdings in idem, Ch. 3. 32 See ibid., Appendix H; also “Boldon Buke”, in VCH: Durham, Vol. I, pp. 264–8. 33 Boldon Buke, “Appendix I: Extracts from the Great Rolls of the Exchequer”, pp. xiii–xiv. 31

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revenue was £138 12s. 4d., and total expenses £28 8s. 11 ½d. for the repairs of thirteen mills.34 Another broken series of compotus rolls for the leuga mill of Peperynghey held by the cellarer of Battle Abbey enables its mill farm to be mapped against its total expenses over the period from 1320 to 1513. Peperynghey’s total recorded income for twenty-four years over this almost two hundred year period amounted to £66 10d., whereas its expenses for the same years amounted to £12 10d., or 18.2% of its income. The peak of Peperynghey’s earnings was immediately after the first major plague, in 1351–2, when it drew the relatively high rent of £5 6s. 8d. Ten years after a second wave of the plague hit the abbey in 1423 and killed more monks than ever before, the mill was taken out of commission to be extensively repaired and rebuilt, at a total cost of £6 19s. 4d.35 The income and expenses of twenty-one or more mills held by Bolton Priory under the administration of John of Laund can be more accurately calculated using twenty-one years of accounting statements over the period from 1300 to 1321. Like other houses in the north, this Lancashire house was able to take advantage of its position on the frontier of English sovereignty by extracting very high revenues from its tenants, including those who let its mills. Bolton earned a total of £964 11s. 8d. from mill tithes and farms between 1300 and 1321, and paid a total of £148 2s. 8d. in expenses for the same mills over that period, or 15.4% of its mill income. Drawing on the figures for its mill income and expenses over the longer period from 1287 to 1324, a slightly higher figure of 16.4% of Bolton’s mill income was spent on mill repairs and maintenance.36 On the other hand, while Beaulieu Abbey’s account book only reveals income, expenditure and millers’ wages for the single financial year of 1269/70, these figures are nevertheless illuminating. While its average income of £5 from its mills was almost double that of the average of £2 10s. 8d. drawn from the mills of lay lords in the

34 Ibid., “Appendix II: Magnus Rotulus Recept. Dunelm. Anno Antonii Episcopi XXV”, pp. xxv–xxviii. 35 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 3, sn. 7.0 & Appendix J. 36 Ibid., Appendix A, sn. A.4.4. Based on a total mill income of £1,394 2s. 9d. and total mill expenses of £229 9d.

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Table 4.1. Incomes, expenses and millers’ wages for eight mills held by Beaulieu Abbey, 1269/70 (£/s/d)* Mill

Income

Expenses

Exp./Inc. (%)

Beaulieu fulling mill

4/14/0

2/5/8

48.6

Soberton mill Rydon mill Burgate mill Kyndelwere mill Nanclegy mill Coxwell windmill Outside mill

2/5/0 5/11/8 4/0/0 9/13/10 1/4/0 3/19/4 8/11/8

4/11/2 4/14/2 0/7/2 3/14/5 0/14/0 0/15/5 0/9/0

202.6 84.3 8.9 38.4 58.1 19.4 5.2

Average Overall

5/0/0

2/3/11

43.9

Millers’ wages 0/14/0 (for 2 men) 0/10/0 0/6/0 0/4/2 5/1/9 – 2/0/4 0/10/0 1/3/4

* All halfpennies have been rounded up to the nearest penny.

South based on the IPM material for 1307–27,37 Beaulieu earned a total of £39 10s. 6d. from eight of its mills in that year, and spent a total of £17 11s. on mill repairs and another £9 6s. 3d. on millers’ wages [see Table 4.1]. The relatively high income from Beaulieu’s mills was therefore offset by their high maintenance costs, which averaged out at £2 3s. 11d. per mill, or around 43.9% of their revenue during this year. Given the high sums paid for repairs to the mills of Soberton and Rydon, however, which in Soberton’s case were double its income, it seems likely that the financial year of 1269/70 was a particularly expensive one for Beaulieu with regard to its mill repairs.38 Excluding Beaulieu, therefore, the range of mill expenses expressed as a percentage of mill income for the five houses of Ely, Bec, Durham, Battle and Bolton thus varied between 8.5% for Durham in the late twelfth century and 12% for Ely in the mid-fourteenth century, to between 18% and 20.5% for Bec, Durham and Battle in the late thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The average of the seven figures provided is just under 16%. Even if we take into account the

37 Langdon (1994), p. 13. The figure for southern lay lords cited here is double that recorded by Langdon, as the IPM valuations generally indicate values minus expenses, which he found are around half of the incomes taken from accounts. Despite having doubled these figures to take this into account, Beaulieu’s average mill revenues were still twice as high. 38 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 5, sn. 6.0.

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costs of paying millers during this period,39 these figures indicate that around 80% of the income earned by English lords on their watermills between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries was clear profit, and demonstrates just how lucrative an enterprise was waterpowered milling in the middle ages.40 The same kinds of variations in watermill construction and repair costs as proportions of income that have already been noted are reflected in some of the figures provided by Colvin in The History of the King’s Works (1963) for the construction, rebuilding and repair of a number of castle watermills. Castles frequently possessed their own mills for strategic purposes, most of which were located in the moats outside the castle walls. Two exceptions included Beaumans Castle, where a watermill was built into one of the castle’s towers,41 and Caernarvon Castle in Wales, where the mill and millpool were sited next to the bridge into the castle, with the bridge acting as a dam for the millpool.42 Because castle mills were almost invariably royal holdings which provided for the needs of urban populations, large sums of money were frequently spent on rebuilding and maintaining them. For example, between 1315 and 1360, Colvin records that well over £1,000 was spent on the repairs to, and rebuilding of, York Castle’s mills, which appear to have been struck by a series of disasters during this period. In 1315, the mills were carried away by floods, costing £100 to rebuild, with another £853 spent to repair their dams and sluices. The mills were again rebuilt in 1348, but by 1360 were again “entirely ruined”, costing more than £100 to rebuild.43 Such natural disasters appear to have been relatively frequent occurrences in the lives of many mills. Colvin records that “[i]n 1251, over £30 had to be spent on repairing the mill beneath . . .

39 The issue of millers’ wages is discussed in detail by Holt (1988), Ch. 6; Langdon (1996), pp. 46–7; Langdon (2004), pp. 238–48. 40 While Langdon has argued that gross investment rates are a better indication of the profitability of milling overall, such calculations can only be made using the richer manorial account material that is available for the period post-1400, a period which is not so well represented in the published monastic material from which most of the previous data are drawn. 41 Colvin (1963), i, pp. 401, 405. 42 Ibid., pp. 380, 383. 43 Ibid., ii, p. 892, citing Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1348–50, pp. 68, 184, 199, and Calendar of Close Rolls, 1346–9, p. 571.

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[Salisbury] castle after it had been badly damaged in a thunderstorm.”44 At Portchester Castle, the King’s Mill was rebuilt at a cost of £22 11s. in 1289, a figure which included the repair of some of the castle’s houses.45 The same mill appears to have again been rebuilt between March 1376 and April 1377.46 As we will see shortly, tidal-powered watermills were even more vulnerable. In a similar vein to the large amounts of money spent on York Castle’s mills in the first half of the fourteenth century, the comparably princely sum of £669 was spent on the reconstruction of the watermills below Nottingham Castle in 1255. In the last eight years of Henry III’s reign (i.e., 1264–72), another £350 was spent on repairing the castle and its mills. During Edward I’s reign (1272–1307), the average annual expenditure on repairs to the castle and its mills was £31,47 while in 1299, £26 was spent on repairing its mills and weirs alone.48 Similarly, the repair of Chester mills averaged and sometimes exceeded £25 per annum between the 1330s and 1370s.49 Taking three rentals which survive for this period, i.e., £200 in 1315, £190 in 1356, and £240 in 1377, and averaging them out, a figure of £210 a year is reached.50 Dividing the average expenses for this period with the average rental gives us a figure of around 12% of their annual income, which is around the same as that for the Great Shelford watermill owned by the Bishops of Ely mentioned a little earlier. It was not unusual for a manor, park and mills to be attached to a castle title, such as at Guildford Castle, which was held by Eleanor of Aquitaine until her death in 1291.51 Royal forests and parks often contained mills and fishponds for the provision of the royal parties which visited them. For example, the royal forest of Feckenham in Worcestershire was often frequented by the Angevin and Plantagenet kings; a new fishpond was built there in 1168–9, and later repaired at a cost of over £40 in 1203–4, with a further £30 8s. 2d. spent

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., ii, p. 827. Ibid., ii, p. 785. Ibid., p. 789. Ibid., p. 760. Ibid., p. 761. Ibid., p. 610, n. 1. See ibid., i, p. 468, and Jack (1981), pp. 98–9. Ibid., ii, p. 658.

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on the mill, fishpond and appurtenant buildings in 1207–8.52 At Woodstock royal park in Oxfordshire in 1334, the cost of moving a watermill to a new site and raising and altering the roof of the chamber building cost over £100.53

Fulling mills Eleanora Carus-Wilson recorded the costs of constructing and/or rebuilding three English fulling mills in the thirteenth century in her famous article “An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century” (1941). In 1208/9, the Bishop of Winchester spent £9 4s. 4d. building a new fulling mill at Brightwell,54 while Henry III rebuilt his fulling mill at Elcot at a cost of £4 17s. 4d. in 1237. The King ordered his men to use timber from his forest at Savernake for this purpose.55 In 1263, Henry de Lacy rebuilt his fulling mill at Burnley in Lancashire for the even lower sum of £2 12s. 6d.56 The costs of rebuilding the fulling mills of Elcot and Burnley were obviously offset by the supply of free timber in the first instance, and probably the re-use of salvagable parts in the second instance. They also did not require millstones, a considerable extra expense. In addition to the material recorded by Carus-Wilson, a gazetteer of medieval Welsh fulling mills compiled by Ian Jack lists the costs of constructing and repairing a number of fulling mills in the fourteenth century. He records, for example, that between 1334 and 1336, the Fitzalan family had two fulling mills constructed at Chirk and Glynfechan in Denbighshire at a cost of £8 3s. 4d, or around £4 each.57 Another fulling mill was built by the Fitzalans at Carreghofa in Montgomeryshire in 1346 at a cost of £4 16s. 4d.58 Because of its inadequate water supply, the same family relocated a fulling mill

52

Ibid., p. 938. Ibid., p. 1016. 54 Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 51, citing Pipe Roll of the Bishop of Winchester (1208–9), p. 13. 55 Ibid., citing Pipe Roll, 31 Henry III, p. 46. 56 Ibid., citing Two Compoti of the Lancashire and Cheshire Manors of Henry de Lacy, 24 and 33 Edward I, Chetham Society, Vol. CXII, pp. 15 & 16. 57 Jack (1981), p. 95. 58 Ibid., p. 94. 53

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at Llangollen to Nether Chirk in Denbighshire in 1339–40. Although Jack provides no costs for this move, the mill was again rebuilt and tiled in 1390–1 at a cost of £23.59 A new fulling mill at Marlborough Castle recorded by Langdon was similarly expensive, costing a little over £18 to build in 1237–8.60 With the exception of the rebuilding of the Nether Chirk mill and the newly built Marlborough Castle fulling mill, therefore, the low costs of constructing the other fulling mills suggests that they were built on existing watermill sites, but were nevertheless built at around half the cost of the fulling mill at Brightwell and the conventional watermills at Gyffin Castle, Ogbourne St George and Kingsland mentioned above. It would therefore appear from these data that the cost of building a fulling mill on an already existing site was generally around half of that for building a conventional water-powered grain mill. With regard to the cost of fulling mill repairs, Jack records that in 1330, a combined fulling mill and cornmill complex at Brithdir in Montgomeryshire, which was presumably powered by a single waterwheel, was laid up for seventeen days while the waterwheel and fulling stocks were replaced at a cost of 8s.61 The repair of fulling stocks and hammers on the Glynfechan fulling mill owned by the Fitzalans in Glynceiriog, Denbighshire, in 1395–6 cost 18s. 4d. in a year when it was rented for £4. The same mill had had repairs made to it four decades earlier in 1355 at a cost of 35s., in a year when its annual rent was around £3.62 In 1342–3, the Bohun family had a new dyehouse built next to its rebuilt fulling mill at Llywel in Brecknockshire at a cost of £3, both of which were promptly leased at £2 per annum.63 Another dyehouse built by the Fitzalans as part of one of its Chirk fulling mill complexes cost £2 8s. 8d. to build in 1391–2.64 They also spent 9s. 4d. on repairs to their fulling mill of Clun in Shropshire a few years earlier in 1387, which also included the construction of a new dyehouse.65

59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Ibid., p. 95. Langdon (1996), pp. 41–2. Jack (1981), p. 89. Ibid., pp. 102–3. Ibid., p. 112. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 97.

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It therefore seems clear that because fulling mills did not require millstones, they could be built for substantially less than a conventional water-powered grain mill. As we can see from the above accounts, fulling stocks and hammers could be completely replaced in fourteenth century Wales for less than £1, which was as little as a quarter of the cost to purchase new millstones. Unfortunately, Jack does not reproduce sufficient details of repair and maintenance costs on any of these mills to draw any further conclusions.

Tide mills Medieval tide mills and windmills served a similar function in that both provided milling capacity for communities which lacked sufficiently powerful watercourses in their immediate vicinities to run conventional watermills. Tide mills, were, however, far more expensive to build and maintain than windmills, with the result that tide mills generally fell out of favour once the cheaper alternative of the windmill became available.66 This point was first made by Richard Holt, and is clearly borne out in his account of the reconstruction of the Lydden tide mill in Kent by Henry of Eastry, the famous Prior of Christ Church Canterbury from 1285 to 1331. The Lydden mill was completely destroyed in the 1290s and was rebuilt by Henry at the significant cost of £143 13s. When it was damaged by floods in 1316, it was moved to a better site at a further cost of £74 13s. 4d., which as Holt points out was a “wholly disproportionate amount just to acquire a rent of twenty-five quarters of wheat.” After it was again destroyed by high tides in 1326, Henry decided to completely relocate it out of the tidal zone at the much lower cost of £12 19s.67 This was an expensive lesson in the follies of building tidal-powered watermills in less than ideal locations.

66 According to Langdon, however, “[tide mills] managed to survive, perhaps even thrive, in more populated parts of the country, most particularly the lower Thames basin and estuary and certain sections of the south coast”. See Langdon (2004), p. 79. 67 Holt (1988), pp. 88–9.

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The large sums spent by Henry of Eastry on rebuilding the Lydden tide mill are comparable to those spent on a tide mill built in Southwark, Surrey, in the mid-fourteenth century, and another at Hadleigh Castle in Essex built between the late thirteenth and late fourteenth centuries. Langdon records that in 1340–1, the Bishop of Winchester built a tide mill at Southwark in Surrey for £100 8s. 10 ½d,68 while Colvin records that a tide mill at Hadleigh Castle was completely rebuilt at the even higher cost of £162 5s. 3d. between July 1375 and Michaelmas 1377. This included work on the dam, floodgates, bays and wharf.69 A century earlier, £25 had been spent on repairs to it.70 Iron fittings from the doors and windows of houses within the castle precincts were also used to repair it.71 It seems very unlikely that this single mill’s income matched the large amounts of money that were spent on maintaining it, and perhaps served more of a strategic than a financial investment. Both the monks of Battle in Sussex and the canons of Blythburgh Priory on the Suffolk coast appear to have made similar calculations to Henry of Eastry about the relative utility of tide mills versus windmills during the thirteenth century, although there are no comparable records of the costs involved. Some time before 1240, Blythburgh replaced a marginal or ruinous precinctual watermill built in the mid-twelfth century with a windmill, a practice that was not at all uncommon in East Anglia at the time.72 Owing to the location of the priory on a prominent bluff close to the coast near mudflats that were only a metre or so above sea-level, the original watermill was probably a tide mill, which would help explain its marginal status and why it was replaced by a windmill.73 In the late thirteenth or

68 Langdon (2004), p. 179, n. 9, citing Hampshire Record Office 11M59 B1/93, ms. 31–31v. 69 Colvin (1963), p. 666. 70 Ibid., ii, p. 659. 71 Ibid., p. 661, n. 3. 72 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 7, sn. 5.0. 73 The only two references to this mill occur in a grant and quitclaim by William the marshall to the priory of homage and rent from a tenement of two acres “adjacent to the Canon’s windmill and former watermill” (iacentium ex parte aquilonis molendini ventilis dictorum canonicorum), which he had previously held of them for 8d. a year. See Blythburgh Priory Cartulary, mss. 15 & 16. William appears to have died before 1240. Cf. ms. 17. The new windmill built by the canons was undoubtedly a relatively early example of this new technology, although it was the priory’s benefactor,

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early fourteenth century, Battle Abbey similarly built a windmill to replace what was probably a tide mill built in the twelfth century in the marshes near Barnhorn.74

Windmills Windmill incomes were on average only half as much or less than those of watermills, but the cost of constructing them was considerably lower than building a new watermill.75 There is also some evidence that their maintenance costs relative to their incomes in medieval England were considerably higher than those for watermills. For example, Holt has calculated that 38% of the rental fees for the mill of Kelsale belonging to the Earl of Norfolk was spent on maintenance in the period from 1294 to 1306, and 35% of the rental income for the same earl’s mill of Soham in Suffolk in the period from 1296 to 1304.76 Similarly, the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds allocated one-third of its rental income for repairs from its four windmills of Redgrave.77 As we will see from the discussion to follow, building new windmills was considerably cheaper than building new watermills, but their higher maintenance costs and lower revenues led to a decline in the construction of windmills in the wake of the Black Death. This decline was probably accompanied by a sizable increase in the number of horse mills in places where insufficient waterpower was available to construct watermills as an alternative.78 Based on an analysis of forty-four windmills built by the bishops of Ely in the mid to late thirteenth century, Holt has proposed that the average cost of constructing a windmill in East Anglia during this period was about £10.79 For example, he notes that three mills

Roger de Chesney, who appears to have built the first windmill in the area. My thanks to Richard Holt for suggesting that the original watermill was a tide mill based on his knowledge of the local geography. 74 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 3, sn. 7.0. 75 Holt (1988), pp. 77–8; Langdon (1991), p. 434. This issue is discussed in more detail in Chapter Five. 76 Holt (1988), p. 86. 77 Ibid., p. 87. 78 Holt (1997), pp. 145, 149. 79 Holt (1988), p. 86.

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built by the Earl of Norfolk at Framlingham in 1286, Walton (Suffolk) in 1291, and Kelsale in 1294 cost £8 4s. 5d., £6 16s. 2 ½d. and £4 16s. 10 ¼d. respectively. All three windmills were provided with millstones from the mills which they replaced, which ranged in value from about £1 13s. for a single stone for the Framlingham mill, to two stones worth around £3 and £4 respectively for the other two mills.80 The true costs of construction for all three mills was, therefore, very close to the average of £10 calculated by Holt. Holt’s figures can also be compared with those pertaining to the construction of the abbot of Sibton’s new windmill in east Suffolk which are listed in the abbey’s compotus rolls for 1363–4. The abbey paid £2 to John the carpenter “for building the new mill inside the abbey’s precincts”, as well as 2s. from the curia for the same.81 It also paid 14s. for 24 ells of cloth for the mill’s sailcloths, £1 2s. 4 ½d. for two millstones, 8s. 8d. for 8,000 laths, 18s. 3d. for 2,600 faggots, 4d. for the transportation of timber, and 4s. 8d. for making the mill’s four sailcloths, which weighed 44 lbs.82 The total listed costs for the mill were £5 10s. 3 ½d., although as will become clearer from the discussion below there are a number of important components of the mill’s costs, including transport of some of the materials and all of the ironwork and other metallic items used in the mill, that do not appear to have been included. The low costs of the two millstones have also reduced the mill’s overall cost. Taking these issues into account, therefore, one would imagine that the total cost of construction for the mill would have also come close to the average of £10 which Holt found for East Anglia in the second half of the thirteenth century. An analysis of Bolton Priory’s mill holdings in Lancashire has similarly revealed that the windmill of Holderness was built and repaired between 1305 and 1316 at a cost of £10 6s. 2d.83 Elsewhere, however, the costs of windmill construction were not so low. Holt records that a windmill built in 1299 at Milton Hall in Essex, for example, cost £15 4s. 11d., while the cost of another built at Walton in Somerset in 1342 was £11 17s. 11d., primarily

80 Ibid., pp. 176–7. The Walton windmill was built to replace the tide mill described below. 81 Sibton Abbey Estates, “Custus domorum”, p. 118. 82 Ibid., “Minute”, pp. 122–4. 83 See Lucas (2003), Appendix A, sn. A.4.4.

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because an inexpensive pair of local millstones was used rather than the more expensive imports that were usual in southern and eastern England.84 It appears to have been a completely new construction. Two of the most expensive to construct medieval windmills that have yet been recorded were built in the same year, i.e., 1303. Langdon records that what appears to have been either a very early tower windmill or a composite tower-post-mill was built by Westminster Abbey in Turweston, Buckinghamshire at a cost of £19 16s. 3 ½d., while Salmon records that the windmill of Newborough in Wales cost £18 3s. 8 ½d. to build. In the latter instance, the very low cost of millstones at 11s. 8d. (including transport) significantly reduced its overall cost.85 Although the Turweston windmill appears to have been an elaborate, “state-of-the-art” construction undertaken at the behest of the abbot of Westminster, the royal windmill of Newborough appears to have been a standard post-mill in its construction, but cost as much to build because of its relative remoteness and the high costs of transporting materials to the site. In both instances, however, the additional costs of the master carpenters or millwrights who worked on these mills appear to have been absorbed in the general wages of the institutions concerned.86 It is also worth noting that by 1375, the costs of a “standard” windmill seem to have markedly increased, when a completely rebuilt windmill at Brandon in Suffolk cost £20 8s. 2d. Higher labour and material costs were no doubt the main contributors to such overall increases.87 Interestingly, a new stone

84 See Holt (1988), p. 177. On the Milton Hall windmill, see also Wailes (1957–9), p. 153. The source of the data on the Milton Hall windmill is J.F. Nicholls, “Milton Hall: the compotus of 1299”, Trans. Southend-on-Sea and District Antiquarian and Hist. Soc., Vol. 2, 1932, pp. 113–67. The source for the Walton, Somerset, windmill is Keil (1961–2). The data in Keil’s article are discussed in detail in Langdon (1996), p. 45, who indicates that the mill was newly built by Glastonbury Abbey under the abbacies of John Breinton (1334–42) and Walter Monyngton (1342–75). The total cost of construction given by Keil, Holt and Langdon is incorrect, however. The figures add to £11 17s. 11d., not £11 12s. 11d. 85 Langdon (1992), p. 60; Salmon (1940). Langdon originally thought that the Turweston mill was simply an elaborate post-mill, but has recently revised his opinion. Based on a closer inspection of the manuscript sources, he now believes that it was a tower mill (personal communication, November 2003). 86 On Turweston, see Langdon (1992), and on Newborough, see the discussion below. While both mills do list some carpentry costs, these are not the totals involved. 87 Holt (1988), p. 177. Although it is difficult to estimate the cost of building the windmill from the following figures, Colvin records that £47 was spent between

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windmill, or tower mill, was built by the king’s orders at Dover Castle in 1294, at a total cost of £36 6s. 11d. This early date would make it one of the earliest recorded tower mills in Europe, and probably the first in England. It appears to have been a replacement for a post-mill built in 1234–5.88 With regard to the carpentry costs for the aforementioned postmills, the millwrights for both Framlingham and Kelsale were paid £3 13s. 4d. each, while £3 6s. 9 ½d. went to the millwright for the Walton (Suffolk) windmill, £5 to the carpenter for the Milton Hall mill, and £5 6s. 8d. for the carpenter who built the Walton (Somerset) mill.89 When taken as percentages of the overall costs of construction, and including the costs of the “free” millstones supplied to the first three mills, the millwrights concerned received 37.1%, 37.4%, 37.8%, and 32.8% respectively of the overall costs of the four East Anglian windmills, and 45.8% of the Somerset windmill. Whether these percentages reflect wider trends in the relative pay-scales and material costs in different regions of England is not clear, but the evidence is suggestive. In order to gain some further insight into the costs of constructing these early windmills, it is instructive to look at a few examples in more detail, notably through a comparison of the costs involved in the construction of the Walton, Somerset, post-mill and the Turweston windmill described in detail by Langdon, with those of the Newborough windmill described above. Using the data reproduced in the bailiff ’s account of the construction of a windmill in Newborough, Anglesey, in 1303 translated by John Salmon in a short paper from 1940, the following information was extracted. Payments to the carpenter, Mathew de Sylkeston,

April 1373 and Michaelmas 1374 on building a new windmill, bridge and weir at Gravesend in Kent [see Colvin (1963), ii, p. 948.]. It seems likely, however, that the cost of building the windmill was around half of the overall cost, given the relative complexity of the three jobs. 88 Colvin (1963), pp. 636, 638. John Langdon and Martin Watts examine in detail the building account for this mill in a forthcoming paper titled, “Tower Windmills in Medieval England: A Case of Arrested Development?”. They argue that a significant amount of stone and wood, as well as the wages for the castle carpenter and smith are not included in the total cost for the mill. The unreported expenses would bring the “real” cost of this tower mill to well over £50. I thank John Langdon for allowing me to read a draft of this paper prior to publication. 89 Holt (1988), pp. 176–7. Langdon (1996), p. 45, gives a figure of £5 7s. 3d. for the millwright’s fee at Walton, Somerset.

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were £6 6s. 8d., and included the provision and cutting of timber from the woods of the Prince of Wales in Lleyn. Payments to a labourer named David the Digger for the foundations of the mill and the erection of the “cross” (which is almost undoubtedly a reference to the pyramidal base of the windmill) cost £2 19s., and included the carriage of turf and other materials to the site necessary for the foundations’ construction. The cost of iron for the mill’s ironwork was 22s. 2d. This was used to make two spindles, as well as hoppers, chains, one rake, and other ironwork for 19s. Thirteen hundred boardnails and spikenails cost 3s. 11 ½d, while bolts and hinges for the mill’s door cost 2d., 24lb of brass cost 5s., and two thousand boardnails for the roof also cost 5s.90 Two millstones bought at Mathawr cost 6s. 8d., forty-six ells of canvas for the sailcloth cost 9s. 7d., while cord and rope cost 6d., and 14lb of tallow cost 12d. Payments for transport of the timber across land and sea were £7 2s., for the millstones from the place of purchase to the mill site, 5s., and for the canvas, cord and rope, 6s. 6d. The grand total for the construction of the mill was therefore £20 12s. 2 ½d. The various costs are set out below in Table 4.2. It should be noted with regard to these costs that Mathew de Sylkeston’s fee of £6 6s. 8d. included the costs of cutting and supplying timber for the mill, whereas these costs are recorded separately in the figures for Turweston and Walton. Another difference between the three mills is that the master carpenter involved in building Turweston was probably a permanent employee of the abbey whose wages were recorded elsewhere.91 While there is no indication that this was the case at Newborough, the fact that the cost of supplying timber is included in the carpenter’s fee indicates that the figures for labour and materials need to be adjusted if a realistic comparison is to be made. Drawing on Langdon’s work on Turweston and Walton, in which the percentage costs of timber varied widely, at 5.3% for the Turweston mill and 19% for the Walton mill, it would at first seem reasonable

90 Salmon translates this passage as “boardnails for the roof of the new cross”. Having not had an opportunity to check the original manuscript, it cannot be stated for certain that this is a mis-translation, but it seems most likely that the references to the “cross” are to the four-legged foundation for the windmill. I thank Richard Holt and John Langdon for pointing this out to me. 91 Langdon (1992), p. 58, idem (1996), p. 43.

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Table 4.2. Cost of constructing Newborough windmill, Anglesey, in 1303 Type of Cost Transport timber millstones canvas, cord & rope Total Transport

Cost

Percentage of Total Costs

£7 2s. 5s. 6s. 6d. £7 13s. 6d.

34.3 1.2 1.6 37.1

£6 6s. 8d.

30.6

Labour carpenter (incl. supply & cutting of timber) labourer (for construction of foundations) smith Total Labour

£2 19s.

14.3

19s. £10 4s. 8d.

4.6 49.5

Materials iron 1,300 boardnails & spikenails bolts & hinges 24lb of brass 2,000 boardnails 2 millstones 46 ells of canvas cord & rope 14lb of tallow Total Material

£1 2s. 2d. 3s. 11 ½d. 2d. 5s. 5s. 6s. 8d. 9s. 7d. 6d. 12d. £2 14s. ½d.

5.4 0.9 0.1 1.2 1.2 1.6 2.3 0.1 0.2 13.1

Grand Total

£20 12s. 2 ½d.

99.7

to take the average of both figures to provide a rough guide as to how to tease out the timber costs from the carpenter’s fees at Newborough. This would provide a figure of 12.1% of the total construction cost, which seems too high given the relative costs of other materials used at Newborough, and the fairly radical reduction in the carpenter’s fee which this would entail. Using a weighted average of the other material costs as a guide, it would seem that Newborough’s materials cost on average about half of those of the English windmills, so it would not seem unreasonable to speculate that the timber costs for Newborough were about 6% of the total. Taking these adjusted figures into account, a comparison can be made with those figures compiled by Langdon for the Turweston and Walton windmills, while keeping in mind that the assumption regarding timber costs is only a rough guide. The total costs for

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labour, transport and materials for the Newborough windmill were as follows: £8 19s. 10d. for the labour of the carpenter, “digger” and smith (which excludes the costs of the timber supplied by the carpenter but includes the cost of transporting turf and fill by the labourer); £7 13s. 6d. for the transport of the timber, millstones, canvas and rope; and £3 18s. 10 ½d. for the various materials, including the timber, millstones, metallic parts, tallow, canvas and rope. Adjusting for the timber costs as outlined above, this gives us the following percentages: labour was the highest at 43.4%, transport amounted to 37.1%, and materials to 19.1%. If we compare these costs with those of the Turweston and Walton windmills, built in 1303 and 1342 respectively, the Turweston windmill cost £19 16s. 3 ½d., and the Walton windmill £11 17s. 11d. to build. The Newborough windmill cost about the same as the Turweston windmill, at £20 12s. 2 ½d., and was built in the same year. However, comparing the costs of labour, transport and materials, there are some significant differences. Langdon’s combined percentages for the transport and labour costs for Turweston were 54.7%, and for Walton, 53.5% (none of which included transport), whereas those for Newborough are 80.5%. Materials for Turweston contributed to 45.4% of the total costs, and at Walton were 46.4%, while at Newborough were only about 19.1% of the total. The large figures for transport costs at Newborough compared to the other two mills count for a significant part of the discrepancy in the breakdown of costs, amounting to 37.1% of the costs there, but only 5% at Turweston, and no costs at all for Walton, which would imply that whereas Walton had all of its materials on hand (apart from millstones presumably), Newborough had to import almost everything except for iron, brass and tallow. Another discrepancy may be due to transport costs of the Turweston and Walton millstones being included in their overall costs as materials. Even so, the Turweston millstones cost £3 2s. 11d., and the Walton millstones £1 4s. 4d., whereas those for Newborough were 6s. 8d., or 11s. 8d. even if we take into account their transport to the mill site. Therefore, even though Newborough’s transport costs were much higher, the cost of materials to them was much lower, implying that Wales was a comparatively cheap place for acquiring such materials when compared to England at the same time.

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On the basis of the material covered in this chapter, a number of tentative observations can be made about the economics of mill investment between the early thirteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The cost of purchasing an existing watermill during the first half of the thirteenth century appears to have been between £10 and £20, while the evidence for the reconstruction of watermills on existing sites in England and Wales from the late thirteenth to late fourteenth centuries indicates costs of between £9 and £15. Although the price range for building a new windmill during the same period was roughly the same, around £10 for a new postmill appears to have been the norm in the thirteenth century. The construction of a new watermill with sluices, dams, leats and millpools, however, could cost anywhere between £20 and £40 prior to the Black Death, and twice that much in the wake of the plague. Apart from the very large sums of money often invested by the Crown in mill complexes for castles and towns, the most significant investment in mill construction involved building a tide mill, which normally cost £100 or more between the late thirteenth and late fourteenth centuries owing to the extensive waterworks required. Because tide mills were generally only built in those places where there was insufficient water-power to run conventional watermills, as soon as the cheaper alternative of the windmill became available, tide mills seem to have generally been abandoned in favour of windmills, although there is some evidence that they continued to be viable in major population centres. The cheapest investment to make in any kind of water- or windpowered mill before the plague appears to have been a fulling mill built on an existing watermill site. Such mills generally appear to have cost around half as much to build as conventional watermills used for grinding grain. This was primarily because they did not have to be supplied with expensive millstones. If they had to be built from scratch, however, the costs of construction were similar to those for building a conventional watermill. Because fulling mill revenues were only around a quarter to a third of those from conventional watermills, however, their relative lack of profitability had a significant impact on the long-term viability of such ventures, as well as the kinds of places in which they were likely to be built. This issue will be explored in more detail in later chapters.

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Some evidence has also been presented to indicate that between the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries, the costs of maintaining watermills as a proportion of their total income was between 12% and 20%. While only a few examples of comparative figures for windmills were cited, all of which derive from the work of Holt, the relative expenditure on maintenance was much higher, at between 33% and 38%. If such figures are, in fact, fairly representative, such costs, combined with the fact that the average revenues for windmills were only around a third to a half of those of watermills, meant that as soon as windmills came under economic pressure in the wake of the Black Death, many lords were quick to abandon them.92 Regardless of the relative costs of maintenance to revenue for windmills and watermills, however, it is nevertheless clear from these data that only those with substantial financial means were able to construct, maintain and operate a windmill or a watermill, and that such means were generally outside the purview of all but the aristocracy and the wealthier of the religious houses, townsfolk and peasantry. Given that profits of between 60% and 80% could be realistically expected from mill investments, it is clear why lords throughout England and Wales were jealous of their seigneurial rights, and would only give tenants permission to build mills if they were deemed to be no competition to their own milling interests. This is a point that will be explored in more detail in the next chapter.

92 Holt (1988), Ch. 10. This issue will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ROLE OF THE MONASTERIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MILLING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Introduction The notion that Christian monasteries played a central role in the diffusion of watermilling technology in medieval Europe has a long history. Lewis Mumford and Marc Bloch were probably the earliest scholars to independently outline this now familiar narrative, just as they were probably the first scholars to argue that there was an industrial revolution in the middle ages based primarily upon waterpower.1 While differing substantially in the depth of their analyses, Mumford’s Technics and Civilization (1934) and Bloch’s “Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau” (1935) proposed that the rapid spread of the watermill in the second half of the middle ages is one of the paradigm cases of technological progress in the transition to modernity.2 They both contended that although the watermill was invented in Classical times, the Romans and their contemporaries made little use of it. Christian monks were largely responsible for its dissemination in medieval times, introducing it to areas where knowledge of it had died out or never existed. Monastic mills thus served as an example for other social groups to emulate. For Mumford and Bloch, Latin Christian monasticism played a central role in providing the foundations for the mechanization of industry and the automation of production that took place in the Industrial Age. While they both argued that the monasteries were leaders in the construction and promotion of labour-saving machinery from the ninth or tenth century onwards, their accounts diverge significantly with respect to their interpretation of the monks’ interests in promoting the widespread adoption of water-powered milling.

1

The latter claim will be examined in detail in Chapter Six. See Mumford (1934, repr. Orlando, 1963), and Bloch (1935), pp. 538–63, first published in English as “The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill”, in Bloch (1967), pp. 136–68. 2

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In understanding what they argued and why, their work needs to be seen within pre-existing scholarly traditions of discourse. Bloch’s views on the subject were developed in the context of a broader debate in social and economic history about lordly power in the middle ages. What might be called the seigneurial monopoly model was probably first articulated by Richard Bennett and John Elton in their four volume History of Cornmilling (1898–1904).3 But it is Bloch’s classic paper from 1935 that has become one of the standard reference works on the topic since it was first published. For Bloch, like Bennett and Elton, monastic ownership of mills and the monks’ promotion of watermilling technology have to be seen within the framework of feudal lordship; in particular, the emergence of seigneurial monopolies as a privilege either granted by monarchs to powerful magnates as a reward for their vassalage, or claimed as a customary right by such magnates and enforced through tyranny. According to this view, the monks were the first feudal lords to build a substantial number of watermills. Under the feudal system, the ownership of mills became exclusively a privilege of lordship. One of the marks of serfdom was the obligation to grind one’s grain at the lord’s mill and pay the lord a proportion of the milled grain as tollcorn. This particular seigneurial monopoly, known as a banalité in France and “suit of mill” or “mill soken” (mulctura) in England, was one of the most important of the rights of private justice that were granted to lords by their monarchs, first in France during the tenth century, and slightly later in England in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.4 Bloch observed that by the thirteenth century, French legal theory regarded suit of mill as “one of the highest judicial rights”.5 He recorded numerous instances of peasants and townsfolk who resisted the imposition of the “advanced technology” of the watermill by continuing the centuries-old practice of grinding the household grain

3 Bennett & Elton (1898–1904). In an earlier critique of Bloch, John Langdon used the term “seigneurial-exploitation model” to describe Bloch’s hypothesis. See Langdon (1994), p. 22. 4 Bloch (1967), pp. 151–3, 156. In France, there were also “monopolies concerning the use of the baking-oven, the wine-press, the breeding-boar or bull, the sale of wine or beer . . . [and] the supply of horses for treading out corn”. Of these, the seigneurial monopoly on milling was “probably the most ancient and certainly the most widespread”. 5 Ibid., p. 153.

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at home on a rotary handmill. But such flagrant flouting of the law incurred the wrath of lay and ecclesiastical lords in such famous cases as St Albans, Peterborough and Cirencester, in which handmills were confiscated and destroyed, the transgressors fined and beaten and, in the worst cases of rebellion, jailed and even executed.6 Bloch’s views emerged from a Marxist tradition which held that it was material conditions, and especially class relations, that shaped the structure and development of the medieval economy. Lords were the dominant players in medieval economic relations, and exercised their authority by monopolising production and trade and relegating the lower orders of society to the margins of economic activity. The abbots and priors of the large monasteries were amongst the earliest members of the new feudal élite, and tended to be as oppressive as their lay counterparts, zealously maintaining their feudal privileges. Bloch suggested that the interest of lords in replacing the handmill with the watermill was not based on the desire to increase productivity, but rather, to strengthen their economic domination of the lower orders. It was not a case of the mode of production (in this case, the technology of the watermill) determining social relations, as Marx’s famous aphorism proclaimed, but of social relations (i.e., the feudal relationship between lord and vassal) determining the mode of production.7 Mumford’s views on the development of medieval milling as expressed in Technics and Civilization emerged from an already wellestablished movement amongst liberal intellectuals to recuperate the middle ages as a legitimate object of study. His account of how monkish inventiveness was responsible for the dissemination of powered milling throughout medieval Europe was elaborated upon by 6 Ibid., pp. 157–8. Bloch’s views about lordly exactions are endorsed by Dockès (1982), pp. 22–5, 174–96, and by Razi (1983), pp. 166–7. Cf. Holt (1988), pp. 47–53. 7 Marx’s much-debated aphorism that “[t]he handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist”, appears in The Poverty of Philosophy. It occurs at the end of a passage about Proudhon, who, Marx says, “has not understood . . . that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations.” See Marx (1963), p. 109. One of Dockès’ central arguments in Medieval Slavery and Liberation is that Bloch provides an account of the development of the watermill in the middle ages that is more consistent with the evidence than Marx’s bald statement in The Poverty of Philosophy.

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Lynn White Jr., Bertrand Gille and Mumford himself over the subsequent decades. What eventually became a full-blown theory of monastic innovation proved to be very influential, particularly within the history of technology.8 According to this theory, positive Christian attitudes to technological innovation encouraged the use of watermills and other machines that harnessed “new sources of power”, such as the tide mill and the windmill. Like Bloch, its proponents argued that Christian monasteries reintroduced watermilling technology to Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Unlike Bloch, they argued that the monks were leaders in the promotion of new and positive attitudes toward the mechanical arts. The role which they attributed to the monasteries in the process of medieval technological development was thus far more benign than that envisaged by Bloch and other neo-Marxists.9 One of the most common claims made by proponents of the monastic innovation thesis is that the Benedictines adopted a standard plan for their monasteries which included one or more watermills, and that the primary purpose in adopting such technology was to spare their brethren from the mind-numbing tasks of milling, fulling, sawing, etc., by hand, in order to liberate more time for them to engage in prayer and other spiritually rewarding tasks.10 Mumford, for example, claimed that these labour-saving devices contributed to the “changeover to free industry” which supposedly began around

8 See, for example, Mumford (1963), pp. 112, 113–18; (1967), pp. 263–271; Forbes (1953), pp. 50–1; White (1968), pp. 63–6; Gille (1969), pp. 559–562; Reynolds (1983), pp. 109–14; Basalla (1988), p. 148; Major (1990), p. 232. 9 White was particularly exuberant in his praise for the Benedictines, to whom he attributed a form of humanism that encouraged industrialisation. See White (1968), pp. 63–7 (the relevant essay was first published in 1958). He emphasised the Benedictines’ supposed valuation of frugal living and manual labour and the general effect which this had on medieval and later Protestant attitudes to work; ibid., pp. 64–5. He also claimed that monastic discipline encouraged the monks to combine both practical and theoretical concerns in their everyday lives, thereby helping to “create a social atmosphere favorable to scientific and technological development”; ibid., p. 65. Mumford had already articulated similar views in Technics and Civilization, but his most extended reflections on the subject are contained in The Myth of the Machine, where he concluded that, “[t]hrough its regularity and efficiency the monastery laid a groundwork for both capitalist organization and further mechanization: even more significantly, it affixed a moral value to the whole process of work, quite apart from its eventual rewards.” See Mumford (1967), p. 266. 10 Mumford (1967), p. 270.

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the tenth century, echoing an oft-repeated claim that the widespread institution of slavery had prevented the Romans and their contemporaries from making any extensive use of watermilling technology.11 He concluded that the Benedictines extensive use of watermills instituted “technological advances . . . which released labor for other purposes and immensely added to the total productivity of the handicrafts themselves”.12 White argued that the White Benedictines, the Cistercians, took these ideas to new heights, applying the technology of the watermill to a range of new industrial applications, including forging iron, sawing timber and crushing and smelting ore, while embracing a reformed commitment to the original ideals of the Benedictines. He credited the Cistercians with having “often . . . led the way in the use of [water]power”, telling us that “[s]ome of their abbeys had four or five water wheels, each powering a different workshop.”13 Thus, it was a philanthropic, forward-looking and proto-humanist monastic order—the Benedictines—and their reformed offshoot—the Cistercians—who embraced the advanced technology of the watermill in the design and construction of their monasteries and who led their lay counterparts by example through their rapid adoption of, and innovations in, water- and wind-powered milling technology between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. While the essential elements of this narrative appear to have been derived from Bloch,14 it is a sanitized version of Bloch’s story that neglects the central issue of milling monopolies and lordly power. Although there has been a veritable explosion in milling studies over the last two decades in several disciplines and sub-disciplines, it has not substantially improved our understanding of the role of the monasteries in medieval technological development, nor has it shed much light on which one of these two accounts provides the more accurate picture.15 Relatively few scholars have subjected these 11 Ibid., p. 268. As already discussed in Chapter One, this claim looks increasingly implausible as more archaeological evidence is uncovered of the widespread use of watermilling technology during Roman times, on which see Wikander (2000), pp. 371–400. 12 Mumford (1967), p. 270. 13 White (1968), pp. 66–7. The Cistercians came into existence in 1098, a time at which waterpower was already well established in England and France. The order did not arrive in England until 1128. 14 See Bloch (1967), pp. 148, 150–2. 15 Some exceptions are recent studies by Verna (1995), Rouillard (1996) and

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two very influential theories to sustained critical scrutiny in the light of the more recent research.16 This chapter is therefore aimed at making a further contribution to the ongoing encounter between the latest empirical studies of the medieval milling industry and these two well-accepted theories. Because most of the detailed research on medieval milling has been conducted on England, this chapter focuses on the English situation, although some comparative evidence will also be drawn from medieval Ireland, Wales, France and northern Italy. It starts by examining the evidence for those claims that both theoretical camps have shared, i.e., that the monasteries played a decisive role in the reintroduction of Roman watermilling technology to medieval Europe. It then moves on to a critical examination of Bloch’s views on seigneurial monopolies. In particular, it looks at whether seigneurial monopolies were as rigidly enforced throughout England as Bloch assumed. This discussion sheds light in turn on the question of whether the widespread medieval use of the watermill was primarily an expression of lordly coercive power, as Bloch argued, or was instead the result of a liberatory interest in relieving monks and tenants from the drudgery of milling by hand, as proponents of the monastic innovation thesis have argued. The second half of the chapter outlines some of my own findings with regard to patterns of mill ownership and profitability amongst the English monasteries, and the implications of these findings for the seigneurial monopoly model and the monastic innovation thesis.

The role of monasticism in the “reintroduction” of the vertical-wheeled watermill to Western Europe Both historians of technology and social and economic historians have tended to accept the view that Western monastic orders, and particularly the Benedictines, were largely responsible for having “reintroduced” Graeco-Roman vertical-wheeled watermills to Western

Magnusson (2000), all of whom have examined the role of the monasteries in the context of medieval technological developments. 16 The few scholars who have done so are Richard Holt, John Langdon and Paolo Squatriti. See: Holt (1987), pp. 4–6, 22–3; (1988), pp. 36–7, 40, 47–8, 52–3, 145–6; (1997), pp. 142–3, 156–7; Langdon (1994); Squatriti (1997), pp. 125–38.

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Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. For example, Mumford argued in Technics and Civilization that although the number of watermills in Europe “may have decreased for a time” following the collapse of the Roman Empire, “they came back again in the land-redemption and the land-colonization that took place under the monastic orders around the tenth century.”17 A year later, in “Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau”, Bloch similarly argued that “although the invention of the watermill took place in ancient times, its real expansion did not come about until the middle ages.”18 While Bloch acknowledged the existence of watermills in various parts of early medieval Europe that were not monastic in origin, he nevertheless emphasised the role of the monasteries in encouraging the construction of such labour-saving machines: “[t]here can be no doubt that these monastic constructions [i.e., vertical-wheeled watermills] . . . often served as an example to lay lords.”19 The “myth of origins” underlying both the seigneurial monopoly model and the monastic innovation thesis thus credits the middle ages in general and the monasteries in particular with playing a crucial role in the development of modern technology, whereas the classical period in general and lay institutions and commoners in the medieval period are generally regarded as having been far less important. What, then, is the evidence regarding the monasteries involvement in “reintroducing” Graeco-Roman watermilling technology to Western Europe from the time of the monastic revival in the tenth century? We have already seen in Chapters One and Two that there is now a substantial body of evidence to suggest that the Romans were not only far more involved in watermilling than scholars such as Forbes, Gille, White and Finley have claimed, but that the most developed regions of early medieval Europe (now known as the countries of Italy and France), continued many of the powered milling

17

Mumford (1963), p. 114. Bloch (1967), p. 143. 19 Ibid., p. 152. Cf. White (1968), pp. 63–7. Holt (1987), pp. 4–5 and (1988), p. 36, also note Bloch’s assignation “to the major monastic communities the major role in the harnessing and utilisation of waterpower”. Squatriti (1997), p. 131, n. 16 & 17, cites a number of French and Italian scholars who similarly ascribe the most significant dissemination of watermilling technology to the period between the 9th and 11th centuries and “the growth of large, self-sufficient, lord-owned estates”. 18

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practices that had first emerged under the Romans.20 On the margins of the Empire, the evidence from the British Isles presents a different picture of the development of milling, but one that is also not especially supportive of the central role ascribed to the monasteries.21 Early medieval France inherited water transmission systems and watermills from the Roman period, including watermills in various locations and urban aqueducts in Paris, Le Man, Béziers and Pézenas, most of which saw service or were re-built during the early middle ages.22 Around 500, Gregory of Tours wrote a detailed description of the construction of a watermill complex at Loches, as well as the watermills installed in the defensive walls of Dijon. Visigothic, Alamanic and Frankish legal codes all indicate that watermills and their associated water networks were important to the economies of the postImperial chiefdoms and a source of some litigation.23 While a number of early monasteries (such as the Abbey of Saint-Bertin c. 650) built their own watermills, they were also granted parcels of land that included watermills built by lay people of varying status. In Carolingian times, watermills were amongst the most prized possessions of the new feudal élite, drawing substantial revenues for the lay aristocracy and religious houses, but also for free peasants in some rural areas. The archaeological evidence from the ninth century onwards suggests that most of these mills were vertical-wheeled watermills located on small waterways, although horizontal-wheeled watermills appear to have predominated in southern France, just as they did in the neighbouring Spanish caliphates and kingdoms.24 Early medieval Ireland had a continuous tradition of water-powered milling from at least the late sixth century onwards. According to Irish legend, watermills were an import from pagan Britain.25 Legal texts of the period lend some support to this oral tradition,

20 The best summaries of this evidence can be found in: Wikander (1984); (1985), pp. 151–79; (2000); Squatriti (1998), Ch. 5. 21 The best summaries of this evidence can be found in: Holt (1988), Ch. 1; Rynne (2000), pp. 1–50. 22 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 166–7, 169. 23 Ibid., pp. 169–70. Also Wikander (1984), p. 31. 24 Ibid., pp. 170–1, 180, 203–4. 25 The legend is first recorded in a poem by Cuan O’Lochain, which is dated to the late tenth, or early eleventh century. See: Mac Adam (1856), p. 10; Curwen (1944), pp. 138–9; Rynne (2000), pp. 18–19.

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indicating that the arrival of watermills in the Irish kingdoms predates the arrival of Christianity.26 Although the earliest firmly dated millsites to date are all monastic, and include the earliest recorded horizontal- and vertical-wheeled tide mills from the first half of the seventh century, the pre-Christian provenance of water-powered milling in Ireland is supported by the fact that of the almost 100 watermill sites that have been dated to the period before 1150, less than 10% were the vertical-wheeled types that we usually associate with the monasteries.27 In Britain, eight well-confirmed ancient watermill sites have been excavated throughout the country, suggesting that the technology was used extensively in the former Roman province. Following the withdrawal of Roman governance in the early fifth century, there is neither archaeological nor manuscript evidence for the existence of watermills up until the late seventh century. The six or seven archaeological sites dated to the later Anglo-Saxon period are all royal, and not monastic, however, as are most of the fifty or so charter references to Anglo-Saxon mills. The archaeological remains are also predominantly from horizontal-wheeled mills.28 A better idea of the proportion of Anglo-Saxon watermills that were held in ecclesiastical hands can be gained from examining the property held by different social groups in late eleventh century England as recorded in Domesday Book. The English Church held about a quarter of the country’s wealth in 1086, with the Crown, tenants-in-chief and lesser gentry holding the remainder in roughly equal proportions. If we assume that mill ownership was directly correlated to property ownership, the Church held a quarter of the more than 6,000 watermills that were recorded in the survey. The vast majority of these mills almost certainly had vertical wheels, and had most likely been built during the tenth and eleventh centuries. A breakdown of Domesday mill ownership by social sector remains to be done, however. Richard Holt and John Langdon have both found evidence that ecclesiastical lords were quicker at exploiting their waterways for the

26

See Rynne (2000), pp. 4, 14. The relevant evidence is summarised in Chapter Two. See also ibid., pp. 4–6, 9, 14; Wikander (1984), pp. 31–2. 28 See Holt (1988), Ch. 1 and Chapter Two of this book for summaries of this evidence. 27

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construction of watermills than were lay lords.29 A more recent study of the mill holdings of thirty English religious houses suggests that while the Benedictines may well have held as many as 2,000 watermills throughout the country at Domesday, it is very unlikely that the Black Monks were responsible for building all of these mills, as a reasonably high proportion of ecclesiastical property both before and after Domesday was acquired from lay lords, much of which included already constructed watermills, just as it did in France.30 It would seem, therefore, that the monks were but one of at least three powerful social groups that were involved in building vertical-wheeled watermills in greater numbers from the ninth or tenth century onwards. According to Paolo Squatriti, both vertical- and horizontal-wheeled watermills were being built and used in different parts of early medieval Italy. He argues that vertical-wheeled watermills tended to be built on major waterways within or near urban centres (following the example set by the Romans), while horizontal-wheeled watermills tended to be built on precipitous or drought-prone streams in rural or mountainous areas that had not previously been served by watermills. The two types of watermill were thus favoured in different hydrological and demographic conditions.31 Whereas Bloch asserted that horizontal-wheeled watermills were an atavistic return to a more primitive type of technology used by “peoples accustomed to a very crude level of material existence”,32 Squatriti suggests that they played an important role in the postImperial economy.33 He argues that most of the early medieval charter references are to horizontal-wheeled watermills, based partially on the number of references to “mobile” watermills and the many references to watermills that were located in or on top of streams.34

29

Ibid., Ch. 7, and Langdon (1991), pp. 431–2. See Lucas (2003). 31 Squatriti (1998), pp. 127, 133–6. Benoit and Rouillard make a similar argument with respect to the different types of watermill used in France. See Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 203–4. 32 See Bloch (1967), p. 142. Cf. Barceló (2004), pp. 255–314. Barceló’s paper examines the legacy of Bloch’s negative assessment of the contribution of the horizontal-wheeled watermill to medieval technological development. I thank Thomas Glick for this reference. 33 Squatriti (1998), Ch. 5. 34 Ibid., pp. 130, 134, 136, 138. According to Wikander, however, there is no archaeological evidence for the use of horizontal-wheeled watermills in Italy before the ninth century (personal communication, November 2002). 30

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Squatriti’s findings suggest that there were two major reorientations in the technological base of the powered milling sector between late Imperial times and the high middle ages. The first was from a sector dominated by government operated vertical-wheeled watermills and animal-powered mills in late Imperial times, to privately and communally operated vertical- and horizontal-wheeled watermills in the Italian kingdoms of the early middle ages. The second change took place between the eighth and tenth centuries, as feudal rulers appropriated large tracts of land for redistribution to their vassals. The nobles and ecclesiastical authorities who were the beneficiaries of the appropriation of communally-owned mills and lands went on to operate those mills as their own. It is not clear, however, whether this shift in watermill ownership was accompanied by a reduction in the number of horizontal-wheeled watermills in favour of the more expensive and efficient vertical-wheeled types, although that is clearly an implication.35 The evidence from Italy nevertheless indicates that a general shift in patterns of ownership occurred in favour of the monasteries and the aristocracy at the expense of the peasantry and townsfolk towards the end of the early middle ages, and this included the ownership and control of watermills. The same appears to be true of France and England. As different feudal systems began to take shape between the eighth and tenth centuries, many watermills that had previously been built and held communally or privately by people of lesser social rank were appropriated by rulers and magnates. A similar process has been revealed with somewhat greater clarity in medieval Spain after the Christian conquest of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as we have already seen in Chapter Two. To the extent that the élites can be said to have “reintroduced” the vertical-wheeled watermill to the Italian countryside therefore, they certainly did not do so out of any sense of philanthropy. As Squatriti has pointed out, they did so because such watermills were useful, profitable and conferred status and authority on those who owned them.36 Because ecclesiastical officials and institutions were the first and largest beneficiaries of the process of feudal appropriation, it is hardly surprising that earlier scholars have tended to mis-

35 36

Ibid., pp. 133–8, 144–5. Ibid., pp. 135–6.

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take the rapid acquisition by the Church of so much property, including mills, for a remarkable enthusiasm to build new watermills when they were, in fact, but one of the social groups involved in their construction. There is, however, clear evidence that the process of élite appropriation of communal lands and property did not progress so far in Italy as it did in France and England.37 While it is therefore evident that in France, Italy, England and Ireland the arrival of powered milling predates Christian monastic activity, the extent to which the monasteries contributed to the introduction or reintroduction of vertical-wheeled watermills to each region remains under-determined. The indications are nevertheless strong that the monks were neither the only social group nor the main social group responsible for building watermills during the first half of the middle ages, whether vertical- or horizontal-wheeled.

Milling monopolies and lordly control According to Bloch, seigneurial milling monopolies were virtually ubiquitous throughout medieval France but less complete in England. They persisted until the late eighteenth century in France, the early nineteenth century in Prussia, and well into the nineteenth century in some parts of Canada.38 They were regarded as one of the many forms of feudal tyranny by those on whom they were imposed,39 and sometimes extended beyond the bounds of the manor to “neighbouring

37 See Bloch (1967), with regard to France, and Holt (1988), with regard to England. It should be noted, however, that an overall increase in mill numbers did not necessarily occur as a result of the élite appropriation of milling resources. In fact, if vertical-wheeled watermills were replacing horizontal-wheeled watermills, the increased milling capacity of the former may have even contributed to a decrease in the numbers of mills per capita. According to Holt, this is essentially what happened in England after the Conquest as Anglo-Norman lords rationalised the location and increased the size and power of their vertical-wheeled watermills. See Holt (1988), pp. 112–13. Cf. Langdon (2004), Ch. 1. 38 Bloch notes that in France, milling monopolies persisted until the Revolution, and in Prussia until 1808. In Canada, such monopolies lasted until as late as 1854. See Bloch (1967), pp. 153, 156, 165, n. 46. Even in England, milling monopolies on some estates, such as the manor of Otterton in Devon, continued until the early twentieth century. See Greenhow (1979), pp. 315–7. Similarly, a milling monopoly in the Wakefield district in West Yorkshire was not abolished until 1853. See Norman (1970), p. 176. 39 Bloch (1967), p. 156.

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lordships whose lords were too feeble or too unskilful to succeed in winning this privilege on their own account.”40 Bloch argued that lordly monopolies extended over most forms of milling, although they were more difficult to enforce in rural areas. Only high-ranking townsfolk escaped their jurisdiction.41 Commoners were not allowed to own or build watermills or windmills, and were expected to procure a licence and pay a fee if they used their own handmills or owned a horse mill.42 Suit of mill was a privilege that ensured tidy profits for the lords concerned.43 He describes a number of disputes between French and English tenants and their lords over handmilling in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to illustrate his argument that peasants and burgesses resented the imposition of suit of mill and the obligation which that entailed to use powered mills rather than the household handmill, the use of which was of course much more difficult to monitor and tax. His most striking example involves a vivid account of the long history of conflict between the monastery of St Albans and the artisans who were its main tenants. Unlike the lords of some other urban centres such as Newcastle, Cardiff and Tewkesbury, the monks of St Albans refused to grant their tenants any concessions in relation to suit on the town’s corn, malt and fulling mills. Over the course of more than a century between 1274 and the Peasants’ Revolt in the late fourteenth century, a series of violent skirmishes between the tenants and abbatial officials culminated in the granting of a number of liberties to the tenants, all of which were annulled by royal decree following the violent uprising of 1381.44 For Bloch, such disputes were indicative of the more widespread phenomenon of peasant and bourgeois resistance to new technologies generally, rather than, for example, resistance to social and economic exploitation.45 The picture that Bloch paints is nevertheless compelling. It is also fundamentally at odds with the benign and philanthropic portrayal

40

Ibid., p. 153. Ibid., p. 155. 42 Ibid., p. 156. Although Bloch does not specifically mention this fact, it was also the case that if tenants built mills without permission, they could be lawfully destroyed by the lord, or taken into the possession of the lord. 43 Ibid., p. 152. 44 Ibid., pp. 157–8. 45 Ibid., pp. 154–60. The latter position is argued by Holt contra Bloch in Holt (1988), pp. 40–41. 41

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of monastic innovation that Mumford and White and their followers promoted. However, Bloch’s view that ecclesiastical lords were just as oppressive and exploitative as their lay counterparts, if not more so, requires further qualification, and in certain crucial respects, substantial correction. First of all, Bloch’s assertion that the Normans and French effectively introduced seigneurial privileges to England after the Conquest is incorrect.46 Already in the ninth century some of the larger English ecclesiastical lords were acquiring such rights.47 By the eleventh century, seigneurial monopolies had become widespread in England. Holt has argued that we have no reason to believe that the vast majority of the more than 6,000 watermills recorded in Domesday Book did not have suit attached to them.48 But far from being a period during which seigneurial privilege became entrenched in England, the twelfth century was witness to many lords abandoning their claims to such privileges. To give him his due, Bloch did say that seigneurial monopolies were less pervasive in England than they were in France, and that a number of towns managed to secure charters of liberty with respect to suit of mill in the twelfth century.49 But he nevertheless gave the strong impression that suit of mill was very much the norm in England from the twelfth century onwards. Because he drew the evidence for his position from northern England and the larger manorial estates in the south, he did not realize that while northern French lords in particular may well have kept a stranglehold on their feudal monopolies over many centuries come what may, English lords lost or abandoned effective control of a large number of mills from the very time they were supposed by Bloch to have been imposing such monopolies for the first time. This difference in estate management techniques had profound implications for the structure of lordship in the French and English milling industries, and leads us onto a discussion of the second issue with regard to which Bloch’s thesis requires substantial correction.

46

Ibid., p. 156. See Bennett & Elton (1899), pp. 122–3; Vol. 3, pp. 206–7. Cf. Holt’s comments on their confusion on this issue in Holt (1988), pp. 37–8. 48 Ibid. 49 Bloch (1967), pp. 156–7. More recently, Benoit & Rouillard (2000), p. 179, have questioned the ubiquity of seigneurial monopolies in France as well. 47

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Although the Anglo-Saxon period is not well documented with regard to the structure of mill ownership in England, we do know that whereas manorial employees and household slaves were the main caretakers of mills on behalf of lords during the pre-Conquest period, the evidence from Domesday Book indicates that within twenty years of the Conquest, a large number of mills were held at will from lay and ecclesiastical lords by tenants paying cash rents.50 The economic downturn of the early twelfth century made many English lords reconsider their role in mill management. French lords appear to have jealously guarded their ownership of mills and the seigneurial monopolies that accompanied them throughout the twelfth century and subsequently, despite fluctuations in mill profitability.51 In England, the downturn in the economy in the early twelfth century was followed by political turmoil and economic instability under the reign of Stephen in the middle of the twelfth century.52 These events led to a major restructuring of property relations between English tenants and lords: a restructuring that was definitely to the advantage of the lower orders. What happened, essentially, is that seigneurial monopolies in many parts of England were allowed to fall into abeyance. Traditionally, lords had retained direct control of their possessions, collecting revenues for their own benefit without leasing them out. During the first half of the twelfth century, however, lordly revenues from such demesne possessions declined, while their maintenance costs remained the same. As a consequence, many lay and ecclesiastical lords allowed their demesne possessions to fall into hereditary tenure. Such possessions were let to free tenants as well as customary villein tenants for 50 Holt (1988), pp. 68, 70. Langdon has argued that about half of the corn being milled throughout the country at this stage was being handled by manorial watermills being run directly by lords. See Langdon (1994), p. 37, n. 93. Cf. Ambler (1994), 43–6. According to Langdon, the other half was being milled at home on rotary handmills and possibly some horse mills. On the role of the horse mill in the medieval English economy, see Holt (1997), pp. 143–5 Langdon (2004), pp. 18, 29, 38–9, 179, 190, 329. 51 See: Bloch (1967), pp. 153–6; Holt (1987), pp. 5–6; (1988), p. 70. 52 See Holt (1987), pp. 6–7 and n. 15, for a bibliography of the debate between M.M. Postan and R.V. Lennard and their followers on the English economy during the twelfth century, as well as Edward Miller’s comments on the subject in Miller (1971). Holt argues that the evidence of mill revenues and tenures on Glastonbury Abbey’s estates clearly support Postan’s contention that there was a twelfth century economic recession. Subsequent research conducted by Holt, Langdon and myself provides further support for Postan’s position.

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a life, or even for two or three lives, in order for the lord to diminish his or her ongoing costs for expensive-to-maintain enterprises such as watermilling by shifting the costs onto tenants.53 Because lords charged fixed rents on these mills which could only be varied once the tenant died or the mill in question was passed on to a third party via grant, sale or lease, it also meant that they forfeited any increase in profitability to their tenants once economic conditions improved. If a mill was held by a lord within the demesne and was directly managed, the lord collected all of the revenue from the mill, but was also responsible for all the costs of maintenance and repairs. As we saw in the previous chapter, the maintenance costs for a watermill averaged around 15–20% of the mill’s income over its lifetime. But if a mill needed to be partially or totally rebuilt, such costs could significantly reduce lordly profits during a time of low grain revenues. Allowing mills to fall into hereditary tenure was a common strategy for minimising costs to the lord during such periods. However, an unforeseen consequence, firstly during the twelfth century, and later in the wake of the Black Death, was that a significant number of these mills could no longer be effectively controlled by their lords, requiring many of them to sue their tenants or those who had illegally appropriated their mills for recovery when their profitability improved. Holt was the first to note this phenomenon, but his findings have been subsequently confirmed.54 The degree to which such mills had autonomy from lordly control has prompted some debate about their exact status in the context of the English manorial system, and by extension, the most appropriate term to use when describing them. Holt has described such mills as “independent mills”, while Langdon has called them “tenant mills”. Holt’s reasoning for choosing the former term is that these mills were granted out in free or hereditary villein tenure and paid fixed rents from that time onwards. They were, therefore, relatively independent of lordly control.55 Langdon’s reasoning for

53 Property held in customary tenure was held outside the demesne in exchange for feudal services, sometimes commuted to a nominal cash rent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and subsequently. 54 See: Holt (1987), pp. 7–8, 13–14; (1988), Ch. 4; Langdon (1994), (2004), p. 17; Lucas (2003), Chh. 3–6. 55 See Holt (1988), pp. 54–5.

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choosing “tenant mills” is that although these mills fell into hereditary tenure, the lord still had some control over the mill. The person (or persons) who held the mill under hereditary or free tenure was, therefore, still a tenant. Theoretically at least, the lord of the mill could still reclaim the mill from his or her tenant if its cash or labour rent was not paid, or if the tenant died without an heir and had not sold or bequeathed it to someone else. In other words, these mills were not “independent” in the sense that they were not totally beyond lordly control.56 Although both Holt and Langdon have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms that each of them respectively coined, the advantage of Holt’s is that it gives a clear indication of the relative autonomy of these mills from lordly jurisdiction, a point that will be expanded upon shortly. The disadvantage of Langdon’s term is that it makes it difficult to differentiate between mills that were held at farm on short- or fixed-term leases, and those held in hereditary tenure. There clearly was a difference in the two types of tenure, and the use of the term “tenant mills” arguably obscures that difference. The difference is best illustrated through a brief description of the conditions attached to each type of tenure. While fixed-term leases on mills (also known as mills “at farm”) varied somewhat in their conditions, most transferred rights of multure (i.e., the right to take toll-corn, or a percentage of the corn milled by its clientele) to the lessee.57 In exchange, the lessee was expected to pay for the maintenance of the mill, the cost of which was usually offset by the lord through the ongoing provision of tim56 John Langdon, personal communication, September 2004. Also Langdon (2004), p. 17. 57 Grants and leases of mills by both lay and ecclesiastical lords included the mill “with its appurtenances”. In the case of a watermill, this included the wheel, millhouse and other associated buildings, as well as its “waters and lands”, which might include roads and footpaths to and from the mill, as well as leets, ponds, dams, trenches and other waterworks such as sluices and gates, along with the meadows in which the whole complex was located. In the case of windmills, the lease was usually restricted to the postmill itself and the mound and meadow in which it was located. In a reasonably large number of instances, however, the lease on either a wind- or watermill might also include a messuage or croft, as well as a significant parcel of land. Occasionally, long-term leases might include suit of mill, although this has normally been thought of as an exclusively lordly privilege. See, for example, Langdon (1992), 56–7, and (1994), p. 6, n. 12, in which he describes how the tenant watermill of Turweston was granted suit of mill by its lord in the thirteenth century, a privilege that was not able to be overturned when a demesne windmill was subsequently built on the manor.

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ber for maintenance, and/or the provision of extra land from which to draw this and other resources, such as fruit from orchards, or fish and eels from the mills’ ponds and leets.58 Generally speaking, such leases stipulated whether the tenant concerned also acquired suit of mill from the lord, and whether the lord’s household was exempt from having to pay multure or retained other milling privileges, such as the right to mill his or her grain before other customers.59 Mills let out in hereditary tenure had much the same conditions attached to them as fixed-term leases. However, as noted previously, one of the defining characteristics of such tenancies was that while the mill may have initially been let for a market rent, because of the nature of the tenure, the lord was unable to increase the rent until either the tenant died or the lord was able to bring the mill back into demesne tenure.60 In practice, this meant that the rents on such mills remained fixed, despite any fluctuations in grain prices or other costs. As profits increased, therefore, a greater share of the profits went to the tenant, rather than the lord. The main beneficiaries of such practices were free peasants, artisans, merchants and the minor gentry, although bonded peasants were also given customary rights over a significant number of mills that subsequently acquired hereditary status.61 While lords in some parts of twelfth and thirteenth century England did not pursue these policies, such as in the north and in certain areas where ancient religious houses held most of the property (such as Huntingdonshire), many lords in England south of the Humber did do so.62 As with fixed-term leases, however, it is not always clear how many of these mills were permitted to 58

Holt (1988), pp. 57, 59, 63. With regard to the rights of lords exempting their own households from paying multure, although the example to follow is a grant rather than a lease, it does illustrate the principle involved. Some time before 1217, Osbert de Henham granted the watermill of Henham to Blythburgh Priory. Osbert’s grant included the suit of the men of Henham, but exempted his own household from having to pay multure when grinding at the mill. See Blythburgh Priory Cartulary, ms. 304. The right to mill “hopper-free” (i.e., to jump to the head of the queue) is also recorded by Holt (1988), p. 49, and Langdon (2004), pp. 274, 277. 60 For example, the canons of Cirencester leased their mill of Boycott to Richard of Radcliff, miller, for life some time between 1236 and 1240. When Richard died, the land and mill were to be given over to the life-long lessee of their other lands in Boycott, and the total rent increased by half a mark. See The Cartulary of Cirencester Abbey, ms. 649. 61 Holt (1988), pp. 54–5. 62 Langdon’s study of the IPM material for the reign of Edward II illustrates this most clearly. See Langdon (1994). 59

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continue to draw suit, although it seems reasonable in most cases to assume that if the mill concerned was not granted or leased as part of a whole manor, drew low revenues compared to others on the manor or nearby, and the relevant documents do not stipulate that suit was included as part of the agreement, the mill did not hold suit.63 According to Holt, by the mid to late thirteenth century, between a third and a half of the mills in many parts of southern England were held in hereditary tenure.64 These findings are supported by Langdon’s studies of mill ownership in the West Midlands from 1086–1500 and the Inquisitiones Post Mortem for the reign of Edward II,65 and by my own study of the mill holdings of more than thirty English religious houses.66 When economic conditions improved in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many of the lords who had earlier let their mills fall into hereditary tenure tried to draw these mills back into the demesne, from where they could enjoy their by now considerable profits. At the same time, many of them sought to re-impose or even to increase the labour and other services required of both free and bonded tenants. Such strategies often included the rigorous enforcement of suit of mill. In response, many villeins who had held property under customary or hereditary tenure on cash rents during the previous period sought to argue a legal case for their free status, although in most cases appear to have been unsuccessful.67 By the early fourteenth century, English lords had managed to recover most of the mills that had fallen out of their direct control.68 63 For example, many of the mills granted to the Augustinians appear to have been mills held in hereditary free tenure by knights of varying status, but only a small percentage of the relevant grants specify that the mills held suit. The Bishop of Hereford, on the other hand, appears to have collected rents on a number of mills let in free and hereditary tenure that did continue to hold suit for reasons which remain unclear. See Lucas (2003), Chh. 3 & 4. 64 Holt (1988), Ch. 4. 65 Langdon, (1991), (1994). 66 Lucas (2003), Chh. 3, 4, 5, 6 & Conclusion. 67 See Hilton (1965). See also Bloch (1967), pp. 156–7, and Holt (1988), p. 38. One exception was the successful effort by the people of the township of Ormskirk under the jurisdiction of the Augustinian priory of Burscough; Lucas (2003), Appendix K, Sn. 2.0. 68 For example, Holt has demonstrated that on twenty-three manors held by Glastonbury Abbey between 1086 and 1189 mill incomes in many cases doubled over that hundred year period. By 1189, thirty out of thirty-one of these mills had been let out under customary or hereditary tenure. A little over one hundred years later, however, two-thirds of these mills were back under seigneurial control, with

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Despite their success, however, a relatively large number of mills remained effectively beyond seigneurial control throughout southern England, particularly in East Anglia. In the wake of the Black Death, a significant number of demesne mills once again reverted or were converted to customary tenure due to the difficulties of securing a stable income from hugely depleted manorial populations.69 Ecclesiastical lords were just as, if not more, enthusiastic as lay lords at pursuing alienated mills, although they often had to take their tenants to court in order to regain them. This sometimes involved the payment of considerable sums of money to compensate the disenfranchised tenant for lost future revenue. This was the case with respect to the mills of Neford and Apechildewude held by the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, and of the mills of Wye held by Battle Abbey during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.70 However, some of the smaller religious houses and those administering property from afar had neither the financial resources nor the will to pursue such cases through the courts. This meant that they might never recover direct control of what had once been profitable manorial mills, and had to remain content with drawing a fixed and relatively low income from those mills, or indeed, no income at all. Holy Trinity and the Priory of St Denys in Southampton provide instances of both kinds of houses that allowed alienated mills to remain outside the demesne or were unable to collect the mill rents due to them from recalcitrant tenants.71 On the other hand, if a free or customary tenant refused to relinquish control of a mill with suit, the lord could starve the mill of custom by failing to enforce suit on its tenants, and/or by building a new manorial mill. Battle, Bec and Glastonbury Abbeys are just some of the houses that pursued such policies.72 The fact that the profits from mills in hereditary tenure were generally being drawn for their tenants rather than their lords, that lords had frequently to sue their tenants to regain seisin of such mills, and that even when they were successful in regaining seisin, they were often forced to pay those tenants considerable sums of money, undermines the claim that they were still effectively under lordly control.

their total revenues more than quadrupling over this period. See: Holt (1987), pp. 11–13, 18; (1988), p. 14. 69 Holt (1987), p. 14. 70 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 3, Sn. 7.0; Ch. 6, Sn. 6.0, Appendices J & M. 71 See ibid., Ch. 4, Sn. 9.0; Ch. 6, Sn. 6.0; Appendices K & M. 72 Ibid., Ch. 3, Sn. 2.0, 5.0 & 7.0; Holt (1988), pp. 64–5.

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Clearly, there were marked differences between the abilities and willingness of different lords to take their tenants to court to regain direct control of mills and other properties that had been part of their demesnes, just as there was to sue neighbouring lords and the descendants of donors who had illegally disseised them. Some cases could drag on for decades and cost the lords concerned more money than the properties were worth. Examples include Lancaster Priory’s seventy year-plus dispute over seisin of the mills of Caton with a local knightly family, St Denys’ Priory’s century-long dispute over rents due to it from the mill of King’s Sombourne, Furness Abbey’s dispute with the Neville family over land and mills in Ulverstone, Holy Trinity’s disputes over seisin of its mills in Minchinhampton, Felsted and Avening, and Battle’s disputes over seisin of its mills in Wye.73 Holt’s initial assessment that many mills in customary and hereditary tenure were relatively autonomous from lordly control is therefore more consistent with the evidence, although Langdon is correct to note that such mills nevertheless remained under lordly jurisdiction by law, if not in practice. I will therefore adopt Holt’s term “independent mill” to register the relative autonomy of these mills from lordly jurisdiction.74 Independence from feudal obligations, and especially suit of mill, was seen as a desirable and legitimate goal by many peasants and townsfolk throughout England, especially from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards. The fact that some had been able to collectively free themselves from such feudal burdens after the Conquest is illustrated by a case in the borough of Tamworth, Staffordshire, where a lay lord was accused by the townspeople in 1275 of depriving them of their customary rights, which had previously included “the choice of their own bailiffs; a fixed farm; and freedom from suit of mill.”75 But while lay lords appear to have been relatively

73 See ibid., Ch. 3, Sn. 3.0 & 7.0; Ch. 4, Sn. 9.0; Ch. 6, Sn. 6.0; Appendices J, K, L & M. 74 Ian Jack has used the terms “private” and “free” mills to designate such mills, but they similarly do not fully capture the kinds of tenure in which these mills were held. See Jack (1983), pp. 70–130. The term “commercial mills” used by Glick and Squatriti to distinguish Spanish and Italian mills run for profit rather than as lordly monopolies also does not fully capture the mixed status of these English mills. 75 Hilton (1965), p. 14, citing Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–81, p. 123. According to Bloch (1967), p. 156, such exemptions from suit of mill for English townsfolk were “totally unknown in French and German urban charters”.

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indulgent in allowing such rights to persist, it was far more common for ecclesiastical lords to deny them. The famous cases of Cirencester, Peterborough, Halesowen and St Albans clearly bear this out.76 The resistance of free and bonded tenants to suit of mill was part of a broader rebellion in the towns and on the larger manorial estates by mercantile and craftwork associations and whole communities against what were regarded as part of a more general system of oppressive rule.77 Just how oppressive the imposition of suit had become by the fourteenth century is well-illustrated by the fact that lords were frequently prepared to commute suit of mill for individuals and even whole communities to a licence fee to be paid annually. Holt records a number of instances where the lord concerned no longer owned a functioning mill on a manor but nevertheless insisted that a licence fee be paid. He argues that such behaviour illustrates clearly that seigneurial mills were regarded by both users and owners “as little more than a means of transferring wealth from the former to the latter”.78 Despite the coercion involved in milling at the manorial mill, peasants and townsfolk do not necessarily appear to have preferred to mill their corn on handmills, as Bloch and Pierre Dockès argued. The long-term survival of a large number of mills outside the demesne clearly demonstrates that they drew custom from a variety of social strata. Although most independent mills may not have been as profitable as manorial mills, a reasonable number of them were sufficiently profitable to survive the Black Death and other problems.79 Their existence demonstrates that Bloch was wrong to argue that milling monopolies were the norm throughout the later middle ages in England, while the fact that independent mills did not require coercion to maintain their custom demonstrates that peasants and burgesses were not necessarily averse to the “advanced technology” of the watermill.80 He was correct, however, to note that suit of mill conferred tidy profits on the lords concerned.

76 See: Bloch (1967), pp. 157–9; Razi (1983); Holt (1988), pp. 40–45: Lucas (2003), Ch. 4, Sn. 4.0. 77 See Holt (1988), Ch. 3; Lucas (2003), Appendix A, Sn. A.4.5. 78 Holt (1988), pp. 44–7. 79 Ibid., Ch. 4. 80 See Langdon (1994), pp. 40–1.

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On the other hand, it is clearly not the case that the majority of watermills and windmills were built and acquired by lay and ecclesiastical lords in order to relieve their tenants from drudgery, as proponents of the monastic innovation thesis have argued.81 To the contrary, they built and acquired new mills to try to make a profit and to impress their power and authority upon the lower orders.82 Indeed, the evidence from the thirteenth century indicates that, despite the widespread growth in the number of mills, ecclesiastical lords were actively engaged throughout this period in imposing additional feudal burdens and unfree status upon their villeins, and significantly increasing the rents extracted from their free tenants.83 Monastic watermills within the precincts of the monasteries may well have served the purpose of freeing monks from the onerous task of grinding by hand, but the many mills that the Benedictines and other religious orders held outside their monasteries served primarily to provide them with a lucrative source of cash revenue. Because

81 It was, in fact, primarily the labour of women in the household that was being freed up by the use of watermills and windmills. As the work of Ruth Schwartz Cowan has shown with respect to improvements in domestic technology in the twentieth century, and numerous other sociologists with respect to the computerization of the workplace, the mechanization and automation of tasks within a variety of different contexts does not necessarily lead to less work for those concerned. See Schwartz Cowan (1976); (1983); MacKenzie & Wacjman (1985). Whether their corn was going to a manorial mill or one that existed outside the manorial system, whatever time women may have saved by having the household’s flour milled mechanically, this task was invariably replaced by others which could not be, or had not yet been, mechanized. In other words, although many women may have been relieved of the task of hand grinding by the growth of the powered milling sector, their overall workload probably remained fairly constant. Basalla (1988), p. 148, puts forward a similar argument to Reynolds about the growth of powered milling being stimulated by labour shortages, first within the monasteries (and presumably upon monastic estates), and later, upon lay estates, where lay landowners were also “in need of new revenues”. No evidence is presented to support the thesis that such labour shortages existed, however, and it is simply assumed that “a diminishing and more costly labour force” automatically favoured the construction of more watermills by lords, although Basalla does also note that suit of mill was a guaranteed source of additional lordly profits. He appears to be unsure, however, of who exactly was doing the milling by hand in most households, and who was taking their corn to lordly mills to be ground. Cf. Reynolds (1983), pp. 32, 34–5, 36, 112–3. 82 George Ovitt Jr. has argued that the positive attitudes towards technological innovation expressed by some medieval Churchmen was more a reaction to events that were already taking place, rather than a forward-looking orientation that served as an example to laypeople. See Ovitt (1986), pp. 486, 497–8, 500. These ideas are further developed in Ovitt (1987). 83 See the detailed discussion of this issue in Lucas (2003), Appendix A, Sn. A.4.3.

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suit of mill was imposed by law in many parts of England and France, White’s characterization of the spread of powered milling as “a chapter in the conquest of freedom” requires serious qualification. It was only in those places where there was a competitive market or where there was a sector of the milling industry that was relatively independent of lordly control that there was a genuine lack of compulsion in this particular economic exchange.

Monastic mill construction, innovation and profitability in medieval England In this final section of the chapter, the results of an unpublished study of the manuscript sources relating to the milling activities of more than thirty English religious houses between the late eleventh and early sixteenth centuries will be summarised. The discussion to follow outlines: 1) the overall proportion of mills that the monasteries are likely to have built themselves, and whether there were any significant differences in the relative proportions of industrial mills held and built by the different monastic orders; 2) the role of the different monastic orders in the independent milling sector, and the kinds of differences that existed in the tenure of ecclesiastical mills that were not seigneurial mills but may have nevertheless been part of the demesne; and 3) the profitability of milling for the monasteries and the factors which shaped that profitability. Monastic mill construction and innovation Proponents of the monastic innovation thesis have argued that the monasteries were responsible for reintroducing large numbers of vertical-wheeled watermills to medieval Europe from the ninth or tenth century onwards, the implication being that they were responsible for building most, if not all, of their own mills. The Benedictines and especially the Cistercians are also supposed to have been great innovators in their application of waterpower to industrial activities. We have already examined the evidence for monastic mill construction in early medieval France, Ireland, England and Italy. But what is the evidence for the monasteries involvement in mill-building in the second half of the middle ages, and for them being great

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innovators in industrial milling practices? The best evidence to date comes from medieval England and Wales. Three major orders—the Benedictines, Augustinians and Cistercians—and a dozen or more minor orders owned and operated mills throughout England between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. The Benedictines were by far the most powerful and widespread of the monastic orders in the country before the Conquest. It was they who were the primary benefactors of Anglo-Saxon aristocratic largesse between the early seventh and eleventh centuries and who owned the largest amount of property (including mills) of any of the orders both before and after the Conquest. The Benedictines’ prosperity, therefore, had little to do with the “orderly routine” followed by the monks, or their “mastery of technical activities”, as Mumford claimed. Their prosperity (in England as elsewhere) was, in fact, primarily due to the generosity of their benefactors and the extensive nature of their estates. As the oldest and wealthiest of the major orders, the Benedictines were able to establish themselves in many parts of England without any competition from other religious orders or lay lords, and had built or acquired hundreds of manorial mills before the other orders had even arrived in the country.84 A reasonable idea of their dominance of the ecclesiastical milling sector can be gained by examining the relative numbers of mills held by the various religious orders in the early fourteenth century, which was the peak of milling activity in the middle ages. Eight of the ten Benedictine houses sampled held just under 275 mills between them, while the ten Augustinian houses sampled held 84 The monastic historian J.C. Dickinson provides a colourful account of the English situation: The richest houses [most of which were Benedictine] had almost all been founded before the Norman Conquest, in days when a pious and minute population inhabited a country abounding in undrained and unwanted land. Some of the antique monasteries then acquired from royal and other benefactors enormous areas of land, and by the end of the middle ages had built up an income equal to many thousands of pounds in modern money. It was, indeed, said that if the abbot of Glastonbury (the richest English house) were to marry the abbess of Shaftesbury (the richest English nunnery) they would be wealthier than the king of England! See Dickinson (1961), p. 4. Indeed, the extraordinary wealth of many of the Benedictine houses was one of the spurs to the monastic reformation of the twelfth century. The luxurious existence of many Benedictine monks was the source of much criticism.

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only 73 mills between them, and the five Cistercian houses, 51 mills. This gives us an average of more than 34 mills per house in the case of the Benedictines, just over 7 mills per house in the case of the Augustinians, and just over 10 mills per house in the case of the Cistercians. The sample therefore revealed that the Benedictines held more than three times as many mills as the Cistercians per house and five times as many as the Augustinians. While there is somewhat of a bias in the figures for the Benedictines due to the number of wealthy houses in the sample,85 and a heavy reliance on charter evidence for the Augustinian houses, it is nevertheless clear that the Benedictines had a strong edge over their ecclesiastical competitors in the milling industry. Furthermore, virtually every religious house examined, whether large or small, held more mills than it needed to feed its own people.86 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only monastic order in England that was ever involved in extensive mill-building at any stage during the middle ages was the Benedictines. Most of the younger orders did not build many of their own mills. The second and third largest orders, the Augustinians and Cistercians, acquired the vast majority of their mills through grant or purchase from lay lords, most of whom were members of the knightly class. At least 70% of their mills were acquired through grants, appropriations, and purchases.87 The first major phase of monastic mill construction probably took place in the century or so leading up to the Domesday survey (1086), after the monasteries had first been granted seigneurial privileges. It was almost undoubtedly the larger Benedictine houses that were building most of these mills, although how the Benedictines acquired the majority of their mills before the Conquest is yet to be determined. Given their substantial property base, however, it seems reasonable to assume that this enabled them to make significant investments in mill construction, much as they did in the thirteenth century. The thirteenth century marked the second phase of monastic mill construction, when mill profitability was at an all-time high and the English population was growing rapidly. Most of the second phase 85 Three of the eight houses, i.e., Glastonbury, Bury and Ramsey, were amongst the ten highest-earning houses at the Dissolution. 86 By “its own people”, I mean to indicate the monks or canons and their servants and retainers. 87 This percentage only includes those mills whose origins could be definitely determined.

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of mill-building involved the construction of windmills, and most of these were built in areas where there were insufficient supplies of running water to meet local demand for milled grain with watermills. The main area for windmill construction was East Anglia, although Lancashire and Sussex also experienced somewhat of a windmill building boom during the thirteenth century.88 Some East Anglian houses tripled the total number of mills which they held over the period of six or seven decades.89 Across the whole of England, a significant number of the wealthier Benedictine houses doubled their mill holdings between Domesday and the early fourteenth century: a doubling which reflects population growth over the same period and clearly indicates the desire and ability of the large houses to take advantage of the growing market for finely milled grain.90 Although the Black Monks may have been building more mills than most other lords between the ninth and eleventh centuries, by Domesday, they were starting to lose their preeminence with respect to the ownership of mills, a preeminence which they had probably shared with the king. But it was not the other religious orders who were challenging their better established brethren. Particularly from the thirteenth century onwards, it was lay lords, and to a lesser extent free men, who were building the majority of new mills, many of which appear to have been operating independently of the manorial structure through the payment of a licence fee to the local lord. As many as a fifth of the new mills being built in the early fourteenth century were constructed by “small men”, and probably twice that number in the wake of the Black Death.91 The plague had a remarkable effect on breaking down feudal monopolies and freeing up property and investment for the lower orders in England. It therefore played a significant role in providing the social and economic foundations for the early modern period.92 88 On East Anglia, see Holt (1988), Chh. 2, 7 & Appendix 1. On Lancashire and Sussex, see Lucas (2003), Ch. 4, Sns 2.0 & 10.0, Ch. 6, Sn 2.0. 89 See Holt (1988), pp. 23–7, 116, summarised in Lucas (2003), pp. 120–1. The mills concerned were built by Ramsey, Bury St Edmunds, Norwich Cathedral Priory and the Bishop of Ely. Holt’s findings were supported by evidence uncovered in relation to the East Anglian houses of Blythburgh, Butley, Sibton and Leiston. See idem, Chh. 4, 5 & 6. 90 See the conclusion to Lucas (2003), Ch. 3. 91 See Chapter Nine. 92 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 208–15, have noted similar processes at work in France, especially after 1450.

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What then, of the role of the monasteries in mill innovation, and especially the application of waterpower to industrial processes such as those associated with fulling, brewing, tanning, timber-cutting, tool-sharpening and metallurgy? Industrial mills in England and Wales were uncommon generally, although they were slightly less so for ecclesiastical estates. Around 10% of the mills held by Benedictine houses and around 14% of those held by Cistercian houses in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were industrial mills,93 which is a significantly higher proportion than that of 3.5% found for lay lords across England in the early fourteenth century,94 but are roughly in accord with the figure of 10% across the board that Langdon found in the West Midlands between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.95 They are also consistent with the recent findings of researchers for the Discovery Programme in Ireland, who found fifteen fulling mills out of 178 mills (i.e., 8.4%) identified in the medieval sources for the region around Dublin between c. 1180 and 1550.96 Although the religious houses did not necessarily document all of the industrial mills that existed on their estates—as archaeological digs on Kirkstall and some other houses such as Bordesley have subsequently revealed—a trawl of archaeological reports from the early 1950s onwards suggests that the numbers of English industrial mills pre-1500 can hardly have been more than double those revealed by the manuscript sources.97 By far the largest involvement by English ecclesiastical lords in any kind of industrial milling was in the fulling industry. Around 85% of all the industrial mills held by the houses sampled were fulling mills. As many as a third of religious houses throughout England and Wales held fulling mills at some stage between the late twelfth and early sixteenth centuries, although in my own sample of

93 Lucas (2003), conclusions to Chh. 3 & 5. None of the ten Augustinian houses studied appear to have held any industrial mills before the mid-fourteenth century. See idem, conclusion to Ch. 4. 94 Langdon (1994), pp. 12–14. It should be repeated, however, that Langdon felt this figure was an under-estimation of the true situation. 95 Langdon (1991), p. 434 (Table 2). It would seem significant that almost threequarters of the 104 manors sampled by Langdon belonged to ecclesiastical estates. See idem, p. 429. 96 See Brady (2004), p. 11. 97 See the detailed discussion of this material in Chapter Eight.

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thirty-five or so houses, just under half of those sampled held fulling mills over the same period. Other forms of industrial milling, such as grinding bark to extract tannin to cure leather, tool-sharpening, and manufacturing iron were comparatively rare. Furthermore, the extensive evidence for the use of waterpower in a range of industrial applications as seen in France and northern Italy was not in evidence in England until the sixteenth century.98 The broader context within which the monasteries’ involvement in mechanized fulling took place is partially revealed through a sectoral analysis of almost three centuries of ecclesiastical involvement in the Welsh mechanized fulling industry. Although this material is discussed in detail in Chapter Nine, some of the findings are worth summarising here. Using data compiled by Ian Jack in the early 1980s, it was found that over the period from 1270 to 1550, just under a fifth of all the Welsh fulling mills identified were held by religious houses. About a quarter of the Welsh religious houses that held fulling mills dominated half of the ecclesiastical sector of the Welsh industry, but the vast majority were controlled by a handful of wealthy noble families. The situation was probably much the same in England, although the research remains to be done. Another significant finding that has emerged from the analysis of Jack’s gazetteer is that the monasteries appear to have become involved relatively early in mechanized fulling, but were soon eclipsed by lay lords. In the late thirteenth century, 45% of the fulling mills that were identified in documents dating from 1270 to 1299 were owned by ecclesiastical estates. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, less than 6% of those identified were owned by ecclesiastical estates. In the sixteenth century, the figure soars to 60% of all those identified. However, the second and third figures appear to have more to do with biases in the sources than being a true reflection of the actual situation.99 It would nevertheless seem reasonable to assume that as much as half of the Welsh fulling industry in the late thirteenth century was controlled by religious houses, but that this figure had been reduced to as little as a third or less by the fourteenth

98

This issue is discussed in detail in Chapter Six. Cf. Holt (1997), pp. 149–56. The relevant data and associated biases are discussed in more detail in Chapter Nine. 99

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and fifteenth centuries. Data collected by John Muendel indicate that a similar situation prevailed in northern Italy in the fourteenth century.100 Such figures are also consistent with my findings regarding ecclesiastical involvement in the milling industry overall. Of those religious orders that were involved in mechanized fulling in England, the Cistercians appear to have been the most active in the fulling industry per capita, largely due to their major involvement in the wool trade, with the Benedictines running a close second. The Cistercians also appear to have been pioneers in the use of watermills for manufacturing iron, as most of the earliest recorded sites in England are Cistercian. Two of the five Cistercian houses sampled had workshops and iron foundries that used waterpower, i.e., Kirkstall and Beaulieu, with Beaulieu also holding a tanning mill and a horsedriven tool-sharpening mill in its shoe workshop in the late thirteenth century. While three of the five houses studied do not appear to have held any industrial mills, the fact that by the early fourteenth century the other two held seven industrial mills out of the nineteen mills which they held between them does give some credence to the monastic innovation thesis, and therefore warrants further study.101 The role of the monasteries in the independent milling sector The involvement of the monasteries in the independent milling sector was largely shaped by the kinds of property which they held, and the places where they held it. There was, therefore, a significant difference between the kinds of independent mills held by the Benedictines, and those held by the two other major orders, the Augustinians and Cistercians. Because of their relatively late arrival in England, the Augustinians and Cistercians did not benefit nearly so much as the Benedictines from large grants of ancient demesne by members of the royal family and other tenants-in-chief. Most of the Benedictines’ grants consisted of whole manors, often with already existing mills. Most of the

100

See Muendel (1981), p. 99. Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 182–3, 194–5, 208–10, have recently summarised the work of a number of French scholars on Cistercian milling which lends further credence to these observations. 101

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Augustinian and Cistercian houses, if they held whole manors at all, tended to acquire them from their founding benefactors. The Cistercians, Premonstratensians and some other minor orders were able to compensate for this disadvantage to some extent by founding their houses in relatively isolated areas and subsequently consolidating their holdings nearby. The Augustinians, however, tended to build up their estates in a far more piece-meal way. The smaller and medium-sized houses in particular were the beneficiaries of disparate and often small holdings that were parts of widely scattered manors previously held at fee by knights. Understandably, most found such holdings difficult to effectively manage. These differences in the composition of their estates meant that while the larger Cistercian houses and most of the minor orders were able to consolidate their holdings sufficiently well to establish suit of mill over a fairly significant proportion of their tenants (even in cases where they had not been granted whole manors or mills with suit), the Augustinians were far less successful at doing so. By the early fourteenth century, the Augustinians appear to have only held suit on about 25% of their mills, while the Cistercians held suit on around 37% of their mills, and the minor orders, between 71% and 80% of their mills. The figures for the Benedictines, however, ranged far more widely, with anywhere between 55% and 95% of their mills holding suit, depending on the region.102 Generally speaking, the older Benedictine houses in southern England which never recovered possession of mills that had been alienated from their possession between the eleventh and twelfth centuries held an average of around half their mills with suit [see Tables 5.1 to 5.3]. Because there remains some controversy over the extent to which suit of mill was the norm across England, the question of how it was determined that certain mills held suit while others did not needs to be briefly addressed. If a grant or lease of a mill stipulated that the mill in question held suit, then it clearly did. In those cases where a house held a whole manor and the mill or mills on the

102 The average determined for the five Benedictine houses studied in detail was 70%, whereas a rough calculation of the (mostly East Anglian) houses studied by Holt came to around 57%. For the estates studied in detail, the percentages ranged wildly from 14% for Canterbury’s Sussex mills, to 95% for Durham’s and Hereford’s mills.

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manor were either directly managed or leased on fixed-term leases, it was assumed that the mill or mills in question held suit. Confirmation could sometimes be gained by comparing mill revenues across manors where account rolls could be cited. If a grant or lease of a mill did not include the whole manor and suit of mill is not mentioned in the relevant documents, it was generally assumed that the mill in question did not hold suit. If a manorial account registered a mill as being in free, customary or hereditary tenure, and the mill in question was drawing a very low or nominal rent in comparison to other mills held by the same house that were known to hold suit, such mills were also assumed to not hold suit. The same assumption was made if there were multiple mills on a single manor, but only one was directly managed and was drawing a significant income compared to the others. The extant evidence suggests that there was a significant difference between the independent mills held by the Benedictines and those held by the Augustinians and Cistercians. Whereas the Benedictines’ manorial mills held suit from the time they were first acquired and subsequently lost it, the Augustinians and Cistercians were granted a large number of mills that did not hold that privilege, and in relatively few cases later acquired it. Most of their mills were donated to them by members of the knightly class, and appear to have been held in hereditary tenure prior to being donated. How such mills had fallen out of the demesne in the first place is not always clear. Some had probably been built by knightly families on fees initially for the use of their households only. Others may have been held by peasants, townsfolk or members of the lesser gentry prior to the Conquest and were never effectively brought into the demesne, while others still may once have been demesne mills, but for one reason or other were abandoned, sold off, or rented for a nominal rent, and replaced by newer, more powerful or more reliable mills that were subsequently given suit at the expense of the other mill or mills on the manor in order to maximise lordly returns. These mills, which did not have seigneurial status at the time of their acquisition from lay lords, constitute a newly-identified category of independent mills. A cogent illustration of the co-existence on the same manor of manorial and independent mills is illustrated by a dispute between Glastonbury Abbey and Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire in the late thirteenth century. In April 1287, Abbot John of Glastonbury appointed

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Abbot William of Malmesbury as his attorney to “put the prior of Bradenstoke into full seisin of the suit of mill of the abbot’s men of Glastonbury to the prior’s mill in Christian Malford, as before.”103 Glastonbury held two mills on the same manor, but neither of them held suit, and one of them was already at farm for two lives by this time. A declaration by the abbot of around the same time lists fiftyone of his tenants who owed suit to the Christian Malford mill, eight of whom were women.104 The dispute over suit of the mill appears to have arisen because the prior of Bradenstoke had until then refused to swear fealty to the abbot of Glastonbury. This was presumably because he knew that Bradenstoke held suit on the manor after it was granted to the canons by a local knightly family, and the abbot was refusing to instruct his own tenants to do suit to the prior’s mill, thus providing his own mills with a larger clientele.105 Even though between 63% and 75% of the mills held by the Cistercians and Augustinians had independent status, in terms of overall numbers, there must have been far more of the former Benedictine mills that were independent, simply because the Benedictines always held more mills than the other orders. But the significant difference between the two types of independent mill was that in the case of the Benedictines, they no longer directly managed those mills: they were held by customary and free tenants, whereas the Augustinian and Cistercian mills were often directly managed by the houses themselves or let on fixed-term leases. Both orders therefore played a significant role in providing independent milling alternatives to manorial tenants and others. According to Langdon, 40% of the overall milling market in England in the early fourteenth century was handled by the demesne sector, less than 20% by “tenant” mills, 20% by “borough” mills (or mills in English towns and villages that had secured charters of liberty and were therefore outside lordly control), while another 20%

103

Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, ms. 154. Ibid. 105 Ibid., p. 65, n. 1. See Langdon (2004), p. 278, for a comparable case at Wyberton in Lincolnshire, where a windmill was recorded as being worth only 10s. in 1325 “and no more because of the smallness of the soke [i.e., the number of tenants observing suit of mill to the windmill] and because there are mills on either side of it.” 104

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or more of the market was handled by domestic handmills and a much smaller number of horse mills. Based on the assumption that ecclesiastical lords held around a quarter of the country’s wealth at the time, they probably therefore controlled only about 20% of the watermills and windmills throughout the country in the early fourteenth century, although they may have held as many as 40% of the mills in the north.106 This means that their share of the powered milling sector overall had diminished significantly between the late eleventh century and the early fourteenth century, the remainder having been picked up by lay lords and, presumably, a growing number of “small men”, i.e., artisans, craftsmen, merchants and some of the wealthier peasants. On the basis of these data, it is now possible to make a meaningful assessment of a claim made by Langdon using the Inquisitiones Post Mortem (IPM) for the reign of Edward II (1307–27) regarding the extent to which the tenants of lay lords tended to utilize ecclesiastical mills as an alternative to the manorial mills of their own lords. In his study of the IPM material, Langdon suggests that demesne mills south of the Humber were only processing about half of the millable grain on their manors, and that since the sample was confined to lay manors, it is possible that some custom was lost to ecclesiastical mills. He suggests that this is unlikely, however, because of the rapacious reputation of ecclesiastical lords, whose own tenants often sought to take their grain outside the manor to be milled, including to neighbouring lay mills.107 While it is true that many of the larger religious houses were rapacious and sought to extract the maximum revenues from their mills with suit, many houses—and even some of the older and wealthier houses—held significant numbers of independent mills from which they were drawing low revenues. The two categories of independent ecclesiastical mills just described were clearly being used by some

106 Langdon (1994), pp. 28–31. The figure of 20% of all the powered mills in the early fourteenth century is based on the assumption that ecclesiastical lords controlled about a third of the demesne sector (i.e., 13.3% of the total market) and possibly an equal proportion of the independent tenant sector (i.e., around 6% of the total). This last figure does not include former seigneurial mills held mostly by the Benedictines that had fallen into customary or hereditary tenure but were never recovered. 107 Langdon (1994), pp. 27–8.

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manorial tenants. Even those that were directly managed by religious houses (i.e., demesne mills without suit) were drawing custom away from lay lords and other ecclesiastical lords. Most of the religious houses studied collected revenues from mills that did not have seigneurial status. As we will see in the next section, even without the compulsion of suit, some of these mills collected quite reasonable revenues for their ecclesiastical lords, indicating that they were not considered an irksome imposition by the people who frequented them. Although such mills did not generally draw very high incomes, or on the whole, very high levels of custom, they most certainly did provide an important alternative to the manorial mills with suit held most frequently by the Benedictines and lay tenants-in-chief. The ecclesiastical lords who held these mills were, therefore, not necessarily rapacious. Furthermore, because a significant number of the smaller Augustinian and Cistercian houses directly managed mills without seigneurial status in competition with seigneurial mills, such competition presumably fuelled a certain amount of conflict. That disputes between lords with competing milling interests did indeed occur is borne out by the previous example of Glastonbury Abbey’s conflict with Bradenstoke Priory over suit in the manor of Christian Malford. That such disputes were fairly common is illustrated by the fact that all five of the Cistercian houses in the sample were involved in at least two or three mill-related water and land disputes with local lay lords, while Sibton was involved in several. Four of the ten Augustinian houses were involved in mill-related water disputes, and three of the five houses of the minor orders were involved in disputes over access to watercourses for mills, or the lands pertaining to mills. A number of these disputes were clearly related to competition for milling custom and sometimes went on for decades.108 My own research provides a substantial body of additional evidence to confirm Holt’s and Langdon’s previous findings that the existence of mills without seigneurial status was far more common in England than Bloch acknowledged. It also demonstrates that there was more than one category of ecclesiastical mill that fell into the

108

See Lucas (2003), Appendices J, K, L & M.

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independent sector, and that such mills constituted a viable alternative for tenants who were dissatisfied with the milling options offered by their lords. The profitability of milling and the factors that shaped it Monastic mills provided an important source of revenue for religious houses and a relatively secure income stream. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was not at all unusual for between 6% and 10% of a monastery’s total income to be derived from its mills. This compares with an average of between 5% and 8% of all manorial income for both lay and ecclesiastical lords over the same period.109 In some parts of northern England at the same time, milling contributed as much as a third of rental income, with the average in the north being around 14%.110 Milling generally remained a profitable enterprise between the late eleventh century until the second half of the fourteenth century, when profits experienced a marked decline in the wake of the Black Death.111 That English lords fully appreciated the profitability of powered milling is well illustrated by the rationalisation of milling resources that took place after the Conquest. Whereas Anglo-Saxon lords had tolerated a large number of relatively unprofitable mills on marginal streams and rivers, or which were a long way from population centres, within two hundred years of their arrival, French and Norman aristocratic families had concentrated their milling assets on major waterways and population centres. Furthermore, milling efficiency was

109

Holt (1988), pp. 82–6; Langdon (1994), p. 5. Holt (1988), pp. 79–82; Langdon (1994), p. 13. The Bishop of Durham, for example, was drawing around a quarter of his rental income from mills in the early fourteenth century, on which see Lucas (2003), Ch. 3, Sn 2.0. Lords in some other parts of England were also able to extract high rental incomes from their mills, such as in East Anglia, where the Earl of Norfolk earned more than 15% of his total revenues in the late thirteenth century from mills, although the average proportion for the whole region in the early fourteenth century was only 6.1%. See idem. 111 See: Holt (1988), Chh. 5 & 10; idem (1990), p. 57, and the discussion at the end of Lucas (2003), Ch. 2. As will be discussed in detail in Chapter Nine, the Welsh mechanized fulling industry also seems to have experienced a marked decline in the 1310s to 1330s that was presumably related to inflation and the cattle murrains of that period. See Kershaw (1973), pp. 3–50. There is also evidence of declines in cornmilling income for some houses such as Bolton Priory for this period, as discussed in detail in Lucas (2003), Appendix A, Sn. A.4.4. 110

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increased by as much as 30% with the construction of bigger and more powerful watermills, particularly in the late thirteenth century.112 When discussing the profitability or lack of profitability of various kinds of milling enterprise, we need to be clear about what was involved. Most important was, of course, the cost of building, repairing and maintaining mills. The only other significant cost was the employment of the miller. With respect to the costs of employing millers, the miller could be a demesne employee paid directly by the lord, or a bonded or free tenant who paid rent to the house which held the mill. Often, the miller used a boy or apprentice to help run the mill. If the miller was a demesne employee, he was often paid in tollcorn, supplemented by a cash stipend. Despite the considerable expertise required, the total sums (in cash and tollcorn) paid to millers with villein status appear to have generally corresponded to that of a low-skilled worker in the early fourteenth century, i.e., around £1 5s. a year.113 Millers who were free men could command higher wages, partially because they were responsible for meeting the mills’ essential running costs.114 With respect to the costs of construction, repairs and maintenance, as we have already seen in Chapter Four, the average cost of building windmills and watermills in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England was around £10 in the case of an average postmill, and between £9 and £15 for rebuilding a watermill on an 112

Holt (1988), pp. 111–13. Holt notes that “a peak of seigneurial authority [in the thirteenth century] coincided with increasing population pressure, and so enabled lords to exact an inflated price for grinding from the peasant customers, while paying extremely low wages to the employees who worked and maintained the mills”. See Holt (1988), p. 170. Some women were employed as millers and/or ran mills with their husbands or on their own using male employees. See Lucas (2003), pp. 204, 219, 227, 235, 238, 249, 282, 305, 354, 388 & 393. For example, four of ten English mills held by the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Caen, in its manor of Minchinhampton in the early fourteenth century were held by women tenants, three of whom let the mill in their own right. 114 See Holt (1988), Ch. 6; Langdon (2004), pp. 237–56. Also Lucas (2003), pp. 327–8, and Chapter Four, Table 4.1, in which the wages for eight millers employed by Beaulieu Abbey in 1269/70 are recorded. Six of these men were demesne employees, and were paid cash stipends of between 4s. 2d. and 10s. each. These sums and the associated conditions are consistent with those found by Holt. In contrast, two free men were paid £2 4d. and £5 1s. 9d. respectively. Both of the mills that they operated cleared around £1 in “profit” for that financial year, although Beaulieu appears to have been minimising its profits from its mills by using its tollcorn to pay famuli and listing such payments as expenses. 113

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already existing site. The cost of repairing and maintaining watermills averaged out to around 20% of the overall income from the mill over a few decades, while the cost of repairing and maintaining windmills averaged to around 33–38%.115 These costs could be reduced slightly by recycling parts such as millstones, or using timber harvested from the mill-owner’s property. Windmills were, therefore, significantly cheaper to build than watermills, but were more expensive to maintain. They were, furthermore, drawing on average only about half the revenues of watermills.116 If a lord had the choice between rebuilding an existing watermill on a reliable watercourse or building a new windmill, he or she would understandably opt for the former due to the lower ongoing maintenance costs and higher revenues. The utility of windmills was therefore largely restricted to areas with restricted supplies of running water and steady prevailing winds, such as East Anglia, parts of the West Midlands, Lancashire and Sussex.117 Despite these differences in construction and maintenance costs, as well as utility and profitability, the profits that were to be had from operating a conventional grain mill were considerable. Given that a watermill paid on average around 20% of its income on expenses, and a windmill about 30%, the average profit for mills engaged in grain-milling was high, at around 70–80% of total revenue. Although these kinds of profits were generally restricted to mills with suit, if an independent mill was located in a population centre with relatively little competition, it could expect a similar level of profitability. Industrial mills, on the other hand, were far less profitable. While data on the revenues for English fulling mills are relatively abundant, those for other types of industrial mill are virtually non-existent. The data on revenues from fulling mills are very clear, however. They demonstrate that fulling mills only earned on average around a quarter to a third as much as conventional watermills. While some of the data from Wales suggest that they were cheaper to build than water-powered grain mills (possibly because they did not require

115

Lucas (2003), p. 327; Holt (1988), pp. 86–7. Holt (1988), pp. 77–8; Langdon (1991), p. 434. See Lucas (2003), Ch. 1, Sn 2.2.4, for discussions of Holt’s and Langdon’s work; Ch. 4, Sn 2.0 for a discussion of the Lancashire windmills of Burscough; and Ch. 4, Sn 10.0 for a discussion of the Sussex windmills of Chichester. 116 117

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expensive millstones), the costs of maintaining and repairing them can hardly have been much lower.118 They were, therefore, only practical propositions where there was an abundance of running water and an existing expertise in industrial commodity production.119 It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite the early enthusiasm of some of the larger religious houses for industrial applications of waterpower, ecclesiastical lords, like lay lords, were primarily involved in the milling industry for profit, and generally only supported those mechanised milling practices which brought in a decent income. The larger religious houses in particular were often entrepreneurial in seeing opportunities for profit-making, particularly during the thirteenth century, but with respect to the adoption of new mill designs or new applications for powered mills, the Cistercians appear to be the only order that was consistently more innovative than their lay counterparts. The extent to which a house held suit on its mills largely determined its level of income from those mills, which of course explains why so many ecclesiastical lords in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries sought to remind their tenants of the privilege by occasionally fining those who ignored it and confiscating their handmills. Generally speaking, the more mills with suit, the higher the revenues. This latter observation is clearly reflected in the average annual mill revenues of six religious houses in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. One of these houses was Cistercian, one was Augustinian, two were Benedictine and the other two were French abbatial lands or dependencies. Table 5.1 shows the name of each house, how many mills each house held, the percentage of mills with suit, and their average annual mill revenue. The differences in average mill revenues between the houses is largely related to differences in the strength of lordship in the regions where the respective houses were located, which in turn largely determined the levels of mill revenue in those regions. The estates of Beaulieu, Bec and Hereford were all located in the south of England.

118 See Chapter Nine. On the lack of profitability of fulling mills as opposed to grain mills, see: Holt (1988), pp. 155–60; Langdon (1991), p. 435; (1994), pp. 14–15; Lucas (2003), Chh. 3, 5 & 6. 119 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 1, Sn. 2.2.2, Ch. 5, Sn. 7.0, and Appendices B, C & D.

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Table 5.1. Suit of mill and average mill revenues for six religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England Name and order of religious house

Number of mills held

% of mills with suit

Average annual mill revenue

Abbey of Bec English manors only (French foundation)

23

87%

£3 13s.

Hereford Cathedral Priory (Benedictine)

21

95%

£3 14s.

Beaulieu Abbey (Cistercian)

12

75%

£5

Grove Priory (French dependency)

5

100%

£4

Treasury of St Peter’s Church, York (Augustinian)

5

100%

£6 3s.

35

95%

Durham Cathedral Priory (Benedictine)

£15

In most of the south there was significant competition for milling custom, with manorial mills competing with mills in customary and hereditary tenure and others without seigneurial status. Such mills did not generally hold suit and charged lower rates of multure than those that did. Competition from independent mills in the south tended to keep overall mill revenues and rates of multure lower than in the north, where much stronger lordship ensured that such mills were generally not tolerated, and higher rates of multure could be maintained. Multure rates in the north could be as high as 1/13 for villein tenants, whereas those in the south were generally around 1/20 to 1/24, but could be as low as 1/32.120 Beaulieu’s ability to earn higher average mill revenues than most of its southern counterparts (despite having fewer mills with suit) was somewhat of an aberration: it faced less competition in those areas of Hampshire and neighbouring counties in which it held mills. The relative earning capacities of mills with suit and those without is clearly revealed by comparing the high average mill revenues

120

Holt (1988), pp. 49–50.

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of those religious houses which mostly held suit with the low average mill revenues of those houses which mostly held mills without suit. As explained earlier, there were two categories of mills without suit. The first category consisted of mills that had been alienated from the demesne and were held in customary or hereditary tenure, while the second category consisted of mills which did not have seigneurial status before they were acquired by the religious houses concerned. Generally speaking, most of those mills in the first category were Benedictine and had been part of ancient demesne lands that were alienated or appropriated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while most of those in the second category were Cistercian or Augustinian mills that had been granted to the houses concerned by knightly benefactors during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The two types of mill have been called Category 1 and Category 2, respectively, in Tables 2 and 3 below. All of the relevant data are from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries, as per the list of high-earning houses above. The contrast between the average annual mill incomes of the houses which mostly held suit and those whose manorial mills had been alienated or which had been donated independent mills is thus very clear. Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of mills in independent tenure, the lower the average mill revenues. The highest average mill earnings in Categories 1 and 2 are still only around half of the lowest average mill earnings of the houses with high proTable 5.2. Suit of mill and average mill revenues for four Category 1 religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England Name and order of religious house

Number of mills held

% of mills with suit

Average annual mill revenue

Holy Trinity Abbey, Caen Manor of Minchinhampton only (French foundation)

10

10%

9s. 9d.

Canterbury Cathedral Priory Sussex manors only (Benedictine)

14

15%

11s. 3d.

Battle Abbey (Benedictine)

20+

50% (?)

£1 5s. 3d.

Glastonbury Abbey (Benedictine)

40

40%

£2

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Table 5.3. Suit of mill and average mill revenues for four Category 2 religious houses in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century England Name and order of religious house

Number of mills held

% of mills with suit

Average annual mill revenue

Lacock Priory (Augustinian)

5

0%

12s.

St Denys Priory (Augustinian)

8

20%

£1 7s.

Sibton Abbey (Cistercian)

9

33%

£1 7s.

19

40%

£1 13s.

Cirencester Abbey (Augustinian)

portions of mills with suit. The lowest average mill earnings in Categories 1 and 2 are about one-seventh of the lowest average mill earnings of the houses with high proportions of mills with suit. They are about one-thirtieth of those of the most extractive ecclesiastical lord in the country, i.e., the bishop of Durham. There were, therefore, huge variations in the amounts of revenue which could be extracted from mills in different parts of England. Bloch’s assumption that seigneurial monopolies were virtually ubiquitous throughout England cannot account for these variations and why they should have been the case.

Conclusion What then, can be said by way of conclusion about the various claims made by proponents of the monastic innovation thesis and the seigneurial monopoly model? With respect to the claims made by advocates of both theories that the monasteries reintroduced the vertical-wheeled watermill to medieval Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, we have seen that although the Romans introduced the vertical-wheeled watermill to the regions that we now call Italy, France and Britain, the early medieval development of powered milling in Italy and Britain involved the widespread construction and use of horizontal-wheeled watermills. From the ninth and tenth centuries onwards, feudal rulers appropriated communal lands for distribution to their vassals, one

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of the probable consequences being that horizontal-wheeled watermills were replaced by vertical-wheeled watermills. At least three powerful social groups were responsible for this technological transition, the monks being but one of them. There is also reason to believe that while the (mainly Benedictine) monks may have held most of the watermills in Western Europe by the end of the first millennium, it is unlikely that they built most of those mills themselves. With respect to the claims made by advocates of the monastic innovation thesis that the Benedictines embraced and encouraged technological development, while valuing frugal living and manual labour, we have seen that the reality was somewhat different. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Benedictines were already drawing fire from other religious orders for their extraordinary wealth and luxurious living conditions. Nor did they work the land themselves, as Mumford and White seem to have believed, but used bonded tenants to do it for them; people whose dependent relationship to them they sought to intensify rather than relax as the centuries wore on. If we want to praise any of the monasteries for their efforts at making milling more affordable, and for encouraging more equitable relations with their tenants, we should probably single out the smaller Augustinian and Cistercian houses, and not the Benedictines. When we turn to the topic of monastic innovation, the picture is more complicated. The larger Benedictine houses seem to have indeed built a large number of mills, but they did not do so to free up their tenants’ time: they did it to better manage their milling resources and make a handsome profit from tenants compelled to mill their grain at the manorial mill. On the other hand, the larger Cistercian houses may well have been innovators in some aspects of industrial milling technology, but the notion that it was some philanthropic bent that motivated them is unlikely given their record of exploiting their feudal position in a similar fashion to their Benedictine brethren. A more plausible explanation is given by Holt, who argues that “[the Cistercians] overriding intention—driven by the strict interpretation of the monastic ideal—was to provide for their own needs, to contain production within their own precincts, and to achieve all this without hired labour.”121

121

See Holt (1997), p. 153.

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With respect to the central claims of the seigneurial monopoly model, we have seen that a large number of watermills and windmills in England south of the Humber were effectively outside seigneurial control from the very time that Bloch claimed that the French and Normans had introduced the seigneurial system to England. In the mid-thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as many as half of the mills in southern England did not have seigneurial status. Half of these mills were located in towns and villages that had secured exemptions from suit of mill as part of a charter of liberties, while the other half were held by a mixture of knights, tenants-in-chief, religious houses and customary and free tenants on rural and urban properties. A significant but as yet undetermined proportion of the independent sector consisted of mills that had formerly been directly controlled by the larger Benedictine houses. A lesser proportion of mills without seigneurial status were held by Augustinian and Cistercian houses and directly managed or let to tenants on fixed-term leases. This second category of ecclesiastical mill without seigneurial status provided direct competition to the seigneurial mills of lay lords and the larger religious houses. One of the main attractions of mills to lords was their profitability, which was largely a function of whether or not they held suit. The ownership of windmills and watermills generated high profits for lords whose mills held suit, but mills without suit could attract sufficient custom to be economically viable. The efforts of lay and ecclesiastical lords to rationalise their mill holdings in the thirteenth century and to secure suit of mill for as many of their mills as possible clearly indicates that their main concern was with making a decent profit. As Bloch maintained, therefore, economic exploitation was a primary motivating factor for English lords. Nevertheless, the fact that many people throughout England from the twelfth century onwards chose to take their grain to be ground at independent mills demonstrates that Bloch was wrong to conclude that most peasants and townsfolk preferred to mill their grain at home, as does the growing number of mills built by small men from the late thirteenth century onwards. Clearly, many households preferred the convenience of using powered mills over handmills, especially if they were not compelled to do so and were not unduly taxed for the privilege.122 122

Cf. Holt (1988), pp. 51–3 and Langdon (1994), pp. 40–2.

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Although the evidence presented in this chapter tends to favour a modified version of the seigneurial monopoly model over most of the elements of the monastic innovation thesis, the seigneurial monopoly model fails to give sufficient credit to the lower social orders and the smaller religious houses in establishing and promoting a large independent milling sector in which a fair economic exchange was the norm rather than the exception. It is upon this sector that we should perhaps be focusing our attention if we want to better understand the emergence of bourgeois enterprise in the early modern period, and not the élites, whether they be monastic or aristocratic.

PART TWO

INDUSTRIAL MILLING IN THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER SIX

WAS THERE AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE BASED ON WATER-POWER?

Introduction In 1934 and 1935, Lewis Mumford and Marc Bloch published two very different pioneering works in the history of technology: Technics and Civilization and “Avénement et conquêtes du moulin à eau”; the first an ambitious attempt to trace the development of technology in human civilizations over several thousand years, the second a historical overview of the development of milling technology from GrecoRoman times to the end of the middle ages.1 What was to prove an extraordinarily influential thesis about the development of medieval technology appeared in both publications, i.e., that the second half of the European middle ages witnessed a rapid increase not only in the number of mills powered by water and wind, but also in the range of industrial processes to which water- and wind-power were applied. These phenomena were, according to Mumford and Bloch, emblematic of a medieval revolution in the use of power technology that laid the foundations for what happened in the Industrial Revolution several hundred years later and helped to explain how European society was subsequently able to transform itself in the way it did.2 In 1941, Eleanora Carus-Wilson added some empirical flesh to the bones of Mumford’s and Bloch’s thesis. Her widely read paper, “An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century” argued that during the thirteenth century, traditional methods of fulling by hand and

1 See Mumford (1963), pp. 112, 113–18; Bloch (1935), published in English as “The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill”, in Bloch (1967), pp. 136–68. 2 Mumford appears to have been the first scholar to allude to the idea that there had been an industrial revolution in the middle ages in Technics and Civilization. Anticipating Bloch, he argues in the book’s third chapter, titled “New Sources of Power”, that if power machinery is regarded as one of the primary manifestations of the new capitalist economy, “the modern industrial revolution began in the twelfth century and was in full swing by the fifteenth”.

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foot in the urban cloth manufacturing centres of England were largely replaced by mechanised fulling in a number of rural wool-growing centres, leading to large-scale social and economic changes that were comparable to those that occurred in the English textile industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.3 Until the post-War period, to suggest that the middle ages had made any meaningful contribution to later scientific or technological achievements was to generally invite ridicule. The prevailing academic and popular view was that scholastic religiousity and superstition suppressed natural philosophical, mechanical and mathematical interests. Scientific and technological stagnation reigned in the middle ages as it had done in the ancient world.4 Although they approached the subject in very different ways, Mumford, Bloch and Carus-Wilson captured the imaginations of a younger generation of scholars in the emergent field of the history of technology with their new vision of medieval technological prowess. Samuel Lilley, Robert J. Forbes, W.H.G. Armytage, Bertrand Gille and Lynn White Jr. were some of the more prominent of the young converts. Over the succeeding decades, these pioneering historians of technology articulated what was to become a core set of claims about an exploratory medieval culture that was exemplified by a number of technological innovations. These included the development of mechanical innovations such as the cam, crank and clockwork, administrative innovations such as double-entry book-keeping, annual accounts 3 See Carus-Wilson (1941). In making her case, Carus-Wilson drew a clear analogy between the social disruption caused by the widespread mechanization of the English fulling industry in the thirteenth century, and the mechanization of the English textile industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its consequences: “[T]he [thirteenth] century was one of striking progress industrially, though of equally striking change and upheaval . . . It witnessed, in fact, an industrial revolution due to scientific discoveries and changes in technique: a revolution which brought poverty, unemployment, and discontent to certain old centres of industry, but wealth, opportunity and prosperity to the country as a whole, and which was destined to alter the face of medieval England.” In a later paper on the medieval woollen industry, she wrote that the mechanization of fulling “was as decisive an event as the mechanization of spinning and weaving in the eighteenth century.” See Carus-Wilson (1952), p. 409. As any student of the Industrial Revolution knows, the social and economic transformations wrought by the mechanization of the textile industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are considered paradigmatic of that revolution. 4 Some of the relevant historiographical issues are canvassed by various authors in: Adas (1993); Smith & Wolfe (1997); Wikander (2000a).

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and audits, and agricultural innovations such as the horse harness, heavy plough, and three-field crop rotation. The effects of these technological changes were so profound, they argued, that a revolution in social and economic conditions took place in the second half of the middle ages. The most compelling evidence for a medieval technological revolution was, however, the rapid growth in the use of “non-human sources of power” from the tenth or eleventh century onward. By the late 1960s, a relatively detailed account had emerged of how the industrial revolution of the middle ages, or IRMA, had unfolded. Its basic assumptions appear to have been ultimately derived from Bloch. The first was that the Romans had failed to make widespread use of water-power, even though they possessed the relevant technology for at least five centuries before the collapse of the Empire. The second was that Christian monasteries were leaders in the reintroduction of Roman watermilling technology to Western Europe at the end of the so-called “Dark Ages”. The third was that monkish inventiveness had acted as a spur to a revolutionary growth in the use of water- and windpower in medieval agriculture and industry from the tenth or eleventh century onward.5 To support the idea of revolutionary growth in the use of waterpower, proponents of an IRMA drew on Margaret Hodgen’s calculation that 5,632 watermills are recorded in Domesday Book.6 They

5 Bloch’s views on the medieval break with the ancient world can be found in Bloch (1967), pp. 143–6. They are echoed in the history of technology literature in, for example, Forbes (1956), pp. 601–606; White (1978), p. 22; Gimpel (1988), pp. 7–10; Reynolds (1983), pp. 32–5, 45; Basalla (1988), pp. 146–7. Bloch’s comments on the role of monasticism in the spread of watermilling technology can be found in Bloch (1967), pp. 148, 150–2, and are echoed in the work of Forbes (1953), pp. 50–1; Mumford (1967), pp. 263–271; White (1968), pp. 63–6; Basalla (1988), p. 148; Major (1990), p. 232. Bloch’s views on the revolutionary growth in the use of water- and windpower can be found in Bloch (1967), pp. 141–2, 182, and are echoed in the work of Gille (1954), pp. 1–15; (1969), pp. 451 & 458; White (1964), pp. 88–9; Gimpel (1988), pp. 10–12. 6 Hodgen (1939), pp. 261–79. Although Hodgen did not go as far as some of her colleagues in asserting the revolutionary role of the watermill in medieval society, she did argue that its widespread diffusion throughout Anglo-Saxon England constituted “a far-reaching cultural and technological change” in the material culture of England, and that “the distribution of Saxon watermills at the time of the Norman conquest forms a background against which to consider the utilization of water power in the later industrialization of England” (p. 262). Hodgen’s figure for Domesday mills has been cited by numerous authors, including: Lilley (1948), p. 37; Forbes (1956), p. 611; Armytage (1961), p. 47; White (1964), p. 84; (1978), p. 67; Gille

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also appealed to Carus-Wilson’s argument that thirteenth century England saw a rapid adoption of water-powered fulling in the textile industry.7 A third supporting strategy (which is the main focus for examination in this chapter) has been to elaborate lists of types of mills, noting where and when they are recorded in the manuscript sources. This strategy too, seems to have been inspired by Bloch. The various claims made by Bloch, Hodgen and Carus-Wilson were thus woven into what proved to be a compelling narrative, one that served as the paradigmatic evidence for an industrial revolution of the middle ages. It asserted that although the vertical-wheeled watermill was invented in the ancient Mediterranean, it was used exclusively for grinding grain, and then only sporadically due to the prevalence of slaves, negative attitudes toward the banausic arts, and insufficient water resources.8 It was, in fact, medieval European “engineers” (trained by, or working in traditions established by, Christian monasteries) who developed the “Roman” watermill’s full potential through their ingenious incorporation into the milling apparatus of a variety of mechanical innovations, including the cam, crank and trip-hammer.9 The incorporation of these innovations into medieval

(1969), p. 451; Derry & Williams (1970), p. 253; Reynolds (1983), pp. 52 & 64; Gimpel (1988), pp. 10–12; and Major (1990), p. 231. It was first challenged in the late 1950s by Reginald Lennard as being too low. In the mid-1970s, H.C. Darby and his colleagues calculated the now accepted figure of 6,082 mills. See Lennard (1959), pp. 278–80, and Darby (1977), p. 361. See Holt (1988), pp. 7–8, 11, for a cogent examination of the problems with Hodgen’s figure and her broader theory. Holt has argued more recently that there were probably around 6,500 watermills throughout England at Domesday if estimates for mill numbers in the poorly recorded north are taken into account. 7 For cited references to Carus-Wilson’s findings on industrial mills in England in the history of technology literature, see, for example, Forbes (1956), p. 611; Armytage (1961), p. 47; White (1964), p. 89; (1978), p. 54; Gimpel (1988), pp. 15 & 16. For uncited references, see White (1978), p. 66, and Gille (1969), p. 456. 8 The longest list of factors precluding ancient technological development is given by Forbes (1956), pp. 601–606. 9 On the origins of the cam and trip-hammer, see White (1964), pp. 79–83. White’s views on the origins and diffusion of the crank can be found in the same book on pp. 104–110, 113–16, 118, 119, 167–8; see also White (1972), p. 157; (1978), pp. 17–18, 49, 186. For more recent assessments of the significance of these various mechanical innovations and their origins, see Reynolds (1983), pp. 23, 26, 28, 29, 70–94, 115, 116. It now seems likely that not only the cam but also the trip-hammer and crank were first developed in the late classical period. Discussions of the latest occidental evidence can be found in Lewis (1997) and Wikander (2000a), pp. 408–410. John-Peter Oleson, in an article on “Water-Lifting”, in Wikander (2000b), p. 263, argues that the crank was probably not known to the Romans,

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watermills allowed them to be applied to a range of industrial processes, from fulling cloth and crushing bark and hemp, to forging iron and powering bellows, thus freeing human labour for other purposes, just as the steam engine did in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The widespread mechanization of industry that occurred in the second half of the middle ages led to transformations in the medieval economy and society similar to those seen in the “later” Industrial Revolution. Scholars who are familiar with contemporary debates in the rhetoric of the sciences and other disciplines may recognize this re-visioning of medieval technological history as an extension into the middle ages of the modernist meta-narrative of western progress. The main objective of this chapter is to show that exaggerated claims for the widespread use of water-power in a range of medieval industries have been critical to the persuasive power of this particular variation of the progress story.10 In determining the extent to which these claims have been exaggerated, this chapter draws on my own research as well as the findings of a number of other historians and archaeologists who have been working on the history of milling over the last two to three decades. In discussing the use of water-power in medieval industries, scholars in several disciplines have for some time made a distinction

although he does not make it clear to what kind of device he is referring when using this term. It seems likely that something resembling a crank handle was used to turn the device known as the Antikythera mechanism; see Price (1965). Joseph Needham notes that the eccentrically placed handles on many rotary querns from the Roman period “constitute a crank”; see Needham (1965), p. 186. If we take the purist view of what constitutes a crank, it remains unclear how long before the eighth century the crank handle was commonly used in the West, although it was certainly known in China by the Han dynasty (second century CE–second century BCE). See Needham (1965), pp. 111–118, 374, 378–9. The more sophisticated mechanism of the crank and connecting rod appear to be early medieval developments; see Lewis (1997), pp. 6, 84, 112, 114. 10 An instructive case in point is the promotional material used for a recent conference on medieval watermills and windmills, which stated that “the mill was central to communities in the middle ages as a source of flour, lumber, cloth, and, by the later middle ages, iron . . . the humble windmill and watermill . . . exerted a profound influence on the shape of communities, organization of labor, considerations over taxation, and establishment of property rights . . . the engineering expertise developed by millwrights led to developments in water management, fine technology, and industrial production, which fed the Industrial Revolution many centuries later.”

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between “agricultural” mills which grind grain, and “industrial” mills which were devoted to what are now commonly thought of as industrial applications, such as fulling cloth, forging iron and sharpening tools. This book continues that convention.11 For reasons of space and clarity of focus, this chapter will not examine claims for an IRMA based on the rapid growth in the number of water- and windpowered grain mills. Nor does it examine claims for a revolution based on technologies other than those related to water-powered machinery. Its aim is, in fact, quite limited. It is, first, to examine whether the evidence for water-powered industry cited by IRMA proponents is sufficiently robust to support the claims that have been made for it. Second, it is to determine whether this same evidence can be better understood in the light of more recent empirical research, and in what areas further research may be required. In developing its case, the chapter sets some basic conditions for the acceptance of evidentiary claims, then works through that evidence to convey a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the various sets of data, including the trends and patterns that may reasonably be inferred from them.12

11 It would seem that Anne-Marie Bautier is the source of this convention, although Bradford Blaine’s doctoral dissertation, The Application of Water Power to Industry During the Middle Ages (UCLA, 1966), which was supervised by Lynn White Jr., appears to be the first major work of scholarship in English to clearly embrace the distinction. See Bautier (1960). The fact that around 80% of English mills in the early fourteenth century were located in rural areas, at least 90% of which were grain mills, provides further support for making such a distinction. On the proportion of medieval English mills located in rural areas, as well as those engaged in industrial activities, see Langdon (1994), pp. 13–14, 31. 12 To the best of my knowledge, Richard Holt is the only scholar to have previously subjected the notion of an IRMA to critical scrutiny. Holt’s assessment of the state of industrial milling across Western Europe during the middle ages is largely shaped by his extensive knowledge of the English situation. My own findings support his research on medieval England, but indicate that the English situation differed substantially from those in the French, Spanish and northern Italian kingdoms. See Holt (1988), Ch. 9, and “Mechanization and the Medieval English Economy”, in Smith and Wolfe, Technology and Resource Use in Medieval Europe (n. 4 above), 139–157. For a brief comparative assessment of the English and Continental evidence that is more in line with my own conclusions, see Langdon (1997), pp. 275–92. Langdon’s recently published Mills in the Medieval Economy: England 1300–1540 (2004), provides additional support for our collective assessment of the English evidence.

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The early history of industrial milling In their efforts to recuperate the European middle ages as an important transitional phase on the road to modernity, proponents of an IRMA continued to conceptualize the classical period and its nonEuropean contemporaries in Enlightenment terms. They drew negative conclusions about the technological achievements of the Greeks and Romans, and argued that Chinese and Islamic civilizations were outstripped by Europe both economically and technologically in the second half of the middle ages. Thus was medieval European exceptionalism emphasised with respect to both its cultural progenitors and its rivals. This conception looks increasingly problematic when subjected to close scrutiny. An examination of the claim that the Romans and their contemporaries made little use of the watermill when compared with medieval Europeans is a logical place to start. Over the past two decades, a number of classical archaeologists and historians have demonstrated that Roman use of water-power was far more widespread and innovative than was previously thought.13 This research has been in the context of a more favourable assessment of Roman technological achievements more generally. Archaeological evidence compiled by Örjan Wikander from over forty Roman-era sites suggests that the vertical-wheeled watermill was in widespread use throughout the Roman Empire from at least the first half of the second century CE, and that it was a preferred technology for some industrial applications.14 Ausonius’ reference to sawmills used for cutting marble on a tributary of the Moselle in the late fourth century CE is now accepted as authentic.15 Other literary

13 See Wikander (2000); Lewis (1997). Wikander has conducted extensive and detailed work on Roman-era watermills for well over two decades. For some of the earlier work by classical historians who argued for either technological stagnation or the limited use of water-power in the Roman era, see Finley (1965); Pleket (1967), (1973). 14 See Wikander (2000, 2000a). Wikander’s findings on the relative chronologies of the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled watermills problematise much of the previous literature on the subject. 15 See Ausonius, Mosella, 362–4. For recent scholarship on the subject, see Ludwig (1981), pp. 131–4; Simms (1983), (1985); Wikander (2000a), pp. 404–5. White’s position that the passage is of dubious veracity [White (1964), pp. 82–3] is no longer credible. Wikander has drawn attention to two roughly contemporaneous sources which suggest similar references to water-powered saws. The first is from Asia Minor;

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references and recent archaeological evidence from Byzantine-era Ephesus indicate that water-powered sawmills were widely used in some parts of the former Empire until the seventh century, and probably later.16 Michael Lewis has recently presented some persuasive evidence for the Roman use of water-powered forge mills. The remains of large anvils with what can only be described as mechanically produced deformations have been excavated at a number of iron mining sites in Roman Iberia, Britain and Gaul.17 They strongly suggest that the Romans were using cam-operated recumbent or vertical stamps in the manufacture of iron, and that the mechanisms involved were probably water-powered. The large number of finds indicates that see Wikander (2000a), p. 405, citing Gregorius of Nyssa, In Ecclesiasten III, 656A Migne; cf. Wikander (1981), p. 99 item B4:c; (1989), p. 190; Lewis (1997), pp. 114–5. The second was first discovered by Rosumek and is contained in a discussion by Ammianus Marcellinus, in which he refers to a “sawing machine” (serratoria machina); see P. Rosumek, Technischer Fortschritt und Rationalisierung im antiken Bergbau, Habelts Dissertations-drucke, Reihe Alte Geschichte, 15, Bonn, 1982, p. 135, citing Ammianus Marcellinus XXIII 4.4. Wikander comments that this is “a unique expression possibly denoting a water-powered saw.” 16 Wikander (2000a), pp. 405–6. The site within the city of Ephesus was part of a complex of ten conventional overshot watermills. He points out, however, that nothing substantial has yet been published about it. See H. Vetters, “Ephesos: Vorläufiger Grabungsbericht 1983”, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Vol. 121, 1984, p. 225. Wikander has recently alerted me to an earlier archaeological discovery of a sixth century sawmilling installation at Jerash in Jordan, excavated in the 1930s but only identified recently by Jacques Seigne. See J. Seigne, “Une scierie mécanique au VI e siècle”, Archéologia, Vol. 385, January 2002, pp. 36–7. 17 Archaeological digs on a number of mines from the first and second centuries CE in Portugal and Spain have revealed stone anvils with deep and regular impressions that cannot have been made by human hands. The most likely explanation is that these impressions were made mechanically via a cam using vertical stamps that were possibly powered by animals, but more likely by water; Lewis (1997), pp. 106–10. A similar find of an even larger anvil from the Dolaucothi gold mine in South Wales, operated by the Romans between 70 CE and the late second century, was surrounded by “both crushing waste and water reservoirs that apparently fed a water-wheel in a stone-lined channel to power a mill on a (not yet excavated) platform”; ibid., pp. 108–9. The Roman iron-works at Eskdale, Cumberland, may also have involved the use of water-power; see Wikander (1981), p. 98 item B3:b. Near the fourth century watermill at Ickham in Kent has been found traces of industrial activity, including large amounts of metal and “a large iron hammer-head with mechanical deformation on one face indicating a possible water-powered triphammer”; see Spain (1984), p. 121; cf. Lewis (1997), p. 111. In the late 1980s, a Roman water-wheel was discovered in Marseille near a pile of iron slag, which the excavators suggested had been used to power the bellows of an iron furnace; Wikander (2000a), p. 407, citing Guéry & Hallier (1987), p. 274, fig. 4. It should be pointed out that all of these examples appear to have been vertical stamps.

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the technology was regularly used from as early as the first century CE, as were water-powered pestles, an alternative to water-powered grain mills.18 Walter Horn’s arguments for water-powered pilis in the seventh century plans for the monastery of St Gall find some support in this context.19 All of this suggests a very early and widespread use of the cam. If we look more generally at a list of the technological achievements of the Hellenic Greeks and Romans, it is far longer and more impressive than some scholars have suggested. These achievements include: the chain of pots and the compartmented waterwheel for raising water, the dough-kneading machine, the olive-crushing mill, the vertical- and horizontal-wheeled watermills, new olive presses, the reaping machine, horizontal looms, the barrow, river boats, a range of wheeled vehicles, more effective hoists, better aqueducts with water-towers and lead-pipes, hydraulic pumps, the use of brick and concrete in construction, a considerable variety of war machines and the mass-production of tiles, moulded pottery and bread.20 It would therefore seem reasonable to conclude from this that the late classical period was far from technologically stagnant, and that it bequeathed much of technological value to both the middle ages and the modern era, even if some of those innovations appear to have been lost or forgotten after the collapse of the Empire. What, then, of the Chinese? The documentary and artefactual evidence indicates that the Chinese were using vertical waterwheels without gearing to power trip-hammers for rice-hulling and to automate bellows for iron furnaces from as early as the first century BCE.21 However, horizontal- and verticalwheeled watermills were not adapted to industrial uses in China until 18 The case for Roman-era fulling mills is put in Lewis (1997), pp. 89–100; and for Roman grain-pounders and ore stamps, in idem, pp. 101–10. The term “triphammer” is used in the literature as short-hand for cam-operated recumbent or vertical stamps. See Reynolds (1983), pp. 109–16.111–12 and Lewis (1997), pp. 6–7, for clear explanations of the two types of trip-hammer. 19 See Horn (1975), pp. 219–58. In this context it is interesting to note Horn’s contention that a massive and seemingly ancient recumbent trip-hammer which was then (1975) still in existence in Compludo, Spain, may have been as old as the seventh century; idem, pp. 241–3. 20 See Wikander (1984), p. 38; Greene (1990), pp. 209–19. Greene (2000), is an excellent reassessment of the work on this subject. 21 See Jizhu (1983), pp. 425–6; Needham (1965), pp. 370–2, 392. Needham’s remains the most thorough study in English of the Chinese material on early waterand windpowered machinery.

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the late third to early fifth centuries CE, suggesting that they probably were an import from the Mediterranean.22 There is nevertheless clear evidence that water-power was used widely in the Chinese metallurgical industry from at least the early third century onward, while the use of watermills for grinding grains and seeds was widespread from at least the fifth century onward. Watermilling was so commonplace throughout China by the tenth century that two Commissioners for Watermills were appointed to oversee the industry in the eastern and western regions, an administrative innovation that appears to have been unique to Imperial China.23 If we were to add to this brief summary of Chinese innovations in water-power the many other technological achievements of the period, we would find once again that there is little or no validity to the idea of medieval European exceptionalism. Although it remains unclear to what extent Chinese technology influenced medieval European technology, we already know that Islamic and Byzantine trade routes acted as conduits for the adoption of a variety of Chinese innovations in Europe between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, and this may well have included innovations in the industrial uses of water-power. While the manuscript sources pertaining to the use of water-power in early medieval Islamic countries have not been adequately assessed, partially because detailed work remains to be conducted or made known to western scholars, there is clear archaeological evidence in the Middle East for the use of watermills from as early as the seventh century.24 The archaeological evidence suggests that both horizontal-

22 Jizhu (1983), pp. 426–7. Also Needham (1965), pp. 369–380, 390–412. Reynolds’ brief overview of medieval developments in the Chinese use of waterpower and powered mills for industry is heavily indebted to Needham. See Reynolds (1983), pp. 115–117. However, his claim that “Chinese applications of water power . . . [do] not compare to the European accomplishment, particularly in the period from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries”, is not supported by the evidence compiled by Needham, although it is well known that the Mongol invasion of China in the thirteenth century retarded Chinese technological development for a few centuries. On Reynolds’ speculation that the earliest water-powered bellows were water-levers, see Chapter Two, note 8. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no recent detailed work conducted on water-power in ancient China. 23 See Needham (1965), p. 401. 24 For a brief overview of some of the literature on industrial mills in medieval Islamic countries, see Hill (1984), pp. 169–72. For Islamic and Christian Spain, see Glick (1979), pp. 230–235. See also Glick & Kirchner (2000), pp. 267–330, for a

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and vertical-wheeled watermills were in widespread use from at least the ninth century.25 For example, the remains of thirty-one mills that are now thought to date from between the seventh and thirteenth centuries have been located at two sites in Iraq and Iran, while the sites of twelve horizontal-wheeled watermills in Oman have been dated to between the eighth and tenth centuries.26 By the time of the Crusades, there were reputedly mills in every province of the Muslim world from Spain and North Africa to Central Asia.27 These mills were engaged in a wide variety of tasks, including grinding grain, fulling cloth, hulling rice, sawing timber, preparing pulp for papermaking, and crushing mineral ores and sugar-cane.28 The use of water-power in the manufacturing of paper in Islamic countries is supposed to have begun in the eighth century, and there are reputedly references to Islamic fulling mills in the tenth century and to ore-crushing mills in the eleventh.29 It would appear that by the mid-twelfth century, the industrial use of water-power had spread from Islamic to Christian Spain, where fulling mills, paper mills and forge mills are recorded for the first time in Catalonia. Archaeological evidence from the high middle ages suggests that industrial watermills were used in large factory complexes, and that water-powered sawmills were also widespread.30 All of this evidence suggests that rather than being an autochthonic irruption in medieval Europe from the ninth or tenth century onward, industrial milling had clear precedents in earlier civilizations. The fact that there were such precedents makes claims for medieval European exceptionalism look increasingly implausible. While a systematic review of the existing research and a thorough examination

detailed discussion of the development of grain milling in Islamic Spain. According to Glick, the early Islamic manuscript sources are very limited [personal communication, April 2004]. 25 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 53. 26 Wikander (1985), pp. 162–3, and Wikander (2000), pp. 376–7, in which he states that none of the Iranian and Iraqi examples can be firmly dated to before the Arab conquest. 27 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 53. See Reynolds (1983), p. 117, for a detailed set of references indicating the widespread dissemination of medieval Islamic watermills. 28 See: Pacey (1990), pp. 10–11; al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 54; Hill (1998), p. XVIII-10. 29 Hill (1998), p. XVIII-10. Hill did not cite the documentary evidence for these claims. 30 See: Glick (1979), pp. 231–4; Reynolds (1983), pp. 117–118.

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of the extant manuscript sources remains to be done, it seems increasingly likely that it was through Islamic Spain and/or the Byzantine Empire that a number of Roman, Islamic, and possibly Chinese innovations in industrial milling technology were conveyed to Western Europe from the tenth or eleventh century onward, providing a foundation for the train of developments that characterized the application of water-power to industry in the European middle ages.31

The industrial use of water-power in the middle ages When citing evidence for the rapid development of industrial milling in medieval Europe, proponents of an IRMA have tended to rely upon chronological lists of industrial mills in various countries as their primary persuasive tool. But even when all of these lists are put together, the resulting body of evidence is not sufficiently large or extensive to prove the case. Consequently, a much larger database of medieval European industrial mills was compiled to try to gain a better sense of the geographical and temporal distribution of different types of industrial mill and of the factors that may have shaped their invention and diffusion. Analysis of the data in the larger sample leads to a series of conclusions about the need for further research in a handful of key areas. I. The traditional evidentiary base In order to test the veracity of claims that the numbers and applications of industrial mills grew rapidly in the second half of the middle ages, every example of industrial mill cited in the IRMA literature was placed into a table (see Appendix A). Its reliability and its coverage was then examined. This revealed that around a quarter of the total number of industrial mills in the table had never had any evidence cited to verify their existence, or that the evidence that had been cited was dubious. In finalising the data for analysis, only those medieval industrial mills for which there are clear manuscript sources or firm archaeological evidence have been included.

31

See: Hill (1984), p. 172; Lewis (1997), pp. 116–21.

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Careful analysis of the evidence compiled in the table reveals that it is not sufficiently robust to support the claims that have been made for it. The quantity and coverage of the evidence are both matters for concern, as are the small number of scholars who compiled it. There are also major differences in the variety of types of mills found in the two regions with the largest numbers of mills. For the whole of Europe between c. 770 and 1600, no more than four hundred industrial mills were able to be authenticated. As these four hundred examples are spread over a period of more than eight hundred years and more than a dozen countries, the data clearly do not constitute a very large or representative sample. Furthermore, over 80% of the 400 mills are from French and English sources. If one includes the German and Italian kingdoms, 94% of the evidence comes from these four regions. While this is not necessarily a problem, for reasons that will be outlined shortly, none of the scholars who have tried to demonstrate that a pan-European technological revolution was taking place have ever noted the biases in their data.32 Although it is historians of technology who have been the main advocates for an IRMA, well over 70% of the documented examples of industrial mills cited by them have been drawn from the research of three social and economic historians.33 Only a little more than one hundred of the nearly four hundred mills were identified by historians of technology, and of these, the vast majority (at 90%) were identified by a single author, Bradford Blaine [Table 6.1]. This was a surprising result in view of the rhetorical importance attached to this thesis in the history of technology literature. Well over half of the total number of documented industrial mills cited by proponents of an IRMA were fulling mills. But the number of these relative to other types of industrial mill in the two main countries documented differ vastly. More than 95% of the industrial mills recorded from England were used for fulling cloth, whereas only 40% of those recorded in France were so used.34 Although these

32 The numbers per country are as follows: France (186), England (145), Germany (28), Italy (15), other European countries (15). 33 These authors are Eleanora Carus-Wilson and Reginald Lennard, who identified 140 English fulling mills between them (as well as a single tanning mill), and AnneMarie Bautier, who identified 147 French industrial mills, less than half of which were fulling mills. 34 Specifically, 140 of 145 mills in England, 79 of 186 in France.

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Table 6.1. European industrial mills cited by proponents of an industrial revolution in the middle ages, 770 to 1600 Author

Number of mills

Bradford Blaine Eleanora Carus-Wilson Reginald Lennard Anne-Marie Bautier Others

102 124 16 147 10

Total

399

figures are significant, they have not received the attention they deserve from advocates of an IRMA. II. New evidence on medieval industrial mills Because the evidence drawn upon by proponents of an IRMA does not constitute a sufficiently large sample from which to draw any firm conclusions about the veracity of claims for an IRMA, a number of scholars have recently extended the evidentiary base through primary research in the English sources and an extensive trawl of the social and economic history literature. From this material has been compiled a table of references to over fourteen hundred ancient and medieval industrial mills, around eleven hundred of which are documented in the manuscript sources, or have been identified through archaeological fieldwork.35 The medieval mills included in the table were applied to almost thirty different processes, although as with the smaller sample compiled by IRMA proponents, the majority of them (about 60%) are fulling mills.

35 The source table for this data is reproduced in Appendix A. The data are arranged according to the type or function of the mill in question, whether for fulling cloth, grinding bark, pulping paper, etc. Each entry includes the date or period to which the reference is supposed to refer, its location, the author who cited the example, and the primary source for the information provided, if available. Only those examples that are verifiable with respect to manuscript or archaeological sources have been treated as unproblematic and used as the basis for the analysis. Where more than ten examples of a single type of mill have been described by a single author, the references provided have generally been grouped and the article concerned cited for the sources.

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It should be noted that this trawl of the primary and secondary sources revealed that while there has been some very systematic research on the medieval sources for England, Wales and Italy over the last two to three decades, and some recent regional studies that include detailed discussions of milling practices in medieval Spain, France and Ireland, most of the rest of Western Europe does not seem to have received nearly so much scholarly attention. Nevertheless, the more recent research that has been done on medieval England, Wales, Italy, Spain and France, together with the earlier cited research of Carus-Wilson, Lennard, Bautier and Blaine, arguably provides a reasonable basis for drawing some tentative conclusions about the extent to which these various regions applied water-power to industry. A cursory examination of the data contained in Appendix A tends to support one of the arguments used to support an IRMA, in that it demonstrates that between the late eighth and fifteenth centuries, watermills became employed in Western Europe in the processing and manufacturing of seventeen different products, i.e., malted grains, woollen cloth, leather, sugar, hemp, iron, tools, mustard, timber, silk, paper, olive oil, mineral ores, wire, woad, pigment, and opium. It should be noted, however, that although mills dedicated to grinding malted grains have in the past been categorised as “industrial mills”, and misleadingly described by Anne-Marie Bautier, Georges Duby, Lynn White Jr., Bradford Blaine and Jean Gimpel as “beer mills”,36 they are more properly described as malt mills (as they were during the middle ages) and classified as grain (or agricultural) mills, rather than industrial mills, as Langdon has recently argued.37 Although it may seem somewhat contrary to ignore these clarifications having already drawn attention to them, I will nevertheless continue to treat malt mills as a form of industrial mill in this chapter for the simple reason that this is how they have been categorised in the past. Continuing to include them in the discussion also helps to illuminate some broader issues on the subject, as will become clearer from the discussion in Chapter Seven.

36 See Holt (1988), pp. 147–8, for a brief but penetrating explanation of why such an appelation is misleading. Holt’s argument is summarised in Chapter Seven. 37 See Langdon (2004), p. 40.

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Table 6.2. Chronological order in which water-power was applied to various industrial processes in medieval Europe, 770 to 1469 Industrial process to which water-power was applied

Earliest date of primary source

malted grains woollen cloth leather sugar hemp iron iron tools mustard timber silk paper olive oil mineral ores wire woad pigment opium

770 c. 1040 1138 1176 c. 1200 c. 1200, 1214 & 1384* 1203 1251 c. 1300 & 1347# 1272 1276 late 13th c. 1315 & 1317 14th c.? 1348 late 14th c. 1469

* These dates refer respectively to water-powered forges, bellows and furnaces. # These dates refer respectively to water-powered saws and lathes.

Table 6.2 reveals that the earliest examples of more than threequarters of the twenty different types of industrial mill listed are dated to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; nine during the thirteenth century, and another seven during the fourteenth century. We now know that this was a period during which there was rapid growth in the medieval population and economy; improvements in agriculture and the expansion of national and international trade being the most commonly cited reasons for this growth. If there was indeed an industrial revolution based upon water-power during the middle ages, therefore, it would seem reasonable on the basis of these data to locate it in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But somewhat of a shadow is cast over this initially hopeful looking data when we look at the numbers of industrial mills recorded in the manuscript sources up until the end of the sixteenth century in order of their chronological appearance. Table 6.3 demonstrates that by far the most abundant types of industrial mill in the sample for medieval Europe are fulling mills and forge mills, which account for 80% of the sample, with tanning mills, sawmills and tool-sharpening

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Table 6.3. Industrial mills in Europe by type, 770 to 1600 Type of mill Malt mill Hemp mill (human/animal-powered) Oil mill Fulling mill Tanning mill Forge mill Tool-sharpening mill Hemp mill (water-powered) Sawmill Bellows (using waterwheel) Ore-crushing mill Blast furnace (water-powered) Total

No. of documented mills 23 19 8 635 58 236 31 18 46 6 4 8 1,092

mills contributing another 12% of the total.38 If these data can be taken as reasonably representative of the situation across medieval Europe, we can further conclude that if an industrial revolution did take place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was predominantly restricted to the fulling and iron industries. However, one of the most significant things about the larger sample is that it clearly indicates that the region that we now call France was a leader in the application of water-power to medieval industry [Table 6.4]. This is strongly suggested by four key pieces of evidence relating to the extent of research conducted on the bestdocumented regions and what that research reveals. To be more specific: [1] the English, Welsh and northern Italian manuscript sources have been examined very thoroughly by a number of scholars, whereas the French evidence is not nearly so well-studied, and yet it reveals a wealth of data compared to which the rest of Western Europe appears distinctly backward; [2] the French manuscripts cited by Bautier record almost all of the earliest examples of the various types of industrial mill; [3] the largest numbers of most types of industrial mill also come from France; and [4] some types of medieval industrial mill are only recorded in the French sources.

38 The earliest type of industrial mill appears at the top of Table 6.3 (the malt mill), while the latest appears at the bottom (the waterpowered blast furnace).

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Table 6.4. First appearance of various industrial mills in medieval Europe, 770 to 1443 Type of mill

Country

Date

Malt mill Hemp mill (human/animal-powered) Fulling mill Tanning mill Forge mill Tool-sharpening mill Hemp mill (water-powered) Bellows (using waterwheel) Sawmill Ore-crushing mill Blast furnace (water-powered) Cutting and slitting mill

France France France France England, France France France Slovakia, France France Germany France France

770 c. 990 1080 c. 1134 c. 1200 1203 1209 1269, 1283 c. 1300 1317 1384 1443

Table 6.5. Industrial mills in Europe by country, 770 to 1600 Country England and Wales France Italy Germany Poland Others Total

No. of mills 682 229 148 31 10 27 1,127

The first point requires some background explanation. French and English sources provided 83% of the data drawn upon by proponents of an IRMA, with an additional 4% coming from Italian sources. The regional bias of the larger sample is even more heavily weighted: this time toward England and Wales (60%), with most of the remaining industrial mills (at 34%) being recorded in France and Italy [Table 6.5]. Only 6% of the mills documented in the larger sample are from other regions. The bias in the larger sample is a consequence of the extensive and systematic research that has been done on the subject of industrial mills in England and Wales by six or seven scholars over the last sixty years or so. The history of milling in medieval France and

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Italy has begun to draw more attention from researchers in recent decades, but comparatively little work has been done on the subject to date for the rest of Western Europe, including Portugal, Spain, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.39 This situation would be a severe constraint on drawing any conclusions about a pan-European IRMA, were it not for two key facts: [1] that medievalists generally agree that what we now call England, France and Italy were the most technologically advanced regions in Europe from the eleventh or twelfth century onward; and [2] that the English and Italian research has been very systematic. Consequently, if it is possible to gauge the extent to which water-power was applied to medieval industry in these regions, it should also be possible to assess the veracity of the IRMA thesis, as whatever happened in the rest of Europe can hardly have been any more innovative. Although the number of scholars contributing to the research in the larger sample has only doubled, there are two significant qualitative differences between the research conducted by the additional scholars whose work contributed to the larger sample and that relied upon by proponents of an IRMA.40 These differences relate to the research methods adopted, and the researchers’ aims. The scholars involved in compiling the English and Welsh evidence have trawled literally thousands of individual manuscripts to build up statistically reliable samples. This includes all of Domesday Book (1086), the Hundred Rolls of Edward I (1279), and the Inquisitiones Post Mortem for the reign of Edward II (1307–27), as well as a large number of calendars of fine rolls, patent rolls and court rolls, ministers’ and manorial accounts, and lay and ecclesiastical charters and cartularies.41 This evidence is also comparable, if certain assumptions

39 Of these countries, Spain and Germany have received some attention. See, for example, Glick (1979) and Reynolds (1983) on medieval Spain. Walter Kuhn did some significant work on medieval German industrial mills in the 1960s, but I have not yet had an opportunity to study it. 40 These are, respectively, Eleanora Carus-Wilson, Reginald Lennard, R.A. Donkin, Ian Jack, Richard Holt, John Langdon and myself on England and Wales, AnneMarie Bautier on France, and John Muendel on Italy. 41 Domesday Book, the Hundred Rolls and Inquisitiones Post Mortem record the location of the mill, to whom it belonged and often to whom it was leased and on what terms, as well as its annual revenue, what type of mill it was, and the year in which the record was made. Although they may not include technical details

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are made and understood.42 John Muendel has similarly undertaken systematic searches of thirteenth and fourteenth century taxation documents in the northern Italian provinces of Pistoia and Firenze, which can for this reason be usefully compared with the English data. On the other hand, while it is difficult to determine just how systematic was Bautier’s research on French industrial mills, her single paper on the subject appears to have involved the same kind of trawl of royal and ecclesiastical records as that conducted by CarusWilson on the English sources. The scholars who contributed most of the data for the larger sample thus conducted systematic studies of large quantities of source material to gain insights into how industrial milling fit into the wider medieval economy, whereas the scholars whose work provided most of the data for the earlier sample (including Carus-Wilson and Bautier) were deliberately selective and discriminating in their sampling techniques in order to demonstrate that industrial milling was an innovative and widespread medieval phenomenon. Nevertheless, the fact that Bautier’s single paper on medieval France cites the earliest reliably dated industrial mills in all categories and a number of varieties of industrial mill that have not been found outside France clearly indicates that, in terms of technological development in the medieval period, the region we now call France was exceptional. With respect to the earliest reliably documented industrial mills of various types and the regions in which they were located [Table 6.2], the earliest documented malt mill in medieval Europe dates to the second half of the eighth century in France, the earliest fulling mill to the second half of the eleventh century in France,43 the tanning about mills, these can be gleaned from the manorial account rolls that have survived from the thirteenth century onward. In my own exhaustive examination of more than fifty ecclesiastical cartularies, account books and surveys, I have only uncovered about thirty English industrial mills that had not been noted by earlier scholars, the vast majority of which were fulling mills. 42 See, for example, Holt’s comments on the reliability of the Domesday mill records in Holt (1988), pp. 5–16 & 107–8, and on the Hundred Rolls, 24–5 & 54. Cf. Kosminsky’s comments on the Hundred Rolls in Kosminsky (1956), pp. 40–41. On the comparability of the mill records in Domesday and the Hundred Rolls, see Holt (1988), pp. 108–112. See Langdon (1994), pp. 7–9, on the reliability of the Inquisitiones Post Mortem. 43 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), p. 193, cite P. Malanima, I piedi di legno: Una macchina alle origini dell’industria medievale (Milan, 1988), as evidence that “[t]he fulling mill appeared for the first time [in Europe?] in Italy, in the founding charter of 962 of a Benedictine monastery in the Abruzzi.” I have yet to verify the primary source

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mill to early twelfth-century France, the (water-powered) hemp mill and the tool-sharpening mill to early-thirteenth-century France, the forge mill to the early thirteenth century in France, England and Sweden,44 and the sawmill to the early fourteenth century in France.45 Other processes such as cutting and slitting metal, and minting coins also appear to have been first adapted to water-power by the French.46 The earliest evidence of blast furnaces similarly comes from France.47 The French provinces in which Bautier found most of this activity were Normandy, Picardy, and Champagne in the north, Burgundy and Dauphiné in the east, and Gevaudan, Languedoc and Provence in the south. These provinces were variously under the jurisdiction of the kings of France and England, and the Holy Roman Emperor between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. With respect to the second key piece of evidence regarding the relative proportions of different kinds of industrial mill that have been identified in each of the four better-studied countries, it is significant that the meticulous research that has been done on medieval England and Wales has revealed a relatively small number and limited variety of mills compared to those recorded for less well-studied France. Not only does the region which we now know as France appear to have been using water-power for industrial purposes earlier than any other Western European country, with the possible exception of Spain, it was applying water-power to a much wider variety of industrial processes: malt mills, oil mills, tanning mills, tool-sharpening for this claim, however. Apart from the example of an early forge mill, Benoit’s and Rouillard’s chronology of other industrial milling developments in France is basically consistent with the work of Bautier (1960), from which most of the French material cited in this chapter is drawn. 44 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), p. 195, draw attention to a description from 1135 by Arnauld de Bonneval of the Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux, who states that “water activated a forge in the heart of the abbey, amidst other milling installations.” I have not had an opportunity to check this source, but if it is correct, it pushes back the earliest date for the forge mill in France by sixty-eight years. 45 With respect to sawmills, this involves excluding the late Roman and Byzantine examples already cited. Benoit & Rouillard (2000), p. 194, claim, without documentation, that the earliest medieval reference to this technique is from a Norman document of 1204. If this is correct, this would also clearly establish France as a leader in the application of waterpower to sawmilling. Interestingly, those two waterpowered technologies with precursors in the Roman Empire and/or ancient China, i.e., the sawmill and the forge mill, do not appear in the European documentation until relatively late. The reasons for this remain unclear, however. 46 In 1443 in the first instance and 1551 in the second. 47 The French examples are dated 1384, 1402, and 1412; the earliest examples from elsewhere being 1429 in Italy and 1496 from England.

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mills, hemp mills, sawmills and paper mills—52% of all such mills in the sample were from France, while 25% were from Italy, and only 10% from England. Whereas the Italian kingdoms seem to have applied water-power to a similar range of industries as the French, there are no examples of oil, hemp or sawmills from medieval England. Furthermore, the only evidence for such unusual waterpowered mills as those used for extracting oil from poppy and hemp seeds, as well as for making mustard and polishing gems and armour, come from France. It would therefore seem reasonable to conclude that these kinds of milling processes were mainly restricted to France, as only a little over half of those mills that appear in the sample were from elsewhere. Three-quarters of all these mills were from France and Italy [Table 6.6]. While a relatively large number of industrial mills are documented for the southern and eastern regions of Germany (most of which were used for metallurgical applications, although there are a significant number of sawmills as well), the only areas in which Germany appears to have been something of an innovator is in relation to the “copper mill” (twelfth century?) and the boring mill (1480).49 The available evidence suggests that metallurgical processes were first widely adapted to water-power in Spain, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Poland Table 6.6. Water-powered industrial mills by country, 770 to 1600

Malt mill Oil mill Tanning mill Tool-sharpening mill Hemp mill Sawmill Paper mill

Spain

France

Italy

England Germany Poland Belgium/ Flanders

0 1 0 0

13 3 37 13

0 4 5 8

4 0 9 5

1 0 0 4

0 0 2 1

5 0 0 0

0 0 1

16 12 1

2 26 1

0 0 0

0 4 0

0 2 0

0 0 0

48 What Robert Forbes called a “copper mill” was either an ore-crushing mill, a copper smelting mill, or a copper polishing mill. It must, therefore, have been an adaptation to copper-mining of an already existing device or devices. Neither Forbes nor any of the other authors from whom this material is drawn have provided verifiable sources for medieval copper mills, silver mills, water-driven mining hoists, wire mills, or winding mills.

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and Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The earliest well-established examples of forge mills are at Kirkstall and Bordesley Abbeys in England (c. 1200), Évreux and Evry in France (1202 and 1203), and the village of Toaker in Sweden (1224). Other metallurgical machines such as water-powered bellows and pumps appear to have first emerged in Italy in the early thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respectively. There is reason to believe, however, that forge mills and water-powered bellows may have been present in Spain and France a century or more earlier, although it remains unclear whether the machines concerned were independently reinvented by medieval Europeans or were adaptations of Chinese or Roman technology from Islamic Spain and/or the Byzantine Empire. Monastic cartularies and royal charters are the main kinds of documents that have informed the English case studies I have conducted, and are significant primary sources for the other scholars who have worked on medieval British mills as well. They are also the kinds of sources that Bautier drew upon, and yet no-one who has worked on the English sources has found anything like the variety or quantity of industrial mills that Bautier discovered. The relative rarity of industrial mills in medieval England is clearly borne out by my own research and by Holt’s and Langdon’s. Langdon has undertaken the most extensive surveys to date. A trawl of the mill-related data contained in the Inquisitiones Post Mortem (IPMs) for the reign of Edward II (1307–27) (which records the holdings of major secular lords upon their deaths) found that only fifty-five of the 1,647 powered mills identified in the sample, or less than 3.5%, were industrial mills, and all were fulling mills.49 In an earlier study of watermills and windmills in the West Midlands between 1086 and 1500, Langdon found that industrial mills for both secular and ecclesiastical lords “never exceeded 10 per cent of all mills in the preplague period”. Three-quarters of the mills recorded by Langdon were ecclesiastical. It is only after the plague that their numbers began to increase, particularly in the period between 1450 and 1475, but

49 See Langdon (1994), pp. 12–14. Langdon’s estimate is based on a systematic study of mill rentals on more than twelve hundred English manors, although he believes this figure is an under-estimate of the actual situation. Other regional studies of industrial mills in medieval England whose data were not included in this study are: Kilburn (1931–2); Butler (1945); Beckwith (1971); Bedwin (1976); Rollins (1981); Beamish (1983).

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even then only marginally.50 Furthermore, less than 1% of the total throughout this period were neither grain mills nor fulling mills.51 These findings have been supported by Langdon’s most recent survey of secular and ecclesiastical sources for the period 1300 to 1540.52 My own exhaustive analysis of the manuscript sources pertaining to more than thirty medieval English religious houses tends to support the findings of Langdon’s West Midlands study. On six English Benedictine estates between the late thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, 10% of the mills were industrial mills.53 On five English Cistercian estates, more than 14% of the total number of mills were industrial.54 On the other hand, ten Augustinian houses recorded no industrial mills before 1348. It thus seems clear that while the Benedictines and Cistercians may not have been as keen on applying watermills to industrial uses as historians of technology have tended to claim,54 they were undoubtedly more involved in industrial milling than most of their religious brethren, and certainly more so than lay lords and free men, at least up until the early fourteenth century. However, if secular lords in England held only one industrial mill for every twenty-eight grain mills, and ecclesiastical lords one for every ten, it is hard to see how this might constitute an industrial revolution in medieval England.

50

Langdon (1994), p. 14, n. 27, citing Langdon (1991), p. 434 (Table 2). Langdon (1991), p. 436. 52 Langdon (2004), pp. 40–54. Some of these findings are summarised in Chapter Nine. 53 The houses were Battle, Bec, Canterbury, Durham, Hereford and Lancaster. See Lucas (2003), Ch. 3. This was not necessarily typical of English Benedictine houses, however. Holt found that whereas Glastonbury in the south had interests in three fulling mills out of the forty mills that it held by the early fourteenth century, or 7.5% of the total, the East Anglian houses of Bury, Peterborough and Ramsey had only two fulling mills between them (Bury had none), out of well over one hundred and fifty mills they held in total. See Holt (1988), pp. 156–7. The 10% figure arrived at through my own analysis is therefore not necessarily representative of the numbers of industrial mills held by the Benedictines as a whole. 54 The houses were Beaulieu, Furness, Old Wardon, Sibton and Kirkstall. See Lucas (2003), Ch. 5. However, three of the five houses recorded no industrial mills, even though one of these, i.e., Furness Abbey, was heavily involved in iron and lead mining. While there is archaeological evidence from Kirkstall and Bordesley Abbeys that industrial mills were not always recorded in manorial accounts and charters, an extensive survey of the English archaeological literature from 1950 to 2000 suggests that such under-recording was not very significant. See Chapter Eight. 55 See, for example: White (1978), p. 67; Reynolds (1983), pp. 110–112; Reynolds (1984), p. 109; Basalla (1988), p. 148; Major (1990), p. 232. 51

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While monastic innovation in industrial milling does appear to be a distinct possibility, the English evidence indicates that such activity does not of necessity entail an industrial revolution. Although comparatively comprehensive data are not available for France, the fact that only four out of ten of the industrial mills Bautier recorded were fulling mills, as opposed to eight or nine out of ten in England, suggests that the number of industrial mills as a proportion of all powered mills must have been significantly higher in France than in England. This supposition is supported by more recent work on various regions of medieval France recently summarised by Paul Benoit and Joséphine Rouillard.56 A clue as to why France led in the application of water-power to industry relates to the profitability of industrial mills as compared to grain mills. All of the evidence from England indicates that fulling mills were only about a third to a quarter as profitable as grain mills, making them less attractive to lords as investments.57 The profits to be had from other English industrial mills were even lower.58 Holt’s suggestion that the lower comparative profitability of such mills meant that they were only ever likely to be sited in areas where there was a plentiful supply of running water remains the most consistent with the evidence.59 With regard to the profitability of industrial mills in Italy and France, Muendel’s work on medieval Florence demonstrates that fulling mills were taxed at the same rate as, or a higher rate than, grain mills, suggesting that they were earning as much as or more than Florentine grain mills.60 Benoit and Rouillard have pointed to evidence from the accounts of the Seneschal of Carcassonne that several forge mills belonging to the king of France were “valued at

56 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 193–7, 208–14. See also Beck (1997), pp. 173–184. 57 Holt (1988), pp. 156–8; Langdon (1991), p. 435 and Langdon (1994), p. 14. Also Lucas (2003), Ch. 2 & Appendices F & G. It is clear from this research that Carus-Wilson was wrong to claim more than sixty years ago that the English fulling industry was a sector of the medieval economy from which “a considerable profit could be derived”; see Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 52. 58 Langdon (1991), p. 436. Holt, Langdon and I have found a number of examples of lay and ecclesiastical lords licensing small entrepreneurs to operate and maintain industrial mills on their land for a nominal annual fee, suggesting that these mills were not earning large sums of money, and were no threat to lordly revenues. 59 Holt (1988), p. 158. 60 Muendel (1981), pp. 89–95.

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much higher prices than grain mills”.61 Why these mills should have been more profitable in the Italian and French kingdoms seems most likely to have been to do with population density and levels of demand, although further research is needed to develop a clearer picture of why this was the case. The fact that they do appear to have been more profitable than English industrial mills does, however, provide an explanation as to why French and Italian lords were more favourably inclined to building and maintaining them. Further exploration of some of Holt’s ideas on this subject would appear to be potentially fruitful.62 Summary of findings from the larger sample A detailed analysis of the data contained in the larger sample suggests that the most intense period of industrial milling activity in medieval Europe was between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The region that we now know as France put water-power to industrial uses earlier than any other Western European country (with the possible exception of Spain) and applied water-power to a much greater variety of industrial processes than any other country as well. The regions that saw the most intense industrial milling activity appear to have been France and Italy. The main industries to which waterpower was applied in these two regions were cloth, hemp, leather and timber, as well as some metallurgical processes. In the later middle ages, this extended to forging iron and pulverizing and polishing ores. In England, the most thoroughly studied region of medieval Europe, industrial milling was restricted primarily to fulling cloth, although there were a small number of industrial mills operating for toolsharpening and for extracting tannin from bark for curing leather. It was only in the late middle ages that water-power was widely applied to metallurgy. Holt, Langdon and I have established that around 90% of English mills were dedicated to grinding grain. No

61 Benoit & Rouillard (2000), pp. 195–6. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no data published to date on the earnings of English forge mills. 62 Holt, “Mechanization and the Medieval English Economy” (n. 12 above), 149–56. For example, Holt’s observation that most industrial milling took place in small workshop producing for local markets undoubtedly holds true for England, but it is not so clear that it does for France or Italy.

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more than 10% were put to industrial uses, and most of those were in the fulling industry. Only 1% of English mills were involved in activities that did not involve milling grain or fulling cloth. Most of England’s industrial mills were built where there was a plentiful water supply and a local wool market (as most were fulling mills), i.e., the West Midlands, south-west England, south Wales, and some parts of northern England. This evidence does not support the thesis that there was an industrial revolution based on water-power in medieval England. But what of those areas of seemingly intense industrial milling activity in southern and northern France and northern Italy? Can they be said to have experienced an “industrial revolution”? In France, it was only certain well-developed regions in the Dauphiné, Provence, Aude, Forez mountains, Champagne, Normandy and Picardy where the extensive application of water-power to industry took place. The same appears to be true of northern Italy, with Piedmont, Pistoia and Firenze showing the largest concentrations. If we examine the social and economic conditions that prevailed in those regions of modern-day France, Italy, England, Germany and the Czech Republic that did begin to extensively use water-power in the middle ages, we find that they already possessed well-developed local industries that had access to regional, national and/or international markets. They also had access to plentiful supplies of running water that could be harnessed for industry. While large-scale hemp production in the Dauphiné, sawmilling in the Forez region, and mining and metallurgy in the Harz mountains, Saxony and Bohemia were atypical industries in medieval Europe, the regions in which they developed did possess many of the features that appear to be necessary for technological innovation and diffusion, features that are more characteristic of the modern period. A more detailed examination of these regions may therefore provide some deeper insights into the processes of technological innovation and industrialization. The papers included in recent collections pertaining to technological development during the ancient and medieval periods have tended to rely on regional studies to illuminate these larger processes.63

63

Astill & Langdon (1997); Wikander (2000); Squatriti (2000).

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It should be fairly obvious from the evidence presented here that such intensive regional applications of water-power to industry do not constitute an “industrial revolution of the middle ages”, as proponents of that thesis have claimed. Furthermore, the assertion that the general lack of evidence for industrial milling in medieval England is because it was a technological backwater is not defensible in the light of a number of recent studies.64 There must, therefore, be some other reason or reasons for the differences in the application of waterpower to industry in France, Italy and England; that will most likely be revealed through a dialogue between medieval historians who specialize in these regions—one that I hope to help stimulate with this research. While the evidence presented here does support the general claim made by supporters of an IRMA that there are definite continuities between the development of industry and automation in the middle ages and similar developments in the modern period, the evidence earlier presented pertaining to the Roman Empire, ancient and medieval China and medieval Islamic societies points to a different set of continuities and discontinuities between their industrial activities and those of medieval Europe, making any attempt to posit a singular radical break between their respective technological advances appear increasingly implausible. While it would seem that a number of Roman advances in industrial milling were completely lost to subsequent civilizations, seemingly independent innovations by the Chinese and a number of Islamic societies appear to have provided the inspiration for subsequent industrial milling activities in Western Europe.65 It has been argued for some years by scholars of Islamic technology that the earliest use of watermills for ore-crushing, fulling cloth and papermaking was in Islamic societies, and that a possible pathway for the diffusion of these technologies into Western Europe

64 At a recent medieval history conference a well-known historian of technology asserted that “England was a technological backwater during the middle ages” in response to comments by other scholars that the relative rarity of industrial mills in medieval England clearly problematized claims that there had been an industrial revolution in the middle ages. Some recent studies which undermine the claim that England was a technological backwater during the middle ages, are: Campbell, Galloway & Murphy (1992); Campbell, Galloway, Keene & Murphy (1993); Astill & Langdon (1997), and esp. Langdon (1997). 65 Although it remains unclear what role China and Byzantium played in this ongoing process of technological diffusion and innovation.

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was through Islamic Spain and North Africa. While a comparison of the earliest evidence for industrial milling in Western Europe with that claimed for contemporaneous Islamic societies does suggest that this was the case, a systematic examination of the Islamic evidence remains to be conducted.66 For example, the miners of Samarkand were reputedly using stamping or ore-crushing mills as early as 973,67 whereas the earliest verifiable manuscript evidence from Europe for the same technology dates from 1317, from the Plauen region in Germany. However, two such mills may have been operating in northern Italy during the twelfth century.68 The Persians were reputedly using water-power to full cloth as early as the tenth century.69 It was not until the twelfth century in Europe that fulling workshops became a common industrial setting in which mills were deployed, even though the earliest reliably dated examples are from the first half of the eleventh century in France.70 The earliest use of water-power for papermaking was reputedly in Samarkand in the eighth century, followed in the tenth century by Iraq, Iran and Syria, while Spanish water-powered paper mills date from the middle of the twelfth century.71 Italian, Spanish and French paper mills date from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries respectively, with the technology gradually spreading to the rest of Europe over the next 250 years or so.72 Most of the early well-documented cases come from Italy, however.

66

Thomas Glick, personal communication, April 2004. Al-Hassan & Hill (1986), pp. 54, 242–4; Hill (1998), p. V-184. 68 Blaine (1966), pp. 140–1; Blaine (1976), p. 175. 69 Pacey (1990), pp. 10–11. 70 With regard to various claims for fulling mills in Europe from the second half of the tenth century, see Forbes (1956), p. 610; White (1964), pp. 84; Gille (1969), p. 456. None but White, however, provide sources. Wikander has commented, “[t]he earliest alleged mills, Toscana 983, Dauphiné c. 990, Milano 1008, etc., are matters of doubt”; Wikander (2000a), p. 406, n. 27. As mentioned above, I have not yet had an opportunity to verify the Benedictine example cited by Benoit and Rouillard from 962. 71 al-Hassan & Hill (1986), p. 54; Pacey (1990), pp. 10–11, 42; Hill (1998), p. XVIII-10; Gille (1969), pp. 456–7. 72 Blaine (1966), pp. 103–15. Although the Chinese invented the papermaking process, they do not seem to have applied water-power to it until around 1690, which would imply that they adopted this technology either indirectly from Western Europe, or directly from the Islamic Near East. See Needham (1965), p. 394. 67

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The research presented here clearly suggests that the IRMA thesis in its received form rests on shaky foundations. The evidence that has been outlined from the Roman Empire, ancient and medieval China and medieval Islamic countries demonstrates that there were indeed precursors to medieval European industrial uses of waterpower, although it remains unclear to what extent Europe was indebted to them. Medieval Islamic societies had undoubtedly established the requisite trade routes and technical traditions to transmit this knowledge to medieval Europe via Spain, North Africa and/or Byzantium, but hard evidence that such a process actually occurred remains elusive. My own research and that of several other scholars on medieval Europe strongly indicates several patterns. Not all of Western Europe was equally innovative in its application of water-power to new and existing industries. The systematic research that has been done on medieval England, Wales and northern Italy demonstrates that there were marked regional differences in both the uses of water-power for industry, and the chronologies of development of the relevant machinery. While there is some evidence for a “revolutionary” increase in the number of processes to which water-power was applied during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that evidence is mainly restricted to France.73 A handful of regions in southern and northern France appear to have been centres of medieval technological innovation. These saw the development of new applications for industrial milling and were the only regions of medieval Europe to apply water-power to some industries. Although other parts of medieval Europe had some involvement in industrial milling, including the more advanced regions of what we now call Italy, England and Germany, that involvement appears to have been quite limited until the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even then it was largely restricted to a small number of industries, most notably the production of broad-fibre woollen cloths and metallurgy. 73 Considering that medieval France is considered in some quarters to have been technologically backward, the finding that with respect to all seven of the most commonly appearing types of industrial watermill, France was a clear leader, should give some pause to those who have held this view in the past.

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The profitability of industrial milling compared with grain milling appears to have varied considerably between England, France and Italy. Whereas English fulling mills generally earned only a half to a quarter as much as grain mills, Italian fulling mills appear to have been just as profitable, or even more profitable, than grain mills. In France, forge mills held by the king appear to have earned handsome profits, whereas there are no such indications from any of the equivalent mills in medieval England. In addition to its negative implications for the IRMA thesis, this research points to a pattern of industrial development in medieval Europe that may prove far more significant in its implications. Rather than illustrating a pan-European industrial revolution in which there were a few pockets of “technological retardation”, the evidence for the development of water-powered industry in medieval Europe suggests that the very opposite was the case.74 Not only do most of the important innovations in industrial milling appear to have originated in earlier Islamic societies, ancient China or the Roman Empire, those regions of medieval Europe that were engaged in industrial milling appear to have been geographical pockets of technological innovation within a broader environment of technological incrementalism.75 It would seem that these centres of innovation were able to develop because of characteristics they shared with centres of trade and commerce in the early modern period and later, i.e., they had relatively dense populations, were resource-rich, already had well-developed industries in key areas of high demand, and were geographically well-placed to exploit local, regional and/or international markets. Of equal importance, they all had plentiful supplies of running water which they could exploit for purposes other than meeting the local demand for grain milling. Further research might profitably concentrate on these exceptional areas and, aided by the insight that they were, in fact, centres of innovation, might help answer a number of key questions about the transition from medieval to modern industry. For example, which social groups were the main investors in different medieval industries? Did the cost of labour and the availability of water-power for 74 White argues for such a pan-European industrial revolution in Medieval Technology and Social Change, p. 88. 75 This is not to say that these were the only geographical areas of technological innovation in the later medieval period.

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purposes other than grain milling play major roles? What other social, economic and environmental factors shaped the development of medieval industries in particular regions? How profitable were different medieval industries, and what levels of ongoing investment and innovation were required? To what extent did profitability vary from region to region and country to country? Did those industrial regions that were successful in the medieval period survive into the early modern period and beyond? In addressing these questions, the most fruitful subjects for study would appear to be France, Italy, Spain, England and Germany. As we have seen, although they all present very different cases, the possibility that other parts of medieval Europe significantly surpassed these regions in the application of water-power to industry is remote. Further interdisciplinary study along these lines will help to illuminate such important issues as the factors necessary for technological innovation and diffusion in the pre-modern period, and the extent to which industrial development in the modern period was built on ancient and medieval foundations. The case study of the Welsh fulling industry in Chapter Nine goes some way to furthering these goals.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN INDUSTRIAL MILLS

Introduction From the earliest times in China and in the territories of the former Roman Empire, hydraulic technologies were used for a variety of purposes other than irrigation and grinding grain. The previous chapter explored some of the evidence for the industrial uses of water-power in ancient China and the Roman Empire that included such applications as hulling rice, forging iron and powering the bellows of iron furnaces. It also discussed some of the possible pathways of diffusion for these various innovations. This chapter examines in more detail the evidence for the most commonly occurring industrial mills in medieval Europe, and discusses the variety of different terms that were used in different parts of Europe to describe these mills. There were at least four distinct kinds of water-powered machinery that were used for industrial purposes during the medieval period. The first combined the vertical waterwheel with a horizontal shaft that powered a recumbent trip-hammer or vertical stamp (or series of them) using cams. A second combined the vertical waterwheel with a horizontal shaft that powered a vertically rotating whetstone. A third involved a minor adaptation of the vertical-wheeled watermill, i.e., the substitution of an edge-runner stone rotating in a circular pit for a millstone rotating in the horizontal plane. The fourth type was a water-powered sawing mechanism, the working details of which remain somewhat uncertain. If Chinese and Roman industrial mills were indeed precursors to similar devices that were used subsequently in Europe, as appears to be the case, the oldest mechanism involved an adaptation of the compartmented waterwheel to convert rotary motion to linear motion, achieved through the addition of a cam and lever.1 The process involved the raising and lowering of either vertical stamps or recumbent 1

Wikander (2000a), pp. 402–3.

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trip-hammers. In the first instance, the cam or cams protruded from the axle of a vertical waterwheel. As the cam on the axle rotated, it raised a lever affixed to a vertical shaft at the base of which was a hammer or club. This lifted the whole shaft and then released it again as the cam and lever moved out of contact with one another. In the second case, the movement of the axle was reversed, so that it depressed a lever on a pivoted reclining shaft, at the end of which was a hammer. When the cam and lever moved out of contact with one another, the hammer fell. Neither mechanism required gearing [Fig. 7.1]. The second and probably later device was a whet-stone rotating in a vertical plane that was also driven directly by the axle of a vertical waterwheel. In this case, the rotating stone was dedicated to sharpening edged tools. The third device was a simple adaptation of the vertical-wheeled watermill to purposes other than grinding grain. In the case of the edge-runner mill, a horizontal shaft fitted into the vertical cog-wheel of a right-angled gear turned a cylindrical or disc-shaped millstone in a circular pit [Fig. 7.2].

Fig. 7.1. A. Vertical stamp operated by a cam and lever. A cam on the wheelshaft rotates anti-clockwise, engaging with a lever on the stamp shaft. As the wheelshaft turns, the stamp shaft is raised and drops with force as the cam and lever move out of contact with one another. Rotary motion is thus transformed into linear motion (after Reynolds). B. Georgius Agricola’s illustration of ore stamps with vertical trip-hammers, 1556. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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Fig. 7.2. Edge-runner mill (mola olearia) used for crushing olives during the Hellenic period, c. 50 CE (after Drachmann). The two millstones were attached to a long timber handle turned by muscle-power which crushed the olives as they rolled around a circular trough of small diameter. According to Bertrand Gille, edgerunner mills were traditionally used for crushing olives in Provence and North Africa, for crushing cider-apples and poppyseeds in Normandy, for crushing grapes in the Palatinate, and for making mustard in the Forez west of Lyons; Gille (1954), p. 7. Courtesy of the Joseph Needham Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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The fourth device, the water-powered sawmill, remains somewhat of a mystery to this day, despite Villard de Honnecourt’s famous illustration of one from c. 1235. It is unclear whether the medieval European sawmill was in any way related to the device for sawing marble described by Ausonius and used in the late Roman and Byzantine Empires. Further details of the various mechanisms involved are provided below. The hemp mill, fulling mill, tanning mill, forge mill, toolsharpening mill and sawmill provide the focus for the discussion, along with a critical examination of why the so-called “beer mill” should be classified as an agricultural mill rather than an industrial mill, and is more accurately described as a “malt mill”, a form of grain mill that ground malted grains.

Malt mills Water-powered mills that were used for grinding malted grains have produced considerable confusion amongst historians of technology, who have made a number of questionable claims about the mechanisms that they employed and the contexts in which they were used. As stated in the last chapter, these mills are more accurately classified as agricultural mills rather than industrial mills, but because there is so much misleading literature on the subject, this section outlines the various arguments and their flaws in order to provide a more rational basis for future scholarly discussion.2 Perhaps the most extraordinary of the claims that have been made about malt mills is Jean Gimpel’s assertion in The Medieval Machine (1976) that “water power . . . activated bellows for the flames that heated the vats in which beer for the monks was produced.”3 However, the process for making beer during the middle ages did not require the heating of vats, although it is plausible that the ambient tem-

2 The first scholar to detail the flaws in the various claims made about so-called “beer mills” was Richard Holt in The Mills of Medieval England (1988), to which the following discussion is indebted. I thank John Langdon for pointing out that it makes more sense to classify malt mills as agricultural or grain mills rather than industrial mills, on which see Langdon (2004), p. 40. 3 Gimpel (1988), p. 5.

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perature in winter may have made this a possibility. Notwithstanding this objection, however, one would have imagined that any heat generated within beer vats is produced by the breakdown of sugars by yeasts introduced during the fermentation process. Gimpel also tells us that the first “beer mill” is dated to 861 CE,4 and that “[i]n France, one of the first mills for making beer is mentioned in a document relating to the monastery of Saint-Sauveur at Montreuil-sur-Mer between 987 and 996”.5 Gimpel’s ultimate source for both of these claims is probably Anne-Marie Bautier, who describes a number of what she called moulin a bière, or “beer mills”, in her well-known article of 1960, “Les plus anciennes mentions de moulins hydraulique industriel et de moulins à vent”. However, there is no indication from these or any of the other examples of “beer mills” cited by her that water-powered bellows were involved. Of the dozen or so examples that Bautier provides from the sources, the five earliest ones refer to mills for cambe or camba, literally “malt” or “malthouse”, but also sometimes used to refer to hemp (i.e., cannabus).6 However, the context in an earlier (rather unclear) case from 770 at the Abbey of Gorze would appear to favour malt, because, in Bautier’s words, “l’abbaye de Gorze possédait deux cambe assez actives pour payer de cens la quantité de deux cents muids de grain”.7 Considering the quantities concerned, either water- or animalpower must have been used. In further support of Bautier, Latham notes that the word cambagium occurs in a document of 1180 to refer to the “payment for the right to malt”.8 Du Cange’s Glossarium provides more support for Bautier, in which he defines camba as “brassiatorum officina, seu locus, ubi cerevisia coquitur et conflicitur”, i.e., “malt workshop and surrounds, where beer is made (‘cooked and confected’)”.9 In four of the other cases cited by Bautier, the expression used to denote “beer mills” is molendinum braisarium or a cognate, which is literally “malt mill”; this expression first appearing in 1088 at Évreux in Normandy. It is also the most common form found in

4

Ibid., p. xiii. Ibid., p. 14. 6 See Latham (1999), pp. 64, 67. 7 Bautier (1960), p. 601: “the abbey of Gorze possessed two cambe that were rather active in the treatment of a quantity of two hundred hogshead’s of grain”. 8 Latham (1999), p. 64. 9 Du Cange (1954), p. 444, col. 1. Cf. Blaine (1966), p. 73. 5

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the English manuscripts, although it is comparatively rare.10 Indeed, only one of the documents cited by Bautier even mentions beer, i.e., the act of King Henry II of 1042 referring to two mills for making beer for the servants of the monastery of Saint-Sauveur at Montreuilsur-Mer.11 The appelation “beer mill” is therefore misleading, although it does not explain Gimpel’s claim that water-powered bellows were somehow involved in brewing beer. Furthermore, Gimpel contradicts himself when he asserts later in his book that the first water-powered bellows date to 1323, with neither a reference nor a location to support the latter assertion.12 But it is not just Gimpel who has been misled by such terminology. Bradford Blaine has also drawn upon Bautier’s work to justify some fairly questionable reasoning. Blaine has argued in all of his published work on the subject that the word cambe may also refer to trip-hammers, due to the superficial resemblance between cambe and cam, the mechanism required to utilize such a device.13 Drawing attention to Walter Horn’s work on the pilis that are depicted in the plan of the Abbey of St Gall from c. 820 CE,14 Blaine jumps to the unwarranted conclusion that these were used for “making mash for beer”, and that trip-hammers were routinely used in the manufacture of malt.15 Granted that the pilis in the aforesaid plan probably do refer to water-powered pestles, Horn failed to make a convincing case as to what they were actually used for. For example, they may have been used for fulling cloth or simply for pounding grain to make a kind of porridge or gruel for the monks. Indeed, to the

10 Latham (1999), p. 302, lists one entry under molendinum ad braesium, dated to 1251. Again, at idem, p. 55, the expression molendinum brasarium is dated to 1297, and molendinum braissanum to 1113 in Normandy. A windmill at Coxwell and the “Outside mill” (molendinum forensicum) held by Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire were both used to grind malted grains, although neither are referred to as malt mills. Similarly, Grove Priory held a double mill at Leighton Grove in Nottinghamshire, one of which was dedicated to grinding flour and the other to malted barley. See Lucas (2003), Ch. 5, Sn. 6.0 & Ch. 6, Sn. 4.0. 11 Bautier (1960), p. 602: “molendinos duos cervisiae usibus deservientes”. See Appendix A for the source. 12 Gimpel (1988), p. 67. As we have already seen, the earliest water-powered bellows appear to date to the first century CE in China, although the mechanism driving them is open to dispute. 13 Blaine (1966), p. 73, n. 139. 14 See Horn (1975), pp. 237–242. 15 Blaine (1966), pp. 72–4. However, he does cite several authors who favour the idea that these pilis were used for fulling cloth. See ibid., p. 82, n. 4. Cf. idem, n. 3.

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best of my knowledge there is no evidence that trip-hammers have ever been used to crush malted grains anywhere, at any time. In his review of Gimpel’s The Medieval Machine in Annals of Science (1978), Blaine reinforces his earlier claims when he agrees with Gimpel that “[t]he beer mills of the late tenth century and the iron forge of the early eleventh century . . . surely do testify to the arrival by then of the hydraulic hammer. Yet there can be little doubt that some sort of water-powered pounder had already been at work in Western Europe since the early ninth century”.16 In his short paper, “The Enigmatic Watermill”, published in 1976 as part of a conference in honour of Lynn White Jr. Blaine cites Walter Horn as having supported his position in recent correspondence with White.17 He also claims that the close proximity of the pilis to the brewery in the abbey’s plan supports this conclusion.18 While initially expressing scepticism about such an interpretation, by the early ’70s, White was supporting Blaine’s position.19 The key point that Blaine makes in this paper is that some kind of water-powered hammer was involved in the industrial processing of fulling cloth (as early as c. 990) and forging iron (as early as 1224), as well as “making mash” for beer, although with regard to the latter he admits that “it is a fact that none of the traces of medieval beer-mills describe the mechanism involved”.20 Terry Reynolds appears to have realized that Blaine’s reasoning on this score was not very persuasive, concluding that “the early use of trip-hammers in the preparation of beer must remain highly conjectural.”21 Blaine concludes his paper by saying that it is not clear whether the mechanisms involved in these various industrial processes were trip-hammers, involving a cam, or tilt-hammers, requiring a reciprocal spill-and-fill mechanism, to operate them, although the weight of evidence would

16

Blaine (1978), p. 534. Blaine (1976), p. 175, n. 68. Horn apparently agreed with Blaine that they may have been used to make malt or “the cereal dish mus, which was an important dietary item at the time.” 18 Ibid., p. 168. Cf. Blaine’s comments on the same matter in idem (1966), p. 72, n. 138. 19 See White (1964), p. 82, n. 2, and idem (1972), pp. 155–6. 20 Blaine (1976), pp. 168–9. 21 Reynolds (1983), pp. 70–1, 82. He also notes in the caption to an illustration of an early modern flour mill [Fig. 2–10] that “[m]edieval beer mills had the same general configuration as flour mills, but ground malt instead of wheat”. 17

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appear to favour trip-hammers.22 While I am inclined to agree with Blaine on this last point with respect to fulling cloth and forging iron, his reasoning about the use of trip-hammers in “beer mills” leaves much to be desired. There is, in fact, nothing at all mysterious about these so-called “beer mills”, although even Georges Duby has been confused on this issue, as can be seen by his comment in Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West that such “beer mills” must have operated paddles.23 But as Richard Holt was the first to argue at some length,24 and as the Latin terminology used to describe them clearly indicates, they were actually malt mills, which are simply conventional watermills (and sometimes windmills) that were dedicated to grinding malted grain for brewer’s malt rather than grinding other grains for making flour. Malt is produced by making barley damp and allowing it to sprout in a warm place. The sprouted grain is then cooked and the resulting mixture, known as malt, can then be ground. Conventional cornmills could be used for grinding malted grains, but this presented some problems, as malt is highly flavoured and sticky and leaves a residue on the millstones. In places where sufficient milling capacity or waterpower was available, a mill or mills could be dedicated to this purpose.25 The millstones of a grain mill could be changed over to allow malted grains to be milled, or the millstones of a malt mill changed over to mill grain, but considering the time and expense involved, this was probably an uncommon procedure. That such dual purpose mills existed, however, is clearly indicated by the phrase “molinis vel cambiis” (“mills otherwise used for malt”) at Corbie in a statute of Adalhard dated to 822,26 although it is not clear whether the mills concerned were water-powered or animal-powered. Blaine’s contention that the use of trip-hammers is “a more appropriate way of

22

Blaine (1976), p. 169. See Duby (1968), p. 107. 24 Holt (1988), pp. 147–8. 25 See Holt (1988), p. 148. As with one of the watermills at Leighton Grove mentioned in n. 10. 26 Blaine (1966), p. 73, citing “Statuta antiqua abbatiae S. Petri corbiensis quae monachis suis praescriptsit Sanctas Adalhardus abbas”, in J.-L. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, Vol. CV, Paris, 1864, Bk. 1, Ch. V, col. 542. As mentioned in n. 10, Coxwell windmill owned by Beaulieu Abbey also appears to have ground conventional as well as malted grains. See: The Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, pp. 93–4. 23

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pulverizing malt than by grinding”, should nevertheless be treated with scepticism.27

Hemp mills Hemp mills were constructed in much the same way as fulling mills, but used their stocks or hammers to break up the dried stalks of hemp or flax plants to release their fibres for making ropes and cords. The etymology for hemp mills is as regionally variable as it is for the other mills cited in this chapter, with the added complication that there appear to have been two distinct mechanisms for the beating of hemp that are probably analogous to the distinction to be made between the manual beating of woollen cloth in the fulling process, and its automation via the use of water-power. The earliest references to what are clearly some kind of hemp-beating mechanism date to the late tenth and early eleventh centuries in the Dauphiné and Piémont regions of south-eastern France, an area that was well-known for hemp production from the early middle ages.28 While the specific terms referring to this mechanism vary somewhat, including batedorios, bathedoriis, batenderia, batifols, batenderiis, battenterium, batentenos, baptenterii, batitoria, batutoria, and batendeiirs, it is clear that the Latin root is the verb battuo, which means “beating”, or “to beat up”, the latter in the sense of a physical assault. The legal term bateria, which means “battery or assault” is another cognate. While it has been suggested that such a device may have been used for either fulling cloth or pulverizing bark or grain,29 a very clear reference to what use these batutoria were put is from a document of 1171, in which a batandos ad corticem pulverisandam (“beater for pulverizing things like bark”) is specifically mentioned,30 while another from 1085 specifically mentions cannabis (cannabem) as the substance subjected to beating.31

27 Blaine (1976), p. 168. See Holt (1988), pp. 147–8, for a similarly critical commentary to my own. 28 Bautier (1960), p. 573. 29 Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v., batandum. 30 Gallia Christiana, t. IV, instr., col. 21. 31 Cartulaire monasterii beatorum Petri et Pauli de Domina, ed. C. de Monteynard, Lyon,

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Almost all of these references derive from the work of Bautier, but it is very clear from her research that it is not possible to unambiguously associate the process of beating hemp with water-power until the early thirteenth century, with the first explicit reference to molendina bateres from the Aisne region in 1209.32 The next reliable reference is from 1251 in the Forez region, with regard to which molendina batatoria are mentioned,33 although batatoria and watermills are mentioned in association with one another in documents dating to as early as c. 990.34 It would seem, therefore, that while the early batatoria may well have been frequently situated near watermills and fulling workshops, like the fulling process itself, these early hemp-beating machines were either human- or animal-powered. Indeed, of the twenty examples that Bautier cites that pre-date the Aisne hemp mill, eight are mentioned in association with a watermill, and three of these in association with a fulling workshop.35 Some kind of industrial complex is therefore clearly implied by each of these references, although it remains unclear as to when exactly these batatoria became powered by water. It should be further noted that most of these references to industrial complexes are associated with churches or abbeys. Such water-powered hemp mills clearly used some kind of triphammer of either a vertical or recumbent type, and perhaps unsurprisingly do not appear to have been known in England, where the climate was too cool and damp for growing cannabis. The only other country for which any records appear is in the north of Italy, where John Muendel records a single example from Pistoia, described as a bullie da canape that was situated “on the torrent Lima near the mountain commune of Cutigliano”, and dating from 1427–30. The hemp mill was part of a factory complex that also contained a grain

1859, p. 87, no. 98: Hugo prior . . . dedit Petro Baschat unum battenterium tali convenientia ut annuatim redderet supradictus monachis sextarios salis . . ., et si voluerint suum cannabem battere, faciat sine mercede. Bloch was therefore probably wrong to refer to such a bateorium at Grenoble, c. 1050, as a fulling mill. See Bloch (1935), p. 543. Cf. CarusWilson (1941), pp. 43–4. 32 Archives nationale, LL 1583, pp. 66–70 (fol. XXXI). 33 Cartulaire du prieuré de Saint-Sauveur-en-Rue (Forez), dépendant de l’abbaye de la ChaiseDieu (1062–1401), ed. Charpin-Feugerolles & M.-C. Guige, Lyon, 1881, p. 77, no. 127: fuerunt plura molendina batatoria. 34 P.-E. Girard, “Essai historique sur l’abbaye de S. Bernard . . . de Romans”, Complément textuel du cartulaire, Lyon, 1869, no. 95, p. 13: molendario et batedorios. 35 See Appendix A.

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mill, a sawmill and a fulling mill. Muendel further comments that although he had at that stage been unable to uncover further documentation of hemp mills and such factory complexes from before the fifteenth century in northern Italy, they may well have existed.36 The earlier cited evidence from France would appear to support that conclusion.

Fulling mills Fulling mills were used in Europe from the late eleventh century onwards as a substitute for fulling woollen cloth by hand or foot. Apart from dyeing and finishing, fulling was the fourth and final process in the preparation of cloth. The first process involved carding or combing the wool by hand, the second involved spinning the wool on a rock or distaff, the third involved weaving the yarn on a loom worked by hand or foot, and the last involved beating or compressing the cloth in water. Fulling the cloth in this way served three main purposes. First of all, it shrank the cloth by anything from a fifth to a half, thus imparting to the cloth greater resistance to wear and tear. Secondly, the process of fulling felted the cloth, which not only strengthened it but gave it a softer and smoother finish, thus enabling the processes of raising and shearing of finer cloths. Finally, the process of fulling cleansed and scoured the cloth of any impurities. This was usually done with the aid of various detergents, including cattle’s urine and manure.37 While the first three of these processes were not mechanized until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fulling with the aid of waterpowered trip-hammers was already well-established in Spain, France and northern Italy by the twelfth century, and in England by the thirteenth century. Germany, Denmark and England all have records of early fulling mills from the second half of the twelfth century. By the second half of the thirteenth century there are well-documented examples from Wales, Switzerland and Poland. As we saw in Chapter Six, the technique was probably first developed in the tenth century

36 Muendel (1974), p. 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 265, 2v. 37 Carus-Wilson (1941), pp. 39–40.

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by Muslims in the Middle East or North Africa as an adaptation of an existing Chinese (or possibly late Roman) device. Prior to the introduction of mechanical fulling in early Islamic societies by the tenth century, and to Europe by the late eleventh century, most fulling had been done by foot, by hand, or with clubs wielded manually, inside a large trough that contained the cloth, a sufficient quantity of water to fully immerse it, and some kind of cleansing agent. The fullers would stand in this trough semi-naked, and, if fulling by foot, support their weight on the rim of the trough as they trampled the cloth underfoot. This process was fully understood and utilized by the Romans, and was most suited to long, heavy broadcloths used for such things as carpets, rugs and winter clothing.38 Despite the spread of mechanical fulling throughout Western Europe by the end of the thirteenth century, a variety of these more primitive methods continued to be used in many countries until the twentieth century.39 The mechanization of the fulling process essentially involved the substitution of two or more recumbent trip-hammers for the beating of the cloth by hand, foot or clubs. As with the mechanism of the forge mill, these trip-hammers were moved by water-power through the action of a set of cams mounted on a drum that rotated on the axle of the waterwheel. The wooden hammers would alternately rise and fall upon the cloth as it lay in the trough, the frequency of the pounding being regulated either via gearing and/or the number of cams attached to the rotating drum. In all other respects, however, a fulling mill was identical to a conventional vertical-wheeled watermill [Fig. 7.3]. The various Latin terms used to denote fulling mills were generally quite stable throughout Western Europe, except in France where three quite different, seemingly regional, terms were used, and in England and some Germanic and Scandinavian countries, where the vernacular term “walkmylle” or “walkemølla” was also used.40 This was presumably a transliteration of the process of fulling by foot to

38

Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., pp. 41–2. 40 See, for example, Lauritz Weibull, “Waldemar I’s privilegium för Tommarps kloster”, Scandia, XV, 1943, p. 87: molendina etiam aquatica in ampne Tummathorp situata videlicet Walkemølla. The document concerned dates to 1430 and refers to a grant of 1161. 39

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Fig. 7.3. Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a fulling mill, 1607, showing: A) & B) recumbent trip-hammers; G) camshaft; H) cams; I) waterwheel. The cam-shaft is directly driven by a vertical waterwheel, as per the Chinese “industrial waterwheel” described in Chapters One and Six. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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the mechanical process of fulling with water-powered trip-hammers. In England, another vernacular term used for a fulling mill was a “tucking-mill”,41 and in Wales, a “pandy”.42 The conventional Latin term for a fulling mill is molendinum fullericum or a cognate such as molendinum fullonum, molendinum fullarium, or molendinum fullatorum (all c. 1179). The term molendinum folerez or fulerez (1172 & 1183) can be found in various parts of France,43 while molendinum parator or paratorem (cloth or apparel mill) appears from as early as c. 1040 from Provence, and is regularly recorded from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Hérault and Toulouse regions.44 The term molendinum draperium (drapery or cloth mill) is also recorded from the early twelfth century through to the fourteenth century, again predominantly in the southern provinces of France.45 There is no reason to doubt, however, that these were anything other than local terms used to denote the same kind of mill.46 As noted earlier, by far the largest number of well-documented industrial mills from the middle ages are fulling mills, with more than 630 listed in Appendix A. Of these, about 250 references are from England, about 200 from Wales, and about ninety from France, with seventy-four from Italy, five from Germany, three from Poland, two from Switzerland, and one from Denmark. The table reveals that the earliest extensive application of water-power to fulling cloth was undoubtedly in France during the twelfth century, although some scholars have claimed that northern Italy was also heavily involved in mechanical fulling by this time.47 The next two countries for which the Appendix lists extensive evidence of mechanical fulling is England for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and Wales for the late thirteenth through to the mid-sixteenth centuries.48 While the earliest well-documented examples from Germany and Denmark are dated to the twelfth century, and from Poland and Switzerland to the thir-

41

Carus-Wilson (1957), p. 106. See Jack (1981). 43 See Bautier (1960), pp. 622–3. 44 Ibid., pp. 577–9. 45 Ibid., pp. 579–80. 46 Ibid., pp. 576–8. 47 See, for example, Blaine (1966), p. 86. 48 Langdon (2004), pp. 40–56, has considerably extended the evidential base for England. See also idem, pp. 99–103, for a discussion of the internal workings of English fulling mills. 42

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teenth century, there is insufficient data on these countries to make any meaningful inferences. With respect to the three categories of fulling mill references in the French manuscript sources, a few preliminary conclusions should be drawn about the chronologies and locations of the mills concerned. Of the French fulling mills proper, thirty are firmly dated to the second half of the twelfth century, twelve to the thirteenth century, and nine to the fourteenth century. About one-third of the references to French “apparel mills” date to the twelfth century, and the other two-thirds to the thirteenth century. Two-thirds of the references to French “clothing mills” are dated to the twelfth century, and the remaining third divided roughly between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Whether these figures reflect real variations in the fortunes of the fulling industry in France or are an artefact of either Bautier’s sampling technique or the limitations of the sources is not clear. A crude generalization that it may be reasonable to make on the basis of these data is that the fortunes of the French fulling industry remained fairly stable from the twelfth through to the middle of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, as noted earlier, while most of the references to “apparel” and “clothing” mills are from southern France, most of the other references to conventional fulling mills are from the northern provinces. Before concluding this discussion with some observations about the significance of English fulling mills within the broader milling industry, a few observations should be made about the Welsh material cited in Appendix A, that will be examined in more detail in Chapter Nine. Of the 206 Welsh fulling mills recorded, one of them was possibly built before 1200, and may have been associated with the Templars, as were some of the early fulling mills in England. Twenty-four were documented from the late thirteenth century, eighty-four from the fourteenth century, sixty from the fifteenth century, and thirty-three from the first half of the sixteenth century. The most intense periods of documentation appear to be the late thirteenth to mid fourteenth centuries, and the mid to late fifteenth century. Both of these periods of seemingly greater investment in fulling mills would accord with what is known of the medieval English economy for these two periods. As already noted in Chapter Six, England is by far the most systematically studied country with regard to medieval references to industrial watermills, so that the data here recorded constitute the

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most reliable of any of the countries studied. The extensive primary research that has been conducted to date by Richard Holt, John Langdon and myself indicates that fulling mills only constituted between 3.5% and 7.7% of the powered milling sector in England by the beginning of the fourteenth century,49 and were on average only a quarter to a third as profitable as conventional cornmills.50 This lack of profitability is clearly one of the main reasons for the relatively small number of industrial mills that have been found in England during the middle ages. Langdon has argued that a decline in the construction of fulling mills in the west midlands of England in the late thirteenth century corresponded almost exactly with an increase in the number of windmills, indicating that lords were seeking to maximise their returns from cornmilling at a time of record profitability. It was only in the late fourteenth century when cornmilling revenues had declined in the wake of the Black Death that the number of fulling mills began to increase again.51 These findings indicate that Eleanora Carus-Wilson’s claim of more than sixty years ago that the English fulling industry was a sector of the medieval economy from which “a considerable profit could be derived” should be treated with caution.52 Considering the relatively low number of Cistercian fulling mills identified by R.A. Donkin throughout England for the period 1189–1540 (i.e., around 10% of all those recorded for England), the claims made by proponents of the IRMA thesis that the Cistercians were instrumental in spreading industrial milling throughout Europe should likewise be treated.

Tanning mills Tanning mills or bark mills were employed during the middle ages within leather workshops to grind or pulverize bark (usually oak) for the extraction of tannin that was then used for curing leather. It has been argued that there were three water-powered processes for crush-

49 See Chapter Nine. Furthermore, ecclesiastical lords had on average twice as many fulling mills per capita than did lay lords, although it is unclear whether they held as many fulling mills overall. 50 Idem, also Holt (1988), pp. 156–8; Langdon (1994), p. 14. 51 Langdon (1991), p. 435. 52 Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 52.

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ing bark, i.e., vertical stamps, horizontal millstones and edge-runner mills, but that edge-runner mills were most commonly deployed for this purpose.53 While this may have been true of France, where the industry seems to have been well-established at a number of centres throughout the country from the first half of the twelfth century onwards, it is less likely to have been the case in England, where there is little evidence of edge-runners being used until the Renaissance [Fig. 7.4].54 The terminology used for tanning or bark mills is fairly straightforward and unambiguous, with the first well-documented reference from 1138 in France referring to a molendinum ad tannum.55 In England, the term molendinum tanerez is recorded in 1206, molendinum tannarium in 1288 and 1349, and molendinum ad conterendos cortices in 1289.56 The earliest well-documented instances from outside France are in Italy (1154) and England (1165), with the only other well-documented examples outside these three countries being in Silesia (Poland) in 1267 and 1335. As noted earlier, the large number of such mills recorded for France between c. 1134 and 1374 would suggest that France was a major producer of leather goods during this time, possessing an industry that was relatively well-developed in comparison to its neighbours. Of the thirty-four well-documented mills recorded by Bautier, ten are recorded for the period from c. 1130 to 1164, and another ten for the period from 1170 to 1200. Nine are dated to the thirteenth century, four are from the fourteenth century and one is from the early fifteenth century. Once again, it is not clear whether these figures reflect real fluctuations in the fortunes of the French leather industry or are merely artefacts of either the sampling technique used by Bautier or limitations in the documentary sources. The relatively infrequent records of tanning mills in such diverse locations as Cumbria, Yorkshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Cornwall and Devon in England between 1165 and the early fifteenth century would seem 53

Reynolds (1983), pp. 74–5, citing Bautier (1960), p. 595. One early example may have been the cider mill held by Battle Abbey between the early fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries; Accounts of the Cellarers of Battle Abbey, p. 130. 55 Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. B. Guérard, Paris, 1850, Vol. I, no. 293: fecerunt tres molendinos apud Charment communiter, duos ex hiis ad annonam et tercium ad tannum. 56 Latham (1999), p. 302. The latter term means a “mill for crushing bark”. 54

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Fig. 7.4. Vittorio Zonca’s illustration of a water-powered edge-runner mill, 1607, the horizontal driveshaft moving the millstone via right-angle gearing. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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to suggest that tanning mills and the tanning industry were never as well-developed in England as in France during the same period. Bertrand Gille’s assertion that tanning mills existed “throughout Western Europe” by the thirteenth century therefore appears to be somewhat of an exaggeration.57

Forge mills Medieval European forge mills, sometimes known as martinet forges, worked on the same basic principle as fulling mills, with a vertical waterwheel directly driving a horizontal wheelshaft into which one or more cams had been inserted. As the wheelshaft rotated, it depressed a pivoted arm that raised a trip-hammer affixed to its opposite end. When the cam and arm broke contact, the trip-hammer would fall [Fig. 7.5]. The regularity with which the hammer fell could be regulated by the number of cams on the wheelshaft, by regulating the water-flow to the wheel, or incorporating gearing into the mechanism. While there is some persuasive evidence for the existence of waterpowered forge mills in Roman Britain, Gaul and Iberia from as early as the 1st century CE, the earliest firmly established documentary and archaeological evidence is from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in such far-flung sites as Worcestershire and Yorkshire in England,58 Normandy and the Champagne region in France,59 and Halland in Sweden.60 Three of these mills are associated with Cistercian monasteries, the earliest dating to around 1200 at Kirkstall Abbey in Yorkshire, the second to around the same time at Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire, and the third to 1224 in the village of Toaker in Halland, a village that was granted to the Danish abbey of Søro by Absalon, the archbishop of Lund in 1197.61 Both of the 57

Gille (1969a), p. 456. Butler (1945), p. 1; “Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1985”, Medieval Archaeology, 30, 1986, p. 153. 59 F. Lot & R. Fawtier, Le plus ancien budget de la monarchie française, Paris, 1932, p. 174a: molendina fabrorum; Actes Champenois: Archives Nationales, 54955, l. 1, No. 10: nartellos molendinorum Templi. 60 “Liber donationum monasterii sorensis”, Scriptores rerum danicarum medii aevi, IV, ed. P.F. Suhna, Copenhagen, 1776, Bk. CXXI, p. 471: de molendino, ubi fabricatur ferrum. 61 See Blaine (1966), pp. 117–8. 58

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Fig. 7.5. A fifteenth-century forge mill directly driven by a vertical waterwheel, again as per the Chinese “industrial waterwheel” described in Chapters One and Six. From Hugo Spechtshart, Flores musicae (1488).

English examples were part of monastic ironworking complexes, although neither are mentioned in the official records of either house and have only been identified through archaeological research.62 The two French forge mills are associated with the Crown in the first

62

Butler (1945), p. 1; Astill (1993).

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instance and the Templars in the second.63 Claims that the Cistercians were operating water-powered forges in France in the twelfth century are at least consistent with the earlier cited evidence from the English Cistercian abbeys of Kirkstall and Bordesley.64 The earliest firm evidence from France other than the Evry (1202) and Évreux (1204) forge mills is associated with the Ariège district (French Pyrennees) from the mid- to late thirteenth century (123765 and 129366 ), and Yonné (central France) in 1299,67 while for Spain, such evidence dates from as late as 1368 in Catalonia.68 A number of scholars have nevertheless made unsubstantiated claims regarding the early existence of the forge mill in a number of different countries. For example, it has been claimed by Walter Horn that water-powered forge mills may have existed in Spain from as early as the seventh century,69 although the more common claim is for the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.70 On the other hand, at least two well-known historians of technology have argued that references to mill rents being paid in blooms of iron in Domesday Book (1086) probably refer to early water-powered forges.71 While this latter claim is not credible,72 it is possible that more evidence

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See Bautier (1960), pp. 604–5. See Forbes (1958), p. 610. Eugène Schneider, Le carbon, son histoire, son destin, Paris, 1945, p. 38, in which the author apparently “refers, without documentation, to an act of 1237 which granted the right to use water-courses ‘indispensible à la marche du martinet ou du soufflet de la forge.’” 66 Raymond Barbe, Recueil des titres authentiques, chartes, privileges, franchises, actes de concession, régalements divers concernant les mines de fer de Hancié (Arièges), Toulouse, 1865, p. 7. The reference here to water rights being made available for the mines need not have involved water-power, it may have simply been for the washing or separating out of ores. 67 Comptes royaux (1285–1315), ed. Robert Fawtier & Francois Maillard, Paris, 1953, I, no. 2117, p. 102, citing a roll from the baillage Toussaint, Villeneuve-surYonne, dated 1299: de censu molendini ad ferrum. 68 Gallardo I Garriga & Rubio I Tuduri, La Farga Catalana, Barcelona, 1930, pp. 46–7. The document cited refers to “un moli per a fer ferro, sota els termes I vila de Prats.” 69 Horn (1975), pp. 242–3. 70 See Forbes (1958), pp. 610–1; White (1964), p. 84; Gille (1969a), p. 456; Hill (1998), p. XVIII–10; Holt (1988), p. 149. 71 See Forbes (1958), p. 611; White (1980), p. 84. 72 The relevant passage records that two mills at Lexworthy in Somersetshire paid their rent in blooms of iron (ii molini reddentes ii plumbas ferri ) [see Darby (1979), p. 270]. White’s contention that these latter renders indicate that the mills concerned were water-powered forges is not sustainable on the basis of this evidence 64 65

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in support of the claims for early Spanish forge mills may be forthcoming, which would at least be consistent with the survival of Roman technology in what had been Iberia and Gaul, or alternatively, with the reintroduction of such technology to the West by the Moors in Spain. The etymology for medieval European forge mills is regionally variable, while the lack of stability in terminology over the centuries also presents some problems of identification. In France, the terms molendina fabrorum and martellos molendinorum (“hammer mill”) are recorded for the years 1202 and 1204 respectively,73 while the term molendini ad ferrum is recorded from 1299.74 In northern Italy, the term fabrica al aqua is recorded from 1388, fabricarum ferri ad aquam from 1390, and fabbriche ad acqua from 1427–30.75 In England, the terms molendinum ferri are recorded from 1346, molendinum ferrarium from 1542 and 1553, and molendinum ferreum also from the year 1553.76 By the fourteenth century, water-powered forge technology had spread throughout central and eastern Europe,77 with a number of well-documented examples dating to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from England (c. 27), northern Italy (16), eastern and southern Germany (8), France (6), Poland (2), Spain (1), Hungary (1), the Czech Republic (1), and Sweden (1).78 All of these data are consistent with my earlier observation that such activity was generally unusual in Europe until the fourteenth century and subsequently. However, the early involvement of the Cistercians in water-powered forging at Kirkstall, Bordesley and the village of Toaker suggests that the Cistercians may well have been leaders in introducing (or reintro[see White (1980), p. 84]. As Colin Rynne has pointed out, “the mill renders recorded in Domesday only reflect the activities of those who controlled the mills and not the actual industrial activities of the mills” [Rynne (1988), ii, p. 161]. For example, in Worcestershire, the mills of Kyre Magna, Salop and Ryton paid their rents in grain, while another at Cleeve Prior paid in honey, whereas the Wasperton mill in Warwickshire paid in salt, and the Bledlow mill in Buckinghamshire paid in malt [see Darby (1979), p. 270]. 73 F. Lot & R. Fawtier, Le plus ancien budget de la monarchie française, Paris, 1932, p. CLXXIV a.; Actes Champenois: Archives Nationales, S4955, 1. 1, No. 10. 74 See n. 66. 75 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, G387, August 8, 1388, 49v-50r; idem, G602, March 13, 1390, 49v–50r; Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 189, 260, 261 & 265. 76 Latham (1999), p. 302. 77 Blaine (1966), p. 129, citing Walter Kuhn, “Das Spätmmittelalter als technisches Zeitalter”, Ostdeutsch Wissenschaft, I, 1954, pp. 73–4. 78 See Appendix A. Most of the English examples were from the Weald region in Sussex and northern England.

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ducing) this technology to Western Europe. Unfortunately, we have very little comparative evidence for the relative profitability of forge mills.79

Tool-sharpening mills It would seem that the device involved in a tool-sharpening or grinding mill was simply a whetstone that rotated in the vertical plane that was directly driven by a waterwheel without the need for gearing. A geared version of such a mill is first illustrated by Böckler and is dated to 1661. The mill concerned included a fly-wheel at the end of the driveshaft that turned two lantern-pinions in between two grindstones located at either end of a second shaft perpindicular to the driveshaft. It is highly probable that ordinary millstones had long been used by millers to sharpen knives, and that such a specific application to tool-sharpening was no great leap in inventiveness. These kinds of mills probably existed long before they are first recorded in France.80 The terminology used to describe tool-sharpening or grinding mills is relatively straightforward, although there are some minor variations, depending on the main use to which the mill was put. For example, the terms used in France ranged from molendina ad cultellos (“a mill for cutlery”) or some variation thereof, to ad molendinum ferramenta (“a mill for ironwork”), and molendinum . . . ad quod ferramentur molentur (“a mill that is for grinding ironwork”), to molendinum ad secures (“a mill for axes”). The latter term is echoed in a rental from England, in which a molendinum ad acuend’ securos et falces (“a mill for sharpening axes and scythes”) is leased at a peppercorn rent for life to its tenant.81 The earliest well-documented examples of tool-sharpening mills come from the Champagne region and Normandy respectively, and are dated to 1203 and 1204. The first refers to a mill that the Templars permitted a smith to operate near their own mills at Evry, which included a fulling mill. The smith concerned was also engaged

79

What little evidence there is has already been cited in Chapter Six. Holt (1988), p. 151. Nevertheless, human-powered grinding stones were obviously still very much in use in England during the fourteenth century, as can be seen from an illustration of two young men turning the crank handles of a grinding stone for their master in the Luttrell Psalter. 81 See Appendix A. 80

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in the repair of the hammer mill of the Templars (martellos molendinorum Templi ).82 The second example was a royal mill that was possibly also associated with a forge mill situated near the entrance to the village of Évreux.83 Of the other twenty-nine well-documented examples from around Europe, eleven are French, eight are Italian, four are German, five are English, and one is Polish. In terms of the chronology of their dating, the first of such mills to appear in countries other than France is from 1267 in Ober-Lausitz, Germany, the second is from around c. 1269 from the workshops of Beaulieu Abbey, England, and was driven by a horse, the third is from 1335 in Lüben, Silesia (now Lubien, Poland, near Warsaw), and the fourth is from 1378 in Florence. If these dates and locations are a reasonably representative sample, it would seem fair to assume that France was the origin of this technology, and, like some of the earliest examples of fulling mills in England, may have first been associated with the Templars. Considering the Templars status as a military order and their obvious association with weapons and armour, this is perhaps not so surprising. It may also be significant that the earliest example of a water-powered tool-sharpening mill in England was held by an alien monastery from France. The absence of any records of such mills in either the eastern or northern records for England, while they only rarely occur in the midlands and the south, would seem to indicate that they were genuinely rare in England, and could only function in areas where there was a concentration of custom. Even around Birmingham with its growing edge-tool industry, water-powered grindstones were not used until the sixteenth century when the local industry began to rapidly expand into national markets. In most parts of England, handpowered grindstones were the norm during the middle ages.84 Presumably, the relatively large numbers of such mills in France reflected concentrated local demands for grinding large numbers of edged tools and/or weapons.

82 See Bautier (1960), p. 605, citing Actes Champenois: Archives Nationales, S4955, 1. 1, No. 10. 83 Ibid., p. 604, citing “Cartulaire Normand de Phillippe-Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint Louis et Phillippe-le Hardi”, in Léopold Delisle (ed.), Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, XVI, 1852, p. 288, n. 1079. 84 Holt (1988), p. 152.

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Sawmills The previous chapter canvassed the available evidence for waterpowered sawmills in the late Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Middle East from between the late fourth and tenth centuries. The mechanisms involved, however, remain a mystery.85 Our understanding of the device is limited to a single illustration by Villard de Honnecourt c. 1235, which also happens to be the earliest textual reference to a sawmill that has yet been found for medieval Europe. Villard’s device consisted of a freely moving blade that was drawn down across the timber by the action of cams that projected from the horizontal axle of a vertical waterwheel. The blade was moved back to its original position after making a saw cut by a flexible pole spring. The rotation of the waterwheel’s axle also acted as a feed mechanism for the timber being sawn. According to Reynolds, by c. 1500, a number of water-powered devices that had been cam-activated were converted to the crank, which enabled the double-acting reciprocal motion required for sawmills, metallurgical bellows and piston pumps [Fig. 7.6]. The terminology for water-powered sawmills varies considerably between France, Germany and Italy. The terms molendina de planchia and molendina reseguae (resega = serra or saw) are recorded from around 1300 in France. In Germany, the rather complicated molitori . . . pro asseribus et swaertlingis is recorded from 1322, while the similarly lengthy expression serrae quae ligna secant per vires cursus octo fluviorum minorum is recorded in a manuscript from Madeira in 1420. In Italy, the fairly straightforward term seghe ad aqua/m is recorded from 1384 and 1404, and its cognate, seghe d’aqqua from 1402.86 There remain no verifiable medieval references to sawmills in England. In medieval Europe, the earliest well-documented evidence does not occur until 1268 in the German Alps, although it is not clear that the saw to which the manuscript refers was water-powered.87 Other than a reference to such a device from Breslau in Poland from the early fourteenth century,88 the next three well-documented 85

See: Simms (1983), (1985); Wikander (2000a), pp. 404–6. See Appendix A. 87 Alfred Ribeaud, Le moulin feodal: Dissertation sur l’évolution du régime feodal et la condition des usines hydrauliques dans la principauté épiscopale de Bâle, Lausanne, 1920, p. 11: tria molendina et unum serram, cum areis ibidem contiguis. 88 Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis, ed. H. Markgraf & J. Schulte, Breslau, 1889, p. 112. 86

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Fig. 7.6. Isaak de Caus’s illustration of a sawmill incorporating a crank instead of a cam to produce reciprocating motion, 1659. The timber was fed through the sawing mechanism by the weights at A and B. Photograph courtesy of the Memorial Library Rare Books Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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cases are from France in the Dauphiné region (1304 and 1307),89 although it has been claimed that they also existed in the Aude and Isère in the early fourteenth century. One of the earliest references from the Dauphiné clearly indicates that sawmills existed in that area for at least two decades prior to 1304. The adoption of water-powered sawmilling practices in the Prémol mountains of the Dauphiné region was responsible for such serious deforestation that the Dauphin issued an edict in 1304 to ban the use of water-powered machines in or near the forests of the area.90 This would suggest that water-powered sawmilling had been practised there for some time, and it is hard to imagine that such damage could have been wrought in less than ten years. Sawmills had therefore presumably been operating in Dauphiné from at least the 1280s and possibly earlier, which is around the time that the earlier cited record appears in the German Alps (1268).91 Villard de Honnecourt’s illustration from c. 1235 would also appear to lend further weight to the possible existence of sawmills in France from earlier in the thirteenth century. Of the forty-five medieval European references to sawmills compiled in Appendix A, twelve are French (c. 1300–1415), four are German (1322–1584), two are Polish (early fourteenth c. & 1427), twenty-six are Italian (1384–1430), and one is from the island of Madeira off the north-west coast of Africa (1420). Of these references, seventeen are from the fourteenth century, twenty-seven are from the fifteenth century, and one is from the late sixteenth century.92 Of the twentysix Italian references, thirteen were located during detailed surveys of records for Pistoia that covered the period between c. 1427 and 1430, while another eight were located during a similar survey of the records for Firenze in the early fifteenth century. The available evidence therefore clearly indicates that water-powered sawmilling was well established in France and Germany by the fourteenth century, and that it had been adopted in Poland during the early part of that century, and in Italy by the end of the century. 89 Sclafert (1926), pp. 197–8, 202, 435; Sclafert, op. cit., p. 435, citing Archives départementales de l’Isère, H, 820; Ibid., citing idem, H, 787, rouleau No. 22. 90 Sclafert (1926), pp. 197–8, 202, 435. 91 See n. 86. 92 The lack of references from the 16th and 17th centuries are purely an artefact of the sampling techniques of the various authors. No doubt many more could be uncovered from these two periods.

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Its presence in China by the early seventeenth century may suggest diffusion of this technology to the East from Europe, possibly during the sixteenth century.

Conclusion This chapter has examined in detail the earliest manuscript and archaeological evidence for the seven most commonly occurring medieval European industrial mills. In the process, the etymologies of the various terms used to describe these mills were reviewed, and regional variations in terminology noted. Where there is some doubt or ambiguity about terminology, this was noted, as was the likely connotation of that ambiguity. In particular, a rational basis for not including the malt mill as a form of industrial mill has been established, and the basis for much of the confusion engendered by the poorly conceived term “beer mill” explained. With regard to industrial mills proper, the various types were discussed in chronological order of when the earliest references to them appear in the manuscript records. The etymology for medieval hemp mills suggests that the earliest hemp beating mechanisms were either human or animal-powered, a number of which are mentioned in relation to watermills and fulling workshops. The earliest explicit reference to a “beating mill” (molendina bateres) is from the Aisne region in 1209, although beaters for pulverising hemp and bark are referred to in documents from as early as 1085 and 1171. The vast majority of both kinds of references are from France, although there is some evidence that hemp mills were also in use in northern Italy by the 1420s. It would appear that the use of hemp mills was a French innovation, and that the mechanism involved was either a recumbent trip-hammer or a vertical stamp. The etymology for medieval fulling mills varies between England, Wales, France and the Germanic and Scandinavian countries. Regional variations in the terminology used does not appear to have indicated any differences in the mechanisms involved, however, which appear to have invariably been a series of water-powered recumbent triphammers. The manuscript evidence for the earliest use of fulling mills also appears to come from France in the mid-eleventh century, although the technology was almost undoubtedly adopted from Islamic

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Spain or North Africa, and adapted from a Chinese or Roman device. By the thirteenth century, fulling mills appear to have been commonplace throughout Western Europe. However, the English evidence clearly indicates that fulling mills in England at least were far less profitable than conventional grain mills. As briefly discussed in Chapter Six, this provides one explanation as to why they were less common in England than they appear to have been in France and northern Italy at the same time, as their profitability in Italy at least appears to have been comparable to that of grain mills. The earliest manuscript references to tanning mills again come from France from the middle of the twelfth century, although examples from Italy and England are not much later. Most of the examples cited in Appendix A are from twelfth century France, indicating that there was a well-developed leather industry in France by that period. The terminology used to describe tanning mills was fairly unambiguous, but there appear to have been at least three different mechanisms used to grind bark to extract tannin: vertical stamps, horizontal millstones and edge-runner mills. There is no clear evidence of the use of edge-runner mills in England prior to the Renaissance, however, suggesting that France was somewhat of an innovator in its use of a variety of industrial milling techniques in its tanning workshops. The earliest evidence for forge mills in medieval Europe is from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in England, France and Sweden, although the technology involved may be indirectly derived from Roman or Chinese sources, again by way of Islamic Spain and North Africa. Some of these early examples are associated with Cistercian monasteries, suggesting that the Cistercians may well have been innovators in the introduction (or reintroduction) of this technology to Western Europe. The extant evidence suggests that the use of water-powered forges did not become commonplace until the second half of the fourteenth century and subsequently. Tool-sharpening mills are first mentioned in the manuscript sources at the beginning of the thirteenth century in France, with later examples appearing in the 1260s in Germany and England. The mechanism involved was probably initially at least a grindstone rotating in a vertical plane that was directly driven by a waterwheel. Later examples from the early modern period incorporated gearing. Because of the simplicity of the earliest mechanism, there is reason to believe that such mills were in use well before the time that they are first

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recorded in France. Most of the recorded examples are associated with smithies or iron workshops. Their relative frequency in the French records suggests well-developed edged-tool and weapons industries in the regions concerned. Sawmills are first unambiguously recorded in the European sources in France at the beginning of the fourteenth century, even though the earliest illustration of one is by Villard de Honnecourt from c. 1235. The earliest French references to the use of sawmills in the Dauphiné suggest that there was already a well-developed sawmilling industry there by at least the 1280s, and probably earlier. It would therefore seem that water-powered sawmilling was well established in France by the late thirteenth century, and in Italy from at least the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The precise nature of the mechanism or mechanisms involved remains somewhat of a mystery, however. All of this evidence suggests that it was generally not until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that industrial milling became relatively commonplace in medieval Europe, and, as already noted in Chapter Six, this was primarily restricted to two key industries, i.e., the woollen cloth industry and iron production. Other than in France, therefore, which already appears to have had well developed industries that were using water-power in the manufacture or processing of woollen cloth, hemp fibre, leather, edged-tools, weapons and timber by the thirteenth century, most of the rest of Europe did not widely adopt water-power for industry until the fifteenth century or later. The best way to further advance our understanding of how these various industries developed in the late medieval and early modern periods will be to conduct detailed case studies. An example of such a case study and what such research might entail is provided in Chapter Nine with respect to the medieval Welsh fulling industry. The extent to which archaeological research might shed light on industrial milling practices is examined in the next chapter.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH INDUSTRIAL MILLS

Introduction In the context of the debate about whether there was an industrial revolution in the middle ages, England’s involvement in water-powered industry was promoted as being equal to that of other great European powers: France, Italy and Germany. However, as we have seen in Chapter Six, a comparison of the findings of several large scale surveys of the manuscript evidence indicates that there were marked differences between all four regions in the range and intensity of industries to which water-power was applied. At one end of the spectrum was France, which appears to have been a leader in adapting many industrial processes to water-power. Its earliest involvement in industrial milling was in fulling cloth, grinding bark and beating hemp from the eleventh and twelfth centuries onward. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we find clear manuscript evidence for forging iron, tool-sharpening, sawmilling, crushing pigments for paint, and crushing woad for dyes. In the fifteenth century, we find evidence for rolling and slitting metal and blast furnaces, as well as crushing poppy and hemp seeds to make oil. By the sixteenth century, the French had adapted water-power to polishing gems and minting coins. In England, by contrast, there are very few references to the use of watermills in industries other than woollen cloth production until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Other than fulling cloth, the next most common applications were in metallurgy. Water-powered forge hammers, tool-sharpeners and bellows can be found in the thirteenth century, whereas furnaces do not appear until the end of the fifteenth century. Apart from cloth and metal production, however, very few English mills appear to have been employed in industrial settings until the early modern period. There is some evidence from the late twelfth century onward that English watermills were used to a limited extent for grinding bark in tanning workshops, and there are a couple of examples of horse

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mills being used for purposes other than grinding grain. But nowhere in the manuscript evidence for medieval England do we find a range of water- and animal-powered industrial applications comparable to those in France or Italy. Holt’s and Langdon’s initial research on medieval England has been supported by my own work on more than thirty English ecclesiastical estates, as well as Langdon’s most recent survey of mills in English agriculture and industry from around 1300 to 1540.1 The vast majority of the evidence upon which the three of us have relied has of course been taken from medieval manuscripts. This has raised questions from some archaeologists as to whether the manuscript sources might not be a good indication of the extent to which waterpower was applied to industry in medieval England. This chapter is therefore aimed at shedding some light on whether water-powered industry was more commonplace in medieval England than historians have imagined, by looking at the content and limitations of the manuscript evidence, and comparing that with the findings from more than fifty years of excavations written up in the British journal, Medieval Archaeology. It also examines whether the manuscript evidence can tell us anything about who was building industrial mills in later medieval England, and under what conditions and why. The discussion to follow will feed into the more detailed analysis of the Welsh fulling industry in Chapter Nine. The chapter begins with a brief outline of the manuscript evidence for industrial mills in the period before 1500, followed by a discussion of the owners and builders of these mills. It then examines in some detail the archaeological evidence selected for analysis, which does not include material taken from the many smaller and regional archaeological journals, none of which were readily accessible when undertaking this research. Discussions with a number of British archaeologists over the years does not indicate that there is a great deal of additional evidence to that which has been uncovered here. While this survey is, therefore, by no means exhaustive, it does give an indication of the extent to which the English manuscript sources might be augmented by the archaeological record.

1 See Holt (1987), (1988), (1996), (1997), (2000); Langdon (1991), (1994), (2004); Lucas (2003).

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Documented industrial mills In order of their appearance before 1400, the English manuscripts record fulling mills, tanning mills, forge mills and tool-sharpening mills. Almost invariably, the mills converted to or purpose-built for industrial uses prior to the late sixteenth century were watermills. Only two horsemills have been discovered doing anything other than grinding grain in the medieval English sources, the details of which are given below. To the best of my knowledge, no one has found any evidence that windmills were used in England for industrial applications before 1540.2 The earliest reference to any kind of industrial mill in England is to a tanning mill (I. molend’ tanerez) from Cumberland, dated to 1164–5.3 The next reference to a tanning mill is from more than a century later at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire in 1269/70,4 while the third is from Kirkstall Abbey in Yorkshire in 1288.5 A fourth is recorded at Truro, Cornwall, in 1337.6 Two others were converted to fulling mills by Tavistock Abbey in Devon in the fifteenth century,7 and a seventh was held by Battle Abbey in Sussex in 1385.8 It also seems likely that Bolton Priory held one or more tanning mills in its lucrative tannery in North Yorkshire in the thirteen-teens, although none is specifically mentioned in the priory’s compotus rolls.9 Fulling mills are by far the most plentiful of the industrial mills that are referred to in the medieval records for England and Wales, but were only located in regions where there was an existing cloth industry, and on lay estates at least, were generally within existing mill complexes.10 The earliest fulling mill recorded in England is mentioned in a survey of the Templars’ lands from 1185, and was

2

Langdon (2004), p. 40, discusses these issues in some detail. Langdon (1991), p. 434, citing Great Roll of the Pipe, 1164–5, p. 54. 4 Account Book of Beaulieu Abbey, p. 210. 5 Pipe Roll, 11 Henry II, Pipe Roll Society, 1887, p. 54; Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 148. 6 Holt (1988), p. 148, citing Caption of Seisin, p. 73. 7 Finberg (1951), pp. 153–4. 8 Searle (1974), p. 301. See Searle’s informative discussion of the tannery and the mill’s place within it in idem, pp. 299–303. 9 See the discussion in Lucas (2003), Appendix A, Sn. A.4.4. 10 As mentioned previously, over 80% of fulling mills in the IPM study undertaken by Langdon were located within such mill complexes. See Langdon (1994), p. 15. 3

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located at Newsham in Yorkshire.11 The manuscripts of Stanley Abbey record a fulling mill that it held in Wiltshire only four years later, as does a charter of Reading Abbey dated 1189–93 for a fulling mill that it held in Leominster in Herefordshire.12 The 1180s is of course the same decade in which the post-mill first appears. Fulling mills appear with much greater regularity in the English manuscript records from the early 1200s onward.13 Most of these mills were in the Cotswolds and the south-west, but they could also be found in northern England, particularly in the West Riding of Yorkshire and the Lake District, and in the southern and marcher counties of Wales.14 The earliest manuscript evidence for medieval English forge mills is from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Devonshire and Kent respectively,15 although the earliest archaeological evidence is from Kirkstall and Bordesley Abbeys from almost a century earlier.16 A third reference is to a forge mill located somewhere near Liverpool in 1346,17 while a fourth is recorded in Warley, Yorkshire, in 1349.18 According to Blaine, the number of forge mills does not increase significantly until the second half of the fourteenth century and subsequently, an observation that applies as much to England as it does to the rest of Western Europe.19 Salzman records the existence of water-powered bellows at the same site as the forge mill in Devonshire in 1295, and several others

11 Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 44, citing Lees (ed.), Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century, p. ccxiii. The mill is referred to as a molendinum fulerez, a term commonly used in the French sources. Carus-Wilson mentions another built by the Templars at Barton in the Cotswolds, but does not specify the date of the relevant manuscript. 12 Ibid., citing Birch (ed.), Collections towards the history of the Cistercian Abbey of Stanley, Wilts, p. 43; Reading Abbey Cartularies, Vol. I, ms. 224. 13 See Appendix A. 14 See: Holt (1990), p. 37; Jack (1981), pp. 80–5. 15 For the late thirteenth century, see Salzman (1964), p. 56, citing Pipe Roll, 28 Edward I. For the early fourteenth century, see Crossley (1981), p. 36. 16 See Butler (1945), p. 1; Astill (1989). 17 Blaine (1966), p. 131, citing H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry from c. 450 BC to AD 1775, London, 1957, p. 342, citing British Museum, Add. MS. 32103, fol. 140. 18 Holt (1988), p. 150, citing Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield 1348–50, ed. H.M. Jewell, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Wakefield Court Rolls Series, 2, 1981, p. xxi; H. Jewell, D. Michelmore, S. Moorhouse, “An Oliver at Warley, West Yorkshire, CE 1349–50”, Historical Metallurgy, 15, 1981, pp. 39–40. 19 Blaine (1966), pp. 130–1. Cf. Holt (1988), p. 150.

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at Weardale in 1408, in the Forest of Dean at around the same time, and in Derbyshire by the end of the fifteenth century.20 Waterpowered bellows for smelting lead are recorded at Durham in 1426 and Wexford in 1557.21 Only six examples of tool-sharpening mills had been found in the medieval English manuscript evidence prior to the publication of Langdon’s most recent book, and one of these was horse-powered rather than water-powered. The earliest example is recorded in the Cistercian abbey of Beaulieu’s account book in 1269/70, in which a tanning mill and horse-powered tool-sharpening mill within the abbey’s workshops are recorded.22 A tool-sharpening mill was also located on an English property held by Holy Trinity Abbey, Caen, in 1306,23 but the next examples do not appear until a century later. The earliest of these was recorded in 1405 at Carhampton in Somerset,24 while two others were recorded in Winchester in 1410–11 and 1429–30. The first was built on the north side of the bridge outside East Gate, whereas the second was built on the south side of the bridge outside the same city gate.25 Both of the Winchester mills appear to have been shortlived. The only other example of a medieval tool-sharpening mill was recorded at Ecchinswell in Hampshire in 1465–6.26 Apart from a reference to a horse-driven cider mill (molend’ pomorum) that the cellarer of Battle Abbey operated within the abbatial precincts from the early fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries,27 this fairly much exhausts the manuscript references to industrial mills other than fulling mills that had been discovered prior to the most recent

20 Salzman (1964), p. 56, citing Pipe Roll, 28 Edward I for the Devonshire bellows, and idem, p. 28, citing English Historical Review, Vol. 14, p. 513 and VCH Derbyshire, Vol. II, p. 358, for the other sites. 21 Ibid., citing VCH Durham, Vol. II, p. 349, and Cal. S.P. Carew, Vol. I, p. 268. 22 Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, pp. 36, 210. As stated in Chapter Three, the tanning mill may have been partially tide-powered. 23 Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, p. 128. 24 See Holt (1988), p. 151, citing Somerset CRO, DD/L P17/4; P18/2. 25 Ibid., p. 152, citing Keene (1985), Vol. II, pp. 1044 & 1046. 26 Ibid., citing Hampshire CRO, Winchester Pipe Roll 1465–6, Eccl. II, 155833. 27 Accounts of the Cellarers of Battle Abbey, p. 130. Other relevant entries can be found on pp. 46, 51, 67, 70, 93, 119, 144 & 158. The mill concerned may well have been an edge-runner mill, given that edge-runners were used in Normandy for this purpose at the same time; see Gille (1954), p. 7.

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work of John Langdon. A brief analysis of Langdon’s findings will be undertaken in Chapter Nine. There is, however, more to be learnt from these manuscripts about who built these mills and under what conditions. Some of the relevant documents reveal that a number of these mills were built by artisans, craftsmen or small entrepreneurs who paid licence fees to their lords for the privilege of owning and operating mills that were no threat to the custom of manorial grain mills. For example, a rental dated to around 1306 that records the toolsharpening mill held by the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, states that a molendinum ad acuend’ securos et falces (“mill for sharpening axes and scythes”) was located at a place called Brechacre near the village of Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire. Robert and his wife held the mill on a lifelong lease at a rent of only 6d. annually, which appears to have been the rent on the site only. The mill was permitted the lessee by the abbey until his death, when it was also released from death duty or heriot. That the mill had only recently been built is also alluded to in the rental,28 and was perhaps attached to an already existing workshop, although the occupations of Robert and his wife are not specified. Similar leases to small entrepreneurs who built fulling mills on their lords’ lands can be found in Wales.29 That such leases were the norm with respect to these mills is supported by the handful of other references to tool-sharpening mills that have already been cited above. A smith in Ecchinswell, Hampshire, paid only a penny rent to operate a tool-sharpening mill there, presumably in the early fifteenth century, but by the middle of that century, it had long since disappeared.30 At Carhampton in Somerset between 1405 and 1420, a smith named John Corbet operated a grinding mill for only a shilling rent to his lord, and that for water rights only. It would appear that he had built the mill himself or

28 The text reads: Item idem Robertus pro una placea que dicitur Brechacre ubi nunc est molendinum ad acuend’ securos et falces’ et huiusmodi ad vitam suam et uxoris sue vi d. per annum et in obitu suo solvet herietum (Likewise the same Robert, [holds] a place called Brechacre where now is a mill for sharpening axes and scythes, this being held with his wife for life at 6d. a year and at his death released from heriot.) 29 See Jack (1981), pp. 107, 108, 117, 124, 125, and the detailed analysis of this material in Chapter Nine. 30 Holt (1988), p. 152, citing Hampshire CRO, Winchester Pipe Roll 1465–6, Eccl. II, 155833.

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bought it from someone else.31 Similar payments of between 4d. and 5s. a year can be found in the leases of privately-operated fulling mills in Wales. For example, the lessee of Aberriw fulling mill in Montgomeryshire paid only 16d. rent for the water-course of the mill in the mid-fifteenth century, while 5s. rent was paid by one John le touker for the mill-race leading to the fulling mill built by him at Carmarthen in 1352. In the mid to late fifteenth century, 4d. per annum was paid for each of the waterways leading to two privately-operated fulling mills at Esclusham in Denbighshire and Glyncothi in Carmarthenshire.32 Two larger tool-sharpening enterprises were situated outside the east gate of Winchester in the early fifteenth century, one of which paid 1s. rent, and the other 3s. 4d. As already mentioned in Chapter Seven, Derek Keene in his Survey of Medieval Winchester (1985) has suggested that the significant cloth finishing and leather-working industries situated in Winchester would have most likely provided the bulk of the custom for the east gate grinding mills, even though much of this work continued to be done by hand on the many grindstones that stood outside smiths’ workshops within the city. Keene also notes that both of the operators concerned were forbidden to convert their mills to other purposes.33 Again, lords placed similar restrictions on the private operators of fulling mills in Wales. For example, the Earl of Arundel allowed Iorwerth ap Gruffudd to keep his unlicensed fulling mill in Wrexham, which diverted water from the earl’s land to the mill, for a rent of 18d. a year provided that the fulling mill was never converted to a cornmill, thus ensuring that it did not compete with the seigneurial cornmill of the manor.34 Based on this information and that pertaining to privately-operated fulling mills in Wales, it seems fairly clear that, as long as these mills were licensed, they do not generally seem to have been considered an infringement upon their lord’s manorial rights. If they were not licensed, however, they were considered illegal and subject to the same fate as illegal cornmills, i.e., they could be either confiscated or destroyed by the local lord once their illegality had been established

31 32 33 34

Holt (1988), p. 152, citing Somerset CRO, DD/L P17/4; P18/2. See Jack (1981), pp. 87, 92–3, 100, 101. Keene (1985), Vol. I, p. 279. See Jack (1981), p. 127.

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in court. For example, a fulling mill at Carnwyllion in Carmarthenshire that was illegally built before 1435 was later confiscated and leased back to the builder around that time for a rent of 6s. 8d. a year.35 While Langdon’s observation that the tenant/independent and domestic sectors “lacked the capital and/or authorization to adapt water power to fulling or other industrial purposes, and so contributed little to the mechanization of these processes” may be true of the early fourteenth century,36 as can be seen from the discussion of the Welsh fulling industry in Chapter Nine, this was certainly not the case with regard to Wales by the fifteenth century, where 20% or more of fulling mills during that period were operated by independent tenants, a share of the industry that approached or perhaps even exceeded that of ecclesiastical estates at the same time. Furthermore, there is evidence from as early as the 1320s in Wales that small entrepreneurs were already making inroads into the fulling industry there, where they held 9 of the 85 mills first recorded in the fourteenth century, or a little more than a 10% of them. Langdon’s generalization that it was lords who were the crucial decision-makers when it came to mill investment in the early fourteenth century, and generally acted very conservatively, nevertheless still holds true. English lords in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries expected most of their profits from milling to issue from the agricultural sector, and had far more experience in controlling this sector than they had in speculative, and certainly less profitable, industrial milling ventures. In those instances where they did invest in industrial mills, this invariably appears to have been due to local demand from a local industry. It is clear from the English and the Welsh evidence set out in Chapter Nine, that it is not until investment activity began to shift beyond lordly control in the fifteenth century and subsequently that milling resources began to be shifted to nonagricultural uses. This is clearly borne out by Langdon’s most recent work.37 However, the lack of lordly investment in industrial mills should be contrasted with the employment of waterwheel technology in the

35 36 37

See, for example, Jack (1981), pp. 94, 127. Langdon (1994), p. 16. See Langdon (2004), Ch. 2.

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workshops of fourteenth and fifteenth century craftsmen and artisans, as the examples of privately-operated tool-sharpening and fulling mills just cited suggests. Generally speaking, the existence of such mills was recorded in reeves’ accounts and manorial surveys, even if those mills had been built by small entrepreneurs who simply leased the water rights or the site on which the mill was located. But there is some cause for doubting whether the manuscript sources are a reliable indication of the numbers of industrial mills that actually existed in medieval England. While it is difficult to determine the extent to which English industrial mills are under-recorded in the manuscript sources, it would seem reasonable on the basis of the discussion below, that as many as half of them were not recorded for a variety of reasons that will be explored below.

Undocumented industrial mills There is now a reasonable amount of archaeological evidence to suggest that there were indeed greater numbers of industrial mills in medieval England than the manuscript sources have so far revealed. The problem is determining the overall proportion of industrial mills that are not picked up in the textual evidence. An analysis of fortysix years of reports of mill excavations in Medieval Archaeology reveals that the remains of a number of medieval industrial mills and mills associated with industrial sites have been found in various parts of England over the last five decades, the latter in situations that would suggest that they were probably involved in some kind of industrial activity. These sites date from the late twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and do not appear to be documented in the extant records. Because of their lack of documentation, it would appear that some of these mills at least belonged to the category of independent mills, and were built and operated by craftworkers or small workshop proprietors for industrial applications in both urban and memorial settings. Some of them were also held by ecclesiastical authorities, but it is not clear exactly how many, again because of a lack of documentation. The relevant evidence ranges from the suggestive to the substantial. On the suggestive side, a site at Whitchurch in Herefordshire was excavated in the mid-1950s, revealing that there had been some

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industrial activity on the site during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, “and there was apparently a mill on the stream”.38 Similarly, excavation of the site of the Postern Mill at King’s Wall on the west side of Malmesbury in Wiltshire in the mid-1980s revealed leats dating from around 1150 that seem to have served a nearby mill “known on this site from at least Tudor times.” The industrial nature of the site, that included evidence of ironworking, stone masonry, and a tannery or abattoir, suggest that the mill was being applied to industrial uses later in its history.39 Some more indirect evidence comes from thirteenth century Bristol. In the early 1970s, excavations were carried out in what had probably been the merchants’ quarter. Evidence of bronze- and ironworking were found in the area, and, on the east side of the site, “a waterlogged stone floor and revetment wall were [found that were] probably parts of a mill alongside the old course of the River Frome”. These were dated to the mid-thirteenth century.40 On an excavation on the west bank of the River Exe in the mid1980s, two hundred meters downstream from medieval Exe Bridge and about thirty meters from the modern river bank, a leat was uncovered as well as the site of a mill on its north-east side. The mill was dated to the thirteenth century, with the mill building showing evidence of having been used as a smithy in the fifteenth century.41 On the firmly substantial side of the evidence, an archaeological team which initially consisted of Philip Rahtz, Sue Hirst, Grenville Astill and David Walsh has been conducting ongoing excavations since the early 1980s on the site of Bordesley Abbey in north Worcestershire. Of particular interest for our purposes has been the work conducted on this Cistercian abbey’s metalworking watermills and workshops.42 38

Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 2 (1958), p. 213: map reference SO 548175. Ibid., Vol. 32 (1988), p. 289: map reference ST 933 871. 40 Ibid., Vol. 18 (1974), p. 199. 41 Ibid., Vol. 30 (1986), p. 128: map reference SX 9167 9194. “The exterior dimensions of the mill appear to have been 9.6 × 8.4 meters . . . fifteenth century road levels contained much iron slag, suggesting that the mill building may have been used as a smithy at this period.” 42 For the ongoing progress on this dig, see: Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 25 (1981), p. 188; Vol. 27 (1983), p. 180; Vol. 28 (1984), p. 223; Vol. 30 (1986), p. 153; Vol. 31 (1987), p. 142; Vol. 32 (1988), p. 258; Vol. 34 (1990), pp. 191–2. See also Astill (1989). 39

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The abbey was founded by Waleran de Beaumont, Earl of Worcester, in 1136 during the reign of Stephen. The site on which it was located had been a wooded valley during Anglo-Saxon times, but was subsequently cleared and possibly cultivated prior to the monastery’s acquisition of the land. None of the excavations have revealed pre-monastic material from the middle ages. Soon after the Cistercians acquired the valley, the abbey’s monks engaged in an extensive land drainage operation to make the valley permanently habitable. This involved the construction of drains, culverts and millponds, including a diversion of the River Arrow. A triangular millpond fed the abbey’s metalworking mill, which formed part of a more extensive water-control system to service it, including a head-race, sluices and tail-race. Timbers in the tail-race and millhouse have been dated to 1174–5. The metalworking mill was an undershot, vertical-wheeled watermill, and was contained in a small workshop, or smithy. The smithy consisted of a high open space containing two hearths, with leantos to the north, east and west of the main building. The whole building was extended over the mill-race as a wheelhouse. Some time during the late 1180s or early 1190s, the smithy and mill caught fire and were rebuilt on the same site using different construction techniques. This included raising the millpond bank by about a metre to compensate for a loss of head caused by rebuilding the new tail-race on top of the pre-existing structure. The mill continued operation with some further modifications to the mill building and tail-race until the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries. This may have been the result of reduced demand for the smithy’s products in the wake of the Black Death combined with the ongoing expense of keeping the tail-race and millpond clear of silt. Examination of the silts in the tail-race revealed the remains of some of the machinery involved. Fragments from a collection of cogs, stone bearings and the worn seatings of iron spindles strongly indicate that the watermill was used to power a trip-hammer and bellows.43 Finds of incomplete forgings, bar iron, scrap metal, nails, tenterhooks and tools such as punches, chisels, awls and reamers indicate that the smithy was primarily used to mass produce items such as nails. Some additional finds of copper alloy fragments and

43

Astill (1993), pp. 267–71, 302.

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parts of weapons and armour suggest that it was also engaged in more sophisticated metalworking and some repair work. The workshop probably served the abbey’s granges as well as local markets. Another Cistercian house that was involved in mining iron was Furness Abbey in Lancashire. Although there is no direct evidence of industrial watermills associated with its extensive iron mining activities, Atkinson suggested in the late nineteenth century that the plentiful supplies of running water that can be found near Furness’s mine sites may have been used for purposes other than washing the ore, but again, there is nothing in the manuscript sources to suggest the existence of industrial mills at these sites.44 To the best of my knowledge, no archaeological digs have been undertaken on any of Furness’s mine sites. Two sites dated to the late medieval period at Washford in Worcester and Bodmin Moor in Cornwall demonstrate the diverse origins of the mills being put to industrial uses, one of which had been transformed from a cornmill with a fishery on its site, while the other had presumably been built exclusively for its application as an ore-crusher in tin mining. In the mid-1960s an excavation was conducted on extensive earthworks north-west of an already established mill-site at Washford in Worcestershire. The earthworks were found to be fishponds, probably built by the Knights Templar in the thirteenth century, but were used later for industrial purposes until at least the end of the fifteenth century and perhaps later. A fish-breeding tank dating from the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries was also found at this site.45 At Collisford Reservoir on Bodmin Moor, excavations were begun in 1979 on a tin mill that was found to have existed on the site. The mill concerned was established to have been an ore-crushing or stamping mill that went out of use some time around 1600, although its origin could only be roughly dated to the fifteenth century.46 A few years later at the same site, further excavations revealed the platform on which the mill machinery sat, as well as the wheel-pit, leat and tail-race. Nothing else of associated significance was found.47

44 45 46 47

Ibid., p. 166. The mill plan is illustrated on p. 161. See The Coucher Book of Furness Abbey, Part III, pp. xiii–xv. Med. Arch., Vol. 12 (1968), p. 285: map reference SP 075650. Ibid., Vol. 25 (1981), p. 226: map reference SX 177713.

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More anecdotally, Christopher Dyer reports having recently visited a site in Yorkshire where it was apparent that a number of watermills had been used in some kind of workshop setting, again with no manuscript evidence to suggest their existence.48 It is clear from the French manuscript sources compiled by Bautier that medieval tanners, brewers, smiths and sawyers from that region all employed water-power for industrial applications, and it is worth noting that if English ecclesiastical estates like Bordesley and Kirkstall were not recording industrial mills that they owned in their charters, there may well have been other ecclesiastical estates that were similarly not recording such mills, presumably because they were either held on peppercorn rents, or were not making any substantial revenues for the houses concerned. It is also possible that their revenues were recorded as part of the incomes of larger workshop or factory complexes. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that some religious houses and lay lords operated mills that were not recorded in their account books, rentals or cartularies, and of which we are likely to learn relatively little. Although Langdon suggests that lords discouraged craftsmen from building specialized mills for their own use,49 he notes that in his survey of the IPM material for the reign of Edward II, “a small number of tenant tool-sharpening mills . . . which lords seem not to have considered an infringement upon their manorial rights, appear in the record.”50 Given that such mills seem to have generally been regarded as not constituting any kind of threat to lordly revenues, there is some basis for concluding that in the south at least, where lordship was generally weaker, and as many as half the mills in some counties existed in free or hereditary tenure until the end of the thirteenth century, there may well have been a relatively large number of industrial mills for which we have no records whatsoever. Given that Kirkstall had not recorded its forge mill in Yorkshire, there is also some reason for thinking there could have been more of such monastery-owned industrial mills in the north as well, such as at

48 Ibid., Vol. 30 (1986), p. 124: map reference SX 179 717. See also Holt (1988), p. 150, n. 18. 49 Personal communication, November 2000. 50 Langdon (1994), pp. 13–16. 51 Ibid., p. 16.

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Cockersand and Furness, both of which were involved in mining, and neither of which recorded their milling activities in the kind of detail that was typical of many of their southern brethren. It nevertheless seems unlikely given what is known about the structure of the milling industry in general that there could have been more than twice as many of these mills than those that we do know about. Even were this the case, their numbers would still be nowhere near as high as those in France at the same time.

Conclusion The manuscript and archaeological evidence for industrial milling in medieval England clearly reveals very different aspects of the subject. On the one hand, the manuscript evidence provides information about mill revenues and ownership, and the legal, political, cultural and economic relations in which mills and milling were embedded. On the other, the archaeological evidence provides information about the ecology of milling, the living and working conditions of those who worked in and around the mill sites excavated, and the craft traditions of mill-builders. The archaeological evidence therefore reveals information that either cannot or has not been revealed by the manuscript sources. For example, archaeological digs on Bordesley and Kirkstall Abbeys, both of which are reasonably well-documented in the manuscript sources, suggest that religious houses did not always record industrial mills that they directly held and ran. This was presumably because they were generating only small revenues, or because those revenues were recorded in the incomes of larger ventures such as tanneries, bloomeries and other workshops. It may, therefore, be fruitful for future archaeological research to focus on the sites of monasteries such as Furness and Cockersand Abbeys that are known to have been involved in industrial activities to determine their involvement in water-powered industry. Archaeology has also revealed information about sites and activities that would have otherwise remained completely unknown. Ironworking using water-power in Yorkshire and Worcestershire is now well-attested by archaeological evidence from the early thirteenth century onward, as is water-powered tin-working in Cornwall from the fifteenth century, while evidence for other indeterminate indus-

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trial activities using water-power has been found in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Devon and Yorkshire. On the basis of the dozen or so archaeological sites referred to in this chapter, there would appear to be a reasonable basis for arguing that the number of industrial mills in medieval England perhaps doubled those indicated in the manuscript sources. But until more systematic research is done on the archaeological records, such an assessment must remain largely speculative. It is nevertheless clear that the archaeological record has not revealed that England’s involvement in industrial milling was anywhere near as widespread as that in the French and Italian kingdoms. Furthermore, the manuscript evidence remains the primary source for information about mill revenues and patterns of ownership and control. As the manuscript sources have revealed, industrial mills were being built and operated in larger and larger numbers by independent tenants from the early fourteenth century onward, a trend that accelerated markedly in the wake of the Black Death. In a similar fashion to the many independent mills that first came into widespread existence in twelfth century England, these independent industrial mills paid a small annual fee to the lord of the manor for a licence to operate in sectors of the economy that were not considered an infringement on the lord’s seigneurial rights. The fact that lords expected that such licence fees would be paid, and that mills built without such licences could be confiscated, clearly indicates that the construction of any mill on any manor for whatever purpose throughout England and Wales was nevertheless considered to be a lordly privilege. What would also appear to be fairly clear, however, is that industrial mills run independently of the lord did not generally hold the suit of manorial tenants, an issue that is particularly well-illuminated by the evidence from the Welsh fulling industry discussed in detail in the next chapter. This observation adds further weight to the contention made in Chapter Five that grain mills operated likewise by independent tenants, whether secular or ecclesiastical, did not generally hold suit.

CHAPTER NINE

THE MEDIEVAL WELSH FULLING INDUSTRY

Introduction The earliest industry to which water-power was widely applied in medieval Europe was the mechanization of fulling. The process of beating woollen cloth by hand and foot to clean and thicken it was a technique first developed by the Romans, but there is no clear evidence that they ever mechanized it.1 Mechanical fulling appears to have originated in Islamic North Africa or the Middle East in the ninth or tenth century as an adaptation of a water-powered device that was initially developed by the Chinese. The technique appears to have subsequently been disseminated into Western Europe via Islamic Spain and/or Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.2 By the early fourteenth century, fulling mills were a fairly common sight throughout the wool-growing regions of the Spanish, French, Italian, English and Welsh kingdoms. Although mechanized fulling, and industrial milling in general, was far more commonplace in later medieval France and Italy than it ever was in England, the overall proportion of industrial mills engaged in fulling appears to have been much higher in England than it was in France and Italy. In early fourteenth century England, nine out of ten industrial mills were fulling cloth, whereas in France and Italy, as few as six out of ten industrial mills appear to have been so engaged. Another significant difference between the two regions is that in later medieval France and Italy, mechanised fulling appears to have been one of a number of adaptations of water-power to industry that was just as (if not more) lucrative as conventional grainmilling, whereas mechanised fulling in medieval England was rarely so profitable.3

1 For a brief discussion of the history of the fulling process, see Chapter Seven. The case for Roman-era fulling mills is made by Lewis (1997), pp. 89–100. 2 See Chapter Six. 3 Idem.

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The best studied country to date remains England, our understanding of which has been primarily shaped by the work of Eleanora Carus-Wilson, Edward Miller, Richard Holt and John Langdon. Their work provides some important insights into the broader economic and environmental factors that helped shape the English fulling industry. John Langdon’s case studies of the milling industry of the west midlands and Edward II Inquisitiones Post Mortem give us an idea of the rates of fulling mill ownership amongst secular and religious lords, and confirm Holt’s findings concerning the low revenues that were drawn from mechanized fulling. Langdon’s research also provides some insight into relative levels of investment in mechanized fulling by secular and ecclesiastical lords in the West Midlands between the early thirteenth and late fifteenth centuries, and by secular lords throughout England in the early fourteenth century. His most recent research in Mills in the Medieval Economy (2004) provides further support for these earlier findings. It also indicates that mechanical fulling as the main form of industrial milling in later medieval England was eclipsed by other forms of industrial milling from the mid-fifteenth century onward. However, none of Langdon’s published research to date has focussed on the fulling industry per se. While the raw data that have been compiled by these four scholars and a handful of others constitute a sufficiently large sample to undertake a case study of the English fulling industry (see Appendix A), a more readily accessible sample presents itself in the form of a gazetteer of Welsh fulling mills compiled by Ian Jack that was published in 1981. A detailed analysis of Jack’s data reveals some wider trends in fulling mill revenues and patterns of ownership, tenure and control that are consistent with larger social, economic and natural events and processes that are known to have shaped the milling industry and agricultural production in neighbouring England at the same time. Because of the major parallels between the mechanization of the English and Welsh fulling industries, the section to follow summarises the positions articulated by Carus-Wilson, Miller, Holt and Langdon on the English situation. Subsequent sections analyse Jack’s data with respect to the chronological development of the Welsh fulling industry, as well as the revenues and structures of lordship that characterised it. The chapter concludes with a comparison of English and Welsh fulling mill revenues and what conclusions can be drawn about

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the changing structure of the medieval Welsh fulling industry from the chronological appearance of fulling mills in Jack’s gazetteer.

Carus-Wilson and the English fulling industry As we have already seen in Chapter Six, Carus-Wilson’s “An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century”, published in The Economic History Review in 1941, was one of several papers that was instrumental in promoting the thesis that there was an industrial revolution based on water-power in medieval Europe from the eleventh or twelfth century onward. Although the paper has been frequently deployed for this rhetorical purpose, its central claim is that there was a rapid decline in cloth-manufacturing in the eastern lowlands between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with urban cloth-centres such as Winchester, Oxford, Lincoln, Northampton, Leicester, London and York losing much of their custom to an emergent rural industry on the rivers of the western uplands. In Carus-Wilson’s own words, “[t]he industry, in fact, was deserting the towns for the countryside” as cloth merchants from the towns flocked to the cheaper rural fulling mills that had begun to spring up in the west during the thirteenth century, a process that supposedly culminated in the wholesale movement of weavers and other clothworkers to the now burgeoning rural sector.4 Demographically at least, the process described by CarusWilson was the reverse of that seen in the “later” Industrial Revolution. The first major challenge to Carus-Wilson’s thesis came from Edward Miller, who undertook a detailed analysis of the changing fortunes of the English textile industry of the thirteenth century in the early 1960s. Miller’s counter-argument basically runs as follows. Overseas competition from cloth-making centres in Belgium, Flanders, France and Italy, along with the strength of local urban weavers’ guilds, led many English cloth merchants to shift their manufacturing processes to the rural sector, and to focus their attentions on meeting the local demand for cheaper cloths. Rather than being an instigator of industrial change, therefore, the growth in the number of fulling mills throughout rural England was symptomatic of efforts by rural lords to gain a share of the profits being made in the cloth 4 Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 56. She elaborated upon this argument in later published work, including Carus-Wilson (1944), (1950), (1952).

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industry at that time, and of English cloth merchants to ensure that they maintained what they considered their fair share of the local business. Miller argued that the spread of fulling workshops throughout the rural wool-growing areas of England and Wales, rather than just the north and west, was the visible expression of those interests.5 Richard Holt, on the other hand, has been primarily concerned in his critique of Carus-Wilson with her explanation of fulling mill distribution and profitability. With respect to the distribution of fulling mills in England and Wales, Carus-Wilson argued that this was related to the intensity of cloth production: in their search for employment, English clothworkers migrated from the former urban cloth centres to those rural areas in which production had intensified. With respect to fulling mill profitability, Carus-Wilson claimed that fullings mills were “an investment from which considerable profit could be derived.”6 A comparison of distribution maps of Welsh and English fulling mills prepared by Ian Jack and R.A. Pelham for the period from the late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries clearly reveals that southern Wales and the marcher counties had some of the largest concentrations of fulling mills during this period.7 Holt has argued that southern Wales cannot have ever been an area to which clothworkers from England migrated in any great numbers, presumably for cultural and practical reasons. Rather than being related to the intensity of cloth production in the area, Holt has argued that the more likely explanation for the large number of fulling mills in Wales is the plentiful water-power that was available for the siting of watermills.8 His counter to Carus-Wilson’s claim that the relatively low number of fulling mills in the south and east of England is explicable on the basis that it was next to impossible to site new mills of any kind on the rivers and streams of those areas is that, considering the relative lack of profitability of fulling mills as opposed to grain mills, it made far more financial sense for lords to put the limited waterpower that was available in the south and east to the task of grinding corn. 5

Miller (1965). Carus-Wilson (1941), p. 52. 7 Jack (1981), pp. 80–85; Holt (1988), p. 154, reproducing a map of early fulling mills in England and Wales from R.A. Pelham, Fulling Mills, Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, 1958. 8 Holt (1988), p. 155. 6

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Holt notes that up until the appearance of The Mills of Medieval England in 1988, no medieval historian or historian of technology had ever tested Carus-Wilson’s claim for the “considerable” profitability of fulling mills.9 Drawing on my own research and the previous work of Holt, Langdon and Jack, this issue will be explored in more detail at the end of the chapter. The findings indicate that mechanized fulling was not as profitable in medieval England and Wales as it appears to have been in medieval Italy and France. Langdon’s most detailed discussions of the subject of mechanized fulling in medieval England appear in his analyses of the milling data contained in a variety of (mainly ecclesiastical) sources for the West Midlands between 1086 and 1500, and the Inquisitiones Post Mortem for the reign of Edward II (1307–27), as well as a variety of secular and ecclesiastical sources for the period from around 1300 to 1540.10 His research on the West Midlands found that the relative proportions of fulling mills to grain mills remained fairly constant between the second quarter of the thirteenth century and the end of the fifteenth century, at around 8–10%. A slight decline in the number of fulling mills at the end of the fourteenth century may have been due to a stagnant period in the rural cloth industry, although their numbers had recovered by the end of the following century.11 Langdon also found further support for Holt’s contention that fulling mills were only built in places where there was an excess of waterpower to corn-grinding needs. A decline in the number of fulling mills in the last quarter of the thirteenth century coincided with a marked increase in the number of windmills, “supporting the view that lords were at that time putting most of their resources into grain milling.” In the wake of the Black Death, the pressure to continue the high level of lordly investment in grain milling collapsed with the population, encouraging a return to investment in mechanized fulling.12 Langdon’s study of the Edward II Inquisitiones Post Mortem revealed a lower rate of overall investment in fulling mills by secular lords

9 Ibid. Carus-Wilson’s unsubstantiated claim has been uncritically repeated by, for example, Reynolds (1983), p. 114, where he says that “the high profits obtainable from the manorial milling monopoly provided the original incentive for the development of the water-powered fulling industry in England.” 10 Langdon (1991), (1994), (2004). 11 Langdon (1991), pp. 434–5. These trends have been confirmed by his more recent research. See Langdon (2004), pp. 51–3. 12 Langdon (1991), p. 435.

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throughout England in the early fourteenth century than by secular and ecclesiastical lords in the West Midlands at the same time, i.e., 3.4% as opposed to 7.5%.13 It should be noted, however, that 70% of the manors examined by Langdon in the West Midlands study were ecclesiastical, suggesting that religious houses were investing more heavily in fulling mills at this time than were members of the lay aristocracy. This is consistent with my own study of the mill holdings of more than thirty English religious houses between the late eleventh and early sixteenth centuries. It found that 6.5% of the total number of mills held by the Benedictines in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were fulling mills, while 6.1% of Cistercian mills and 7.7% of the mills of minor religious orders were fulling mills.14 Langdon also found that more than 80% of the fulling mills in the case study were located on manors that already had watermills for corn-grinding, suggesting that they were built within larger watermill complexes that already existed. He also found no evidence for secular lords freeing up water-power for fulling or other industrial processes by building windmills and horse mills, as has been claimed for medieval France at the same time, and was actually the case in eighteenth century England.15 Langdon’s discussion of the development of industrial milling throughout England between 1300 and 1540 in Mills in the Medieval Economy lends further weight to his own earlier research and that of Holt. To briefly summarise some of the book’s more important findings, there was an overall increase in the number of industrial mills throughout England of 130% between 1300 and 1540, much of which was at the expense of conventional grain mills. Between 1300 and 1400, there was a 50% increase in industrial mill numbers, but most of the increase occurred in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The main growth in numbers was initially in fulling mills, but was in industrial mills other than fulling mills during the later period—especially those employed in metallurgical processes. There was, furthermore, a much larger increase in the number of

13 Langdon (1994), p. 12. As noted previously, Langdon believes that the IPM figures are somewhat of an under-estimation of the true situation. 14 See Lucas (2003), Conclusion. 15 Langdon (1994), p. 15, citing Philippe (1982), p. 109, and R.A. Pelham, “Corn Milling and the Industrial Revolution in England in the Eighteenth Century”, Univ. Birmingham Hist. Journal, vi (1957–8), p. 175.

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rural industrial mills over this period than in urban areas, although this growth was far more volatile.16

Ian Jack’s gazetteer of Welsh fulling mills A gazetteer of Welsh fulling mills published in 1981 by Ian Jack in the Welsh archaeological journal, Archaeologia Cambrensis, appears to have largely escaped the attention of archaeologists, historians and molinologists. It is, nevertheless, an important compilation of data that draws on Public Record Office and other county and national library and museum records, calendars of the Close Rolls, Inquisitions Miscellaneous, Inquisitiones Post Mortem, the Taxatio Ecclesiastica and Valor Ecclesiasticus, and a number of other ecclesiastical records and secondary sources. The gazetteer provides detailed entries on 206 fulling mills dating to between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a period of about 270 years.17 It lists map references, locations and, where available, each mill’s history, including dates of construction, repair and reconstruction, the terms, periods, and amounts of leases, the lord and lessee, and any other pertinent information. To the best of my knowledge, no other scholar has looked at these data in any detail, despite the richness of their content. Nor has Jack revisited his gazetteer to analyse its contents himself. The discussion to follow therefore consists of a detailed analysis of the material contained in the gazetteer. This includes a sectoral analysis of the social groups that held fulling mills between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries, including the number of fulling mills held by roughly two dozen Welsh religious houses and as many noble families. It then moves on to an analysis of the Welsh rental data and a comparison of fulling mill revenues in England and Wales. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the social groups that appear to have first become involved in mechanized fulling in Wales and the involvement of “small men” in the development of the Welsh industry.

16 17

Langdon (2004), pp. 40–54. See Jack (1981).

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Structure of the Welsh mechanized fulling industry Of the 206 fulling mills gazetted by Jack over the 270 years covered, twenty-three recorded no lord, thirty-seven were held privately,18 thirty-nine were held by ecclesiastical estates, and 107 were held by lay lords. These figures are represented below in Table 9.1. As we can see, the aggregated number of fulling mills held by small entrepreneurs over the whole period was roughly the same as those held by ecclesiastical lords, at around 18%, with the lion’s share of a little over half held by secular lords. Of the roughly 10% of fulling mills for which no lords were recorded, it seems likely that as many as a third of them were held by independent tenants. These data therefore appear to contradict any effort to link ecclesiastical lords with domination of the fulling industry, at least in Wales, where independent entrepreneurs held almost as many fulling mills as did ecclesiastical lords by the time of the Dissolution, but both of which were in turn bit players to lay lords.19 The data also suggest that while religious houses may have held more fulling mills as a proportion of all their mills than members of the lay aristocracy, the Table 9.1. Number of fulling mills held by different sectors of Anglo-Welsh society, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries No. of mills

Percentage of total

Lay lords Ecclesiastical lords Privately held No lord recorded

107 39 37 23

51.9 18.9 18.0 11.2

Total

206

100.0

18 That is, according to Jack (1981), pp. 79–86, a fulling mill “built by a private individual with his own capital on his own land, or on land specifically leased to him by the lord as the site for a pandy.” “Pandy” is the Welsh vernacular for a fulling mill. In other words, these were independent mills. 19 Although the social groups who owned fulling mills in early fifteenth century Firenze were somewhat different to those in Wales, comparable figures for ecclesiastical ownership of fulling mills have been compiled by Muendel, who found that of sixty fulling mills held in the province between 1407 and 1416, 20% were held by ecclesiastical authorities, 22% by communes, 35% by individuals, 14% by families and 9% by consortia. See Muendel (1981), p. 99. Muendel does not elaborate on the social status of the individuals who owned these mills.

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latter held more fulling mills overall. This issue will be explored in more detail later in the chapter. The data on individual ecclesiastical lords and lordly families that held these mills are set out in Tables 9.2 and 9.3. In both instances, the tables are organized according to how many mills were held by each lord. It should be noted that fifteen of the secular fulling mills recorded were held by two or more lords at some stage during the period covered by the sample. As we can see, Carmarthen Priory and Whitland Abbey held four fulling mills each, with the Bishop of St David’s, and Margam, Strata Florida and Tintern abbeys holding three each. In other words, more than half of the ecclesiastical fulling mills were owned by only six of the twenty-three religious houses that held fulling mills, or a little Table 9.2. Twenty-three ecclesiastical estates holding fulling mills in Wales, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries Name Carmarthen Priory Whitland Abbey Bishop of St Davids Margam Abbey Strata Florida Abbey Tintern Abbey Conwy Abbey Abargavenny Priory Basingwerk Abbey Bishop of Llandaff Abbey Dore Cymer Abbey Flaxley Abbey Gracedieu Abbey Haverford West Priory Hospital of Holy Trinity Knights of St John Llanllugan Priory Llantarnam Abbey Llanthony Secunda Priory Neath Abbey St Dogmael’s Abbey Talley Abbey Total number of mills

Number of mills 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 39

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Table 9.3. Twenty-five lordly families holding fulling mills in Wales, late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries Name Lancaster Mortimer Stafford Fitzalan Clare Despenser Hastings Prince of Wales Bohun Crown/royal Beauchamp Grey of Ruthin Berkerolles Mowbray Bigod Chaworth Corbet De Braose De Roche Duke of Bedford Duke of Stafford Mansell Ormond Tony Valence Total number of mills

Number of mills 15 13 13 11 10 9 8 7 6 6 5 5 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 124

over a quarter of the houses held more than half of the mills in ecclesiastical hands. This was, in turn, about one-tenth of all the fulling mills gazetted by Jack over this period. The dominance of a relatively small number of religious houses in the ecclesiastical sector of the Welsh fulling industry is typical of the general economic dominance of roughly one-fifth of ecclesiastical estates throughout England and Wales during the medieval period that has already been discussed in detail in Chapter Five. Table 9.3 reveals that the ten largest fulling mill-owning families and individuals in Wales in order of their holdings were the Lancasters, Mortimers, Staffords, Fitzalans, Clares, Despensers, Hastings, the

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Prince of Wales, Bohuns and the King of England. The Beauchamps and Greys of Ruthin also held significant numbers of fulling mills. Most of these families were tenants-in-chief and major players in the English aristocracy. For example, in the early fourteenth century, Lancaster was an earldom and Stafford a baronage, while the Clares and the Bohuns held the earldoms of Gloucester and Herefordshire, and the Fitzalans the earldom of Arundel. The Mortimers, Despensers, Hastings and Beauchamps were all great knightly families with extensive holdings across England, Wales and Ireland, some of which included baronies. An indication of the relative wealth of these families is conveyed by briefly examining the extent of the property accumulated by two prominent members of the fifth and seventh ranking families from Table 9.3. When Gilbert de Clare died in 1318, the abstract of the Inquisitiones Post Mortem for Edward II records amongst his assets more than twenty castles, six towns, nine boroughs, well over a hundred manors, and the moieties of more than six hundred knight’s fees. He also held numerous hamlets, courts, advowsons and miscellaneous landholdings. All of this property was spread across twentythree English counties, but also encompassed the whole counties of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, and a third county in Ireland.20 The Clares’ possession of these southern Welsh counties largely accounts for the ten fulling mills held by the family there. Some of the earliest fulling mills recorded in Wales were built by Gilbert, including one within the moat of Caerphilly Castle and another in the town of Caerleon.21 While Gilbert is perhaps exceptional amongst these great lords, and even within his own family, the list of assets held by John de Hastings when he died in 1312/13 is less impressive but nevertheless substantial. Hastings held the manor and castle of Oboy in Ireland separately from his baronage there, as well as thirteen manors, fourteen advowsons, fractions of well over a hundred knight’s fees and numerous other landholdings in fourteen English counties.22 He also held a castle, nine hamlets, two forests and eight fulling mills in the Welsh marches.

20 21 22

Cal. IPM Edw. II, Vol. 5, Ms. 538. See Jack (1981), p. 91. Cal. IPM Edw. II, Vol. 5, Ms. 412.

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The lordly families concerned were thus landholders of the highest stature. Considering that the data compiled by John Langdon from the Inquisitiones Post Mortem for Edward II would capture the holdings of many of these lordly families, a potentially fruitful line of future research would be to compare Langdon’s data with that extracted from Jack’s gazetteer. A number of general conclusions can be drawn from the data presented in Table 9.3. Fourteen of twenty-five lordly families held three or more mills at some stage during this period, or 56% of those families. Of the total of 125 references to fulling mills held by all families, 114 of them relate to mills held by the largest fourteen mill-holders, or 91.2% of the total references to fulling mills held by lay lords, and 55.3% of all the references to medieval fulling mills found by Jack that pertain to Wales. In other words, if the mills gazetted by Jack are taken as a reasonably representative cross-section of the number of fulling mills that existed in Wales over a period of roughly three centuries, it would appear that fourteen lordly families controlled more than half of the Welsh fulling industry, at least for broadcloth fibres. This is a significant finding that requires further investigation, but again such research goes beyond the confines of this study. It should be noted, however, that there has been more work done on this subject than that which is examined here, including additional work by Jack, and individual contributions from E.A. Lewis, and S.D. Coates and D.G. Tucker.23 It is nevertheless clear from the above-quoted figures that religious houses were by no means the dominant players in the Welsh fulling industry, controlling less than one fifth of the mills documented by Jack. As we have just seen, the dominant players were in fact a small and very privileged sector of the aristocracy that controlled more than half of the industry. It is also worth reiterating that the proportion of the industry that appears to have been controlled by small entrepreneurs was roughly the same as that for the ecclesiastical sector, a figure that is almost exactly in accordance with Langdon’s estimates of the proportion of the grain milled by the tenant/independent sector in the English milling industry in the early fourteenth century, at less than 20%. Some of these fulling mills might fall within Langdon’s category of borough mills, however.

23

See Jack (1963), Lewis (1903), Coates & Tucker (1978).

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part two ‒ chapter nine Analysis of Welsh fulling mill rental data

An analysis of the rental data recorded by Jack pertaining to 144 of the 206 documented mills reveals a number of important trends which correlate with other sectors of the medieval economy. Of the 144 mills, rentals for 135 are recorded, with 286 individual rental amounts listed. Most of these rentals relate to mills owned by lay lords, but also to privately operated mills. Unusually, ecclesiastical mills are not so well represented. Five other rentals are for mill sites only, while another four refer to payments for waterways leading to and from four mills. A graph of the earnings of these mills, with the exception of the mill site and waterway rentals, is represented in Chart 9.1. The mill earnings have been averaged over each decade from 1280 to 1550. The number of mill rentals sampled per decade ranged between four and twenty. The largest number of rentals per decade (i.e., ten or over) pertain to the 1340s (14), 1360s (20), 1370s (14), 1380s (17), 1400s (10), 1430s (12), 1440s (14), 1470s (10), 1480s (17), 1490s (17), 1500s (11), 1510s (10), 1520s (12), and 1530s (13). In other words, the sample size is relatively large for more than half of the decades covered and provides a fairly representative cross-section of highand low-value fulling mills. One exception is the 1500s, in which a single exceptionally high value mill appears and distorts the average, producing a high upward “spike” in the graph. In order to “smooth out” this aberration, the figure for this decade has been recalculated by removing this high value mill, and the graph redrawn with dotted lines to represent the recalculated amount. The severe downward spike in the 1420s is probably only partially the result of the small sample size for this decade, that was dominated by low value mills, as the subsequent two decades are also low and draw on much larger sample sizes, suggesting a definite downward trend, although perhaps not quite so dramatic. Furthermore, by comparing the averages mapped in the graph with the rental histories of some specific mills, any other artefacts of the small sample size for some of the other decades can be corrected. In that light, the following general observations can be made. Based on the data in Chart 9.1, it would appear that the 1280s and the decade just prior to that was probably the period of highest revenue for fulling mills in Wales, with the 1290s seeing a marked decline, followed by a recovery in the 1300s, and another marked

Pennies

Recorded

Adjusted

Decade

0 1280s 1290s 1300s 1310s 1320s 1330s 1340s 1350s 1360s 1370s 1380s 1390s 1400s 1410s 1420s 1430s 1440s 1450s 1460s 1470s 1480s 1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s

100

200

300

400

500

600

Chart 9.1: Earnings of 135 Welsh fulling mills, averaged by decade

the medieval welsh fulling industry 291

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decline between the 1310s and 1330s, followed by a second recovery between the 1340s and 1350s, with average rents returning to a level that was close to those of the 1280s and 1300s. This was followed by a second sharp decline in the 1360s, with a slight recovery in the 1370s and ’80s, peaking sharply in the 1390s when revenues appear to hit an all-time high. A severe decline began in the 1400s and lasted until the 1440s, that was at least initially related to the rebellion of Owen Glendower (1404–17), whose men destroyed many mills throughout Wales.24 A recovery in the 1450s was followed by another decline that lasted until the 1510s, followed by another recovery in the 1520s, and what appears to have been another decline between the 1530s and ’40s. It is relatively clear from all this that any increases in revenue that lords were able to extract from fulling mills over the almost two hundred years following the Black Death were shortlived and unstable, with rentals between the 1440s and 1540s averaging out at the income levels received during the slump of the 1310s to ’30s. The low rentals between the 1310s and ’30s were no doubt related to the crop failures and cattle murrains of that period,25 while the very clear collapse in revenues during the 1360s and ’70s was a direct consequence of the Black Death. Although lords like the Fitzalans attempted to return their fulling mill revenues to late thirteenth and early fourteenth century levels in the 1380s and ’90s, this appears to have been unworkable and therefore unsustainable, ushering in a long and fairly steady period of decline over the next centuryand-a-half, punctuated by brief recoveries in the 1450s and 1520s, that once again appear to have been unsustainable attempts by lords to increase their revenues. It is important to note on the basis of these data that the prolonged slump in revenues does not seem to have really hit until some time after the Black Death, i.e., at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Although the initial slump was clearly related to Glendower’s activities, this was the century in which independent artisans, craftsworkers, merchants and entrepreneurs entered into the mechanized fulling industry in Wales in much greater numbers. One is therefore led to believe that it was not only the ongoing plagues and the Welsh rebellion that were putting downward pressure on fulling mill revenues.

24 25

See Jack (1981). See Kershaw (1973).

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Competition between the fulling mills of the newly made men of the lower classes and those of a half dozen religious houses and fourteen great families was also having a comparable effect, that quite possibly also led to greater stability in rentals than would have otherwise been the case. These general observations of average trends are confirmed by looking at the rentals on some individual mills for which there are relevant chronologies of rental data. For example, starting with the peak of the industry in the late thirteenth century and moving into the period leading up to the Black Death, the fulling mill of Osbaston in Monmouthshire belonging to Gracedieu Abbey was receiving the very high rental of £6 13s. 4d. during the period leading up to 1291, but was only assessed at £2 for the Taxatio Ecclesiastica.26 Similarly, the fulling mill of Usk in Monmouthshire owned by the Clares was receiving £5 6s. 8d. in 1292, which rose to £6 13s. 4d. in 1301 when it was let to Tintern Abbey. By 1314, however, Tintern had abandoned the Usk mill, which was then let with three grain mills for only £3 10s. per annum. Obviously, the rent charged by the Clares had been too high for Tintern to warrant any continuation of its lease. Sometime between 1314 and 1369, the mill had passed into the hands of the Mortimers, and after the death of Lionel, Duke of Clarence in 1369, the fulling mill and one grain mill were assessed once again at the very high rental of £20 per annum.27 Such high rentals in the 1360s were not the norm, however. For example, the fulling mill of Kidwelly Castle in Carmarthenshire owned by Patrick Chaworth was assessed at £1 rent per annum in 1283. In 1361–2, it was only earning half as much at 10s.28 On the other hand, the comparatively well-documented fulling mill of Llywel in Brecknockshire owned by John Bohun, Earl of Hereford, showed some particularly volatile returns over a period of a little over six decades between the 1330s and 1400s. In 1336, the mill was rented for £2, but went down to £1 13s. 4d. in 1343, despite the fact that the lease now also included a newly-built dyehouse. From 1344–9, the rent increased again to £2 per annum, only to fall once again to £1 between 1350–61. Sometime between 1361 and 1368 it was again rented at £2, but increased to £2 14s. 4d. in 1368. Between 26 Ibid., p. 118. However, Gracedieu may well have under-stated the revenue from this mill for the purposes of the ecclesiastical survey. 27 Ibid., p. 126. 28 Ibid., p. 105.

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1394 and 1404, however, its rent had been reduced once again to only £1.29 In contrast, the fulling mill of Llanblethian in Glamorganshire owned by the Clares was only earning £1 6s. in 1281, but increased to £1 18s. 9d. annually from 1315–16.30 In 1349 in one of the Despenser Inquisitiones Post Mortem, the rent was increased once again to £2 10s., but was reduced to £2 in 1359. By 1375, however, it had increased in value once again to £3 a year. With regard to the post-plague period, most of the individual rentals reflected the trends registered in the rental averages, with the 1450s and ’60s marking somewhat of a recovery. For example, the manorial fulling mill of Dyffryn in Monmouthshire owned by the Clares and later the Staffords, was rented for life to one Madog ap Dafydd Fychan for £4 6s. 8d. in 1399–1400. Sometime between 1402 and 1407 the mill was destroyed by Glendower, and remained ruined until 1434–5, when its rent prior to its destruction was listed as having increased to £5. The fulling mill and a grain mill in the same building were rebuilt in 1442, and between that year and 1480, the two were leased for twenty years at the lower rent of £4. In 1486, this was reduced again to £2, and remained the same until 1514, when it was increased to £2 13s. 4d. and remained so for a number of years afterwards.31 The fulling mill of Glynfechan in Denbighshire provides one of the longest and most detailed rental series of any of the mills in the sample. Covering a period of 160 years, there are twelve decades for which records exist. Built in 1334–6 by the Fitzalans, it was initially leased with another fulling mill at Chirk for £3 a year. Its revenues ranged from a high of £3 6s. 8d. p.a. in 1360 down to £3 in 1365 and £2 in the following year. Between 1370 and 1384, this was increased to £2 3s. 4d., and by 1395–6 was receiving £4 a year. The fifteenth century saw a steady decline, from £3 a year in 1416–7, to £1 6s. 8d. some time later in the first several decades of the century. For the whole period from 1465 to 1516—more than half a century—it earned only 11s. 8d., or about one-seventh of its peak value.32

29

Ibid., p. 112. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 99. This double mill was known as “Ebbothis” and was located on the river Ebbw. 32 Ibid., pp. 101–2. 30 31

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The fact that the Fitzalans were not alone in experiencing a century long depression in their fulling mill revenues is well-illustrated by the difference between average rentals in the first 120 years of the data set, when revenues remained relatively buoyant, as opposed to the second 160 years in which they declined, the cutoff point being 1399/1400. The period from 1280 to 1399 gives us an average rent of 406.5d. (£1 14s. 2 ½d.), as against 289.5d. (£1 4s. 1 ½d.) for 1400 to 1560, or an overall decline in mill revenues during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries of almost 10s. or 30%. This is consistent with the declines in grain mill revenues found by Holt and Langdon in England during the post-plague period.33

The relative profitability of mechanized fulling in medieval England and Wales Holt’s and Langdon’s findings that fulling mills were as little as onequarter to a third as profitable as grain mills has already been alluded to several times, although it was not uncommon for fulling mills to earn around half as much as grain mills. This is well-illustrated by some of the evidence cited by Holt. For example, at Elton in Huntingdonshire in the late thirteenth century, the fulling mill there was earning somewhat less than half the revenue of each of the two grain mills, as was the fulling mill of Dunster in Somerset at around the same time, and the fulling mill of Wood Hall in 1337. On the other hand, in the early fourteenth century, a number of fulling mills held by the Bishop of Bath and Wells at Wiveliscombe, Wookey, and Cheddar, and by the Earl of Lincoln in Lancashire, were earning anything from a quarter to an eighth as much as the grain mills on those estates.34 In his West Midlands study, Langdon found that the bishop of Worcester earned an average annual revenue of £2 9 ½d. in 1299 from twenty-four watermills used for grinding grain, and only £1 from one of his fulling mills.35 In the Edward II Inquisitiones Post Mortem, he found that fulling mills in the north and west were drawing a

33 34 35

Holt (1988), Ch. 10; Langdon (1991), p. 439. Holt (1988), pp. 156–8. Langdon (1991), p. 434.

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third or less of the average revenue of the watermills in those two regions, and 40% of the revenue of all watermills across the country. Interestingly, and in agreement with earlier research by Holt, he found that twelve fulling mills in the south-east were of relatively high value, averaging £1 7s. per mill across East Anglia, the Home and southern counties. The 315 watermills in the same counties averaged £1 4s. 5d. in value. Four fulling mills in East Anglia averaged £1 19s. in value, as opposed to £1 3s. 8d. for the 103 watermills in the same counties. As Langdon comments, “the figures strongly suggest that competition for water resources in these areas meant that fulling-mills were built only when the demand for fulling would produce revenues rivalling those for grinding corn.”36 My own research on the mill holdings of thirty English religious houses revealed that around half of the houses studied held fulling mills at some stage in their histories. Of these houses, several have sufficiently good records to make meaningful comparisons between their grain mill and fulling mill revenues. For example, two Sussex fulling mills held by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1285 were earning 4s. and 4s. 2d. each, whereas the average earnings from its twelve grain mills in the same county at the same time were 11s. 3d., indicating that the fulling mill revenues were around 36% of those of the grain mills.37 Likewise, between 1272 and 1289, the Norman Abbey of Bec was earning an average of around £3 13s. annually from each of twenty grain mills in southern England. Over the same period, the average earnings from its fulling mill of Blakenham in Suffolk were around £1 6s., or 36% of the average revenue of its grain mills.38 Bec’s single fulling mill in Blakenham was therefore earning only slightly more than a third of the average revenue from its grain mills. If we double Langdon’s IPM figures for average grain mill revenues in East Anglia to make them comparable to the figures recorded in Bec’s compotus rolls, Bec’s fulling mill was earning only a third of the average found by Langdon a generation later. Bec’s grain mill revenues between 1272 and 1289 were therefore comparable to the average grain mill revenues found by Langdon in the Edward II IPMs for East Anglia. Considering the time lag in the 36 Langdon (1994), pp. 12–14. The IPM figures are around half of those recorded in the account books. 37 See Lucas (2003), Ch. 3, Table 3.5. 38 Ibid., Table 3.4.

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two sets of records, it is conceivable that Bec’s fulling mill in Suffolk had served as an example to lay lords in the vicinity of how not to run their own enterprises. Two other fulling mills earned around half of the average earnings of their owners’ grain mills. The fulling mill of Brimscombe and a messuage was drawing 44% of the average earnings of nine grain mills held by the Abbey of the Holy Trinity on its manor of Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire in the early fourteenth century. Like the Archbishop of Canterbury’s fulling mills two to three decades earlier, the nuns of Caen were drawing only 4s. 3d. from this mill.39 On the other hand, the fulling mill of Merffordd in Denbighshire held by the Fitzalans earned far more than its ecclesiastical counterparts from a century earlier. In 1391, Merffordd fulling mill earned £3 6s. 8d., as opposed to £6 for the grain mill there (i.e., 55.6% of the grain mill’s revenue).40 Most Welsh fulling mills earned far less than this, however. For example, the fulling mill of Brithdir in Cydewain, Montgomeryshire, was leased in 1329–30 for only £2, while the grain mill there was leased for £22.41 The fulling mill of Camros in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, was earning 10s. in 1324, while the grain mill was leased for £3 3s. 4d.42 The fulling mill of Cilgerran in the same county was earning only 12d. a year in 1326, while the grain mill was earning £2.43 These revenues amount to 9%, 16% and 2.5% of those from their neighbouring grain mills, demonstrating much greater variations in profitability than for those recorded in England by Holt, Langdon and me. However, the peppercorn rent paid for the Cilgerran fulling mill held by John Hastings was almost undoubtedly because it was either ruined, or had been built and was being operated by an independent tenant. Like the high fulling mill revenues found by Langdon in the southeast of England, similarly high revenues of £4 4s. are recorded by Beaulieu Abbey for its precinctual fulling mill in its account book for 1269/70. This constituted more than 80% of the average earnings of seven of its grain mills recorded in the account book.44 The 39 40 41 42 43 44

Ibid., Ch. 6, Table 6.10. Jack (1981), p. 119. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 96. See Lucas (2003), Ch. 5, Table 5.13.

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returns on two Welsh fulling mills at Pembroke in 1348 were also relatively high, with the former earning 14s. and its companion grain mill £1 for the same year (i.e., 70% of the grain mill’s revenue).45 It does seem to have been unusual, however, for a medieval Welsh or English fulling mill to exceed £4 in annual revenue. For example, the Chirk and Carreghofa fulling mills in Chirk, Montgomeryshire, were earning between £10 and £13 in the 1350s and ’60s, all three of which were owned by the Fitzalan family.46 Considering the relatively low costs of constructing fulling mills on existing watermill sites, that, as we saw in Chapter Four, appears to have averaged a little over £4 per mill, there can be little doubt that these particular fulling mills were very profitable for their lords. Nevertheless, such earnings were the exception rather than the rule, as only eleven of the 296 individual mill rentals covering the period from c. 1280 to the 1550s were for £4 or more, or only 3.5% of the total.

The changing structure of the Welsh fulling industry Finally, a few comments should be made about the significance of the chronological appearance of these fulling mills within the documentary evidence for the changing structure of the Welsh fulling industry. The earliest reliable references to fulling mills in Jack’s gazetteer are from the 1270s, while the latest is from the 1560s. Organizing the references to these mills according to the decades in which they first appear, the largest clusters appear in the 1290s (13), the 1310s (13), the 1330s (14), the 1360s (14), the 1440s (12), and the 1530s (18).47 In terms of grouped clusters, the largest number of references appear between the 1290s and 1370s (90 of 206, or around 44%), the 1420s to the 1440s (24, or around 12%), and the 1460s to the 1490s (27, or around 13%). Interestingly, the second and third clusters follow two periods in which fulling mill rentals had recovered

45

Jack (1981), p. 115. Ibid., pp. 94–6. In making these calculations, uncertainties in dating have generally been ignored, with nines rounded up to the decade above, e.g., a date of 1349, or “before 1349” is included in the tally for the 1350s. 46 47

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somewhat, but whereas the second cluster appears to have taken place during a subsequent upsurge, the third cluster reflects a building program that perhaps even contributed to a decline in revenues. The large number of mills recorded in the 1530s is mainly an artefact of the Valor Ecclesiasticus conducted as a vehicle for the Dissolution, fourteen of the eighteen mills recorded for that decade being held by ecclesiastical estates. It is important to note that no records for any of these mills were uncovered by Jack for the period prior to the Dissolution survey, and at least three of them were not even recorded there. This adds further weight to the contention that industrial mills were under-recorded generally, even on ecclesiastical estates. The fourteen mills concerned constitute close to 36% of all those fulling mills held in ecclesiastical hands. It seems likely that most of them were built or acquired by the relevant lords well before the 1530s. The earliest well-documented fulling mills to appear in Wales were built by the King and the Prince of Wales in the 1270s, and by lay lords such as the Clares, Mortimers and Bohuns in the 1280s and 1290s. A large cluster of ten ecclesiastically-held mills first appeared in the 1290s, although this is probably again an artefact of the property survey that formed the basis of the papal Taxatio Nicholai IV conducted in 1291. It nevertheless seems unlikely that many of these latter mills were more than twenty years old.48 By far the largest numbers of mills recorded in the fourteenth century were held by lay lords, at 62 of 85, or around 73% of the total. This compares with only 40% of those mills recorded in the thirteenth century. In stark contrast, only seven of the mills first recorded in the fourteenth century were held by ecclesiastical estates, or around 8% of the total for that century, although this figure is probably at least partially an artefact of the fourteenth century records examined by Jack. It would nevertheless seem that while ecclesiastical estates

48 A probable exception was the fulling mill belonging to the Hospital of the Holy Trinity, St Mary and John the Baptist at Ludlow, which Jack speculates could be as early as 1157/9–86, but for which he does not supply sources. The mill was donated to the hospital’s founder, Peter Undergod, by one Gilbert de Lacy, who could only have been one of two men of that name. The first died in 1163, and was a Knight Templar, while the other died in 1186. Given that the earliest English fulling mill so far recorded is dated to the 1185 Templar survey [see Appendix A], it seems likely that it was the younger Gilbert who donated the mill. See Jack (1981), pp. 94–5.

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were initially significant players in the Welsh fulling industry, they had been well and truly eclipsed by the end of the first half of the fourteenth century. Based on the figures provided in the Valor Ecclesiasticus and the clergy’s overall share of just under 20% of the industry over the three centuries concerned, it would also appear that they maintained as little as half of their originally significant involvement in mechanical fulling over the subsequent period. This would suggest that although the clergy were involved early in mechanized fulling, they failed to develop their interests. Nevertheless, the cluster of references appearing in the Valor Ecclesiasticus would suggest their ongoing involvement, despite the lack of documentation uncovered by Jack during the intervening period. It should also be noted that the first evidence of Welsh fulling mills being held by independent tenants is from the 1320s to 1360s, but only nine of the eighty-five mills recorded in the fourteenth century were held privately, or a little more than 10% of them. Of the more than two hundred fulling mills recorded by Jack for the whole period, about sixty of them were built in the fifteenth century, and of these at least twenty-three, or almost 40% of them, were held by independent tenants. It is therefore clear from these figures that the fifteenth century saw a marked overall increase in the participation of small entrepreneurs in the Welsh fulling industry, that can only have been at the expense of lay and ecclesiastical lords.

Conclusion It would seem from the evidence examined in this case study that the rural fulling industry was developed by rural lords and small entrepreneurs to handle locally grown produce for local or regional markets. The advantages of such enterprises were that transport costs were lower than if one had to send one’s wool a considerable distance to an established market town, and the final product could be more easily monitored by those who had invested. The disadvantages were limited throughput and stiff competition in areas where there were no fulling mill monopolies and a plentiful supply of running water to site fulling mills, as appears to have been the case in a number of the wool-growing regions of Wales. This accounts for the generally low incomes of most Welsh fulling mills when compared

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with grain mills. The small proportion of fulling mills that earned large sums must have had significantly more custom than most of their competitors, presumably because their wealthy owners had a monopoly on fulling the wool grown within their large estates. Just as the ecclesiastical lords that we saw in Chapter Five were able to extract large profits from mills on manors where they held suit, lords in Wales who were able to exercise a monopoly on the operation of fulling mills within their demesnes could extract significant incomes. It seems likely that the major cloth manufacturers in English urban centres made fairly limited use of rural Welsh fulling mills, except where their close proximity made their cheaper costs sufficiently attractive to send wool outside the urban area to be processed. In other words, “the industrial revolution of the thirteenth century” for which Carus-Wilson argued was in fact a restructuring and reorientation of English and Welsh woollen manufacturing that decentred production, created new local and regional markets, and spread mechanization of the manufacturing process into both rural and urban parts of the country that were both already existing woolgrowing areas and had plentiful supplies of running water. With respect to the relative involvement of various social classes in the development of the mechanized fulling industry in Wales, the evidence examined here suggests that a handful of prominent secular lords were the first to make significant investments, soon followed by a handful of wealthy religious houses. As early as the first decades of the fourteenth century, however, “small men” began investing in the industry. In the wake of the Black Death, and particularly during the fifteenth century, this involvement increased substantially, so that by the middle of the sixteenth century, they appear to have controlled as much of the industry as did the Church. The notion that the monastic orders were great innovators when it came to industrial milling is, therefore, not borne out by the Welsh evidence. What appears to have provided the greatest impetus to the substantial changes in patterns of ownership that occurred in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the relative earning capacities of fulling mills and cornmills. Apart from the legal issue of whether the mill in question had suit, the main factors affecting fulling mill profitability were environmental and social, i.e., severe climatic variations and disease in the fourteenth century, and the Welsh rebellion and competition between lay lords and small entrepreneurs in the fifteenth century and subsequently.

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Thus we can see how neo-Malthusian concerns with environment and demographics as well as Marxist concerns with class exploitation must of necessity be taken into account when trying to understand the development of the medieval fulling industry. These considerations are nevertheless insufficient to comprehend how innovation and entrepreneurship arose from within the lower orders of later medieval society. This case study suggests that the expansion of the fulling industry and diversification in the ownership of fulling mills were stimulated by the same forces that diminished élite control of the industry and limited its profitability.

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER TEN

THE SOCIAL SHAPING OF MILLING TECHNOLOGY IN THE PRE-MODERN PERIOD

Introduction Over the last two to three decades, a growing body of research across several disciplines has focused on the study of technology as a social phenomenon. Primarily emanating from the history and sociology of science and technology, evolutionary economics, political economy, policy studies and cultural studies, it has developed a range of new concepts and empirical approaches that have been usefully applied to many different technologies originating in the modern period. The subjects tackled range from the development of transport, electrical and telecommunications systems, to domestic appliances, office machinery and agricultural equipment.1 While there were a number of theoretical and methodological differences between the approaches taken in the earlier phases of research, over the last ten years or so a common language for the analysis of technological development has started to emerge. A common point of departure for much of the new scholarship is its identification of two of the great legitimating myths of modernity as obstacles to our understanding of the role of technology in society: the myth that science and technology automatically generate social progress, and the related myth of technological determinism. The first myth is familiar to virtually everyone: the modern comforts that many of us now enjoy would not be possible without scientific discoveries and technological applications. We should be grateful for this boon, adapt to the changed circumstances that it brings with it, and reap the collective benefits. However, the authority with which

1 See Russell & Williams (2002) for a recent summary of trends in the literature. The well-known American journal Technology and Culture provides a useful entry point for those wishing to gain an appreciation of the diversity of contributions to the field.

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such assertions are made conceals a series of unexamined assumptions that seek to give the impression of an iron chain of causal necessity, neatly summarised in the aphorism: “science discovers— technology applies—society adapts—humanity benefits”.2 The second legitimating myth, technological determinism, is one of the lesser narratives within which the progress myth unfolds. It holds that the development of technology follows an inevitable internal logic of its own. Like biological organisms, individual technologies have their own ancestral trees, evolutionary trajectories and adaptive strategies, independent of human intentionality. Like forces of nature, individual technologies cannot be diverted from realising their potentialities. The oft-repeated phrase, “It is folly to stand in the way of progress”, encapsulates this view.3 Like all good cover stories, both of these fictions about the role of science and technology in society obscure rather than reveal the truth: they divert attention from those actors and elements most pertinent to the investigation. The alternative theoretical frameworks that have emerged in technology studies and related fields over the last two to three decades are, to the contrary, generally preoccupied with focussing attention on the social, technical, economic and natural forces that shape, and are shaped by, technological development. Two important collections of essays, The Social Shaping of Technology (1985) and The Social Construction of Technological Systems (1987), the first edited by Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wacjman and the second by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch, captured the diversity of new approaches as they emerged in the early 1980s. The authors whose work appears in these two books articulated several different conceptual frameworks which shared the insight that technology is a social construction. Both books have become standard reference works for teaching and research, and have provided the basis for a vigorous debate ever since. The approaches taken range from analyses based on neo-Marxist theories of class struggle and feminist analyses of gendered technology, to several alternative theories emanating from the sociology of scientific knowledge and what has come to be known in the humanities and social sciences as “constructivism”.4 2

See Schuster (1995), Ch. 2, for a detailed and accessible critique of this view. The contemporary literature on technological determinism is well represented in Marx & Smith (1994). 4 Some of the key texts in the development of a sociology of scientific knowl3

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A striking feature of the essays in both collections, however, and of much of the research that has subsequently been undertaken in the social shaping of technology (SST), is an overwhelming focus on the technologies of the modern period. While MacKenzie’s and Wacjman’s book reproduces a key passage from Marc Bloch’s “Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau”, the fact that Bloch’s paper, as important and insightful as it is, was already fifty years old when the book was published arguably sheds some light on the paucity of research on pre-modern technology to that date. The situation has not changed dramatically since then. We have seen ample evidence throughout the pages of this book of a renewed interest in the study of pre-modern technology over the same period that research in technology studies has seen rapid growth. But most of the scholars who have engaged with the former subject over that period have been trained in archaeology or social and economic history. Very few have had any background in the social studies of technology, and even fewer have attempted to bring any of its insights to bear on their research.5 As we have also seen, particularly through the historiographical discussions in Chapters Five and Six, most of the historians of technology who have written about pre-modern technology have been firmly wedded to the concepts and evidentiary frameworks articulated by their modernist forebears in the discipline. Their work has, therefore, contributed to the perpetuation of a number of misconceptions about technology in premodern societies, a number of which I have attempted to unpack and correct in earlier chapters.

edge include Kuhn (1962), Feyerabend (1975), Mulkay (1979), Latour & Woolgar (1979). 5 One of the few exceptions is John Langdon’s Mills in the Medieval Economy (2004), which makes some use of the concept of reverse salients and technological systems originated by Thomas Hughes, as well as Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigms (via Edward Constant) to illuminate certain aspects of medieval technological development; Langdon (2004), pp. 67–8, 69–70, 74, 83, 132–4, 168, 304. Other recent work that is very much compatible with the insights of recent trends in the sociology of technology include Astill & Langdon (1997), Squatriti (1998) and Glick & Kirchner (2000). In a collection of essays titled Medieval Farming and Technology, edited by Grenville Astill and John Langdon, the SST-type notions of “technological package” and the “technological shelf ” are discussed in detail. See, for example, Astill & Langdon (1997), pp. 6–7, 294, 309–11. The first term refers to a package of techniques and artefacts that are available to a people in a particular region at a particular time, while the second refers to the techniques and/or artefacts that are available for selection from a range of possibilities at a given time and place.

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Because certain approaches emanating from the social studies of technology provide important insights that can be fruitfully applied to the pre-modern period, the purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarise some of those insights and how they can be applied to the findings of this book. The chapter begins by analysing the related theories of technological systems and sociotechnical networks. Drawing on two influential papers by Thomas Hughes and John Law, key concepts in both theories are outlined and illustrated where possible with reference to pre-modern milling technologies. The discussion then moves on to an investigation of Langdon Winner’s argument that artefacts have politics, drawing on the research in previous chapters to illustrate the role of political factors in shaping a variety of pre-modern milling technologies. The chapter concludes with an outline of potentially fruitful directions for future research on the subject. Although it may seem odd to introduce these concepts at the end of the book rather than at the beginning, my main purpose so far has been to provide a firmer evidentiary basis for the study of ancient and medieval milling, and to settle a number of historiographical issues that have delayed the development of more sophisticated scholarship on the subject. Having arguably achieved those aims in the earlier chapters, I now want to theorise my findings.

Technological systems and sociotechnical networks In his well-known paper, “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems” (1987), Thomas Hughes details his systems-theoretic approach to understanding the development of technology in human societies. Beginning with the insight that what he calls “technological systems” are both socially constructed and society shaping, he points out that such systems are heterogeneous combinations of a large variety of different kinds of elements, including physical artefacts, human organisations, technical and scientific texts, teaching traditions, research programs, legal instruments and natural resources.6 All of these com6 Hughes (1987), p. 51. When applied to pre-modern technologies, Hughes’ identification of system components requires only minor modification. Obviously, technical and “scientific” (i.e., natural philosophical) treatises and teaching traditions during the pre-modern period were not so powerful as oral craft traditions, and

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ponents are woven together into a seamless whole, thereby contributing to the common system goal, whatever that might be. The holistic nature of technological systems can be demonstrated by the fact that if one component of the system is removed or its characteristics change, the other components of the system will also change. Another way of putting this is to say that the interaction of components in a technological system mutually conditions the characteristics of those components. This applies as much to the technical artefacts embodying the system’s goals as it does to the management structure guiding their operation.7 A good illustration of the concept of the mutual conditioning of system elements can be found in the different strategies put into play in Islamic Spain and early medieval China to deal with the conflict between the system goals of irrigation and grain milling described in Chapter Two. In Islamic Spain, the state was relatively weak and most mills were managed by clan-based communities, for whom crop irrigation was just as important as grain milling. The development of milling technology in Al-Andalus was thus conditioned by concerns about ensuring that the irrigation of crops was not compromised by the operation of mills, both of which were managed and owned by the same communities. The technological solution was to place mills at the ends of valley-floor irrigation systems so that both could function simultaneously and with a minimum of disruption to one another’s activities. In early medieval China, on the other hand, although milling and irrigation activities also shared the same waterways, mills were owned and operated by ruling élites for whom crop irrigation was a lesser concern because the farms downstream or adjacent to their mills were frequently owned by other parties. A relatively strong state had therefore to intervene with regulations that prioritised irrigation over milling, and enforced those regulations through the decommissioning or destruction of mills that transgressed them. We can thus see how the different systems goals (or interests) of mill owners and managers in Islamic Spain and early medieval few research programs had yet come into being. “Rules of thumb”, trial-and-error methods and accumulated experience were more important for the development of pre-modern technologies than the quantitative formulae and standardized procedures that have increasingly guided technological development in the modern period. Cf. Langdon’s comments on Hughes’ notion of technological system in relation to the medieval milling industry in Langdon (2004), pp. 69–70. 7 Hughes (1987), pp. 51–2.

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China conditioned how and where mills were located on waterways, while the effects of mills on water delivery for irrigation conditioned how and whether such considerations were deemed relevant and actionable by mill owners and managers. According to Hughes, the goals of any technological system are primarily oriented toward reordering the physical world to make it more productive of goods and services considered useful or desirable, using whatever means are available and appropriate. In this context, Hughes cites Heidegger’s notion of technology as a “standing reserve” that has been prepared for problem-solving or producing products. For Heidegger, technology is one of the most important aspects of human efforts to order the world and to thereby reveal its essence: what Heidegger calls “enframing”.8 It follows from this that technological systems are not “forces of nature”, despite sometimes appearing to be autonomous in their behaviour. They are assembled or put together by human beings to satisfy human needs and wants; they do not and cannot make themselves. Because technological systems are human artefacts, they should be regarded as social constructions. The people who invent and develop technological systems are called “systems builders” by Hughes. They are people who are gifted at bringing together multiple and diverse elements into a coherent, working whole; people who can bridge technical, social, political and economic complexities and realise their ambitions in the face of opposition and numerous obstacles.9 While it is sometimes difficult to identify such individuals in the pre-modern period due to the patchy nature of the evidence, we know from the study of medieval English monastic estates and royal building programs that gifted ecclesiastical administrators such as Abbot Samson, Henry of Eastry and John of Laund, and master builders like Robert the Engineer, were accomplished medieval systems builders, and did much to advance the economic fortunes of the institutions they served.10

8 Ibid., pp. 53–4, citing Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt, Harper & Row, New York, 1977, p. 19. 9 Ibid., p. 52. 10 On Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds (1182–1211), see Holt (1988), pp. 57–8, and The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond. Samson enforced milling monopolies on his tenants, built new mills, and resumed most of the property that had been let out by his predecessors, thereby restoring the financial viability of the abbey.

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Given the central role of social factors in constituting technological systems, it is therefore a mistake to treat “the social” as either solely or primarily part of “the environment” or “context” within which technological change takes place. Not only do all technological systems incorporate social elements, some of those elements have agency and drive technological change. Almost invariably, these social elements are individuals, social groups and institutions, and the interests which guide their behaviour. While there are of course social and natural environments in which technological systems develop, the success of any particular technological system depends on its ability to incorporate elements of its environment. Incorporation enables technological systems to minimise sources of uncertainty and to create the stability required for continued operation. The “environment” can either be dependent on the system, or the system can be dependent on it. Hughes argues that the way to analytically distinguish between system and environment is to recognize that those aspects of the environment that are not subject to system control are not a part of the system, nor are those environmental factors that are dependent on the system but do not affect its goals and products.11 The idea of a technological system incorporating its environment and the extent to which that environment remains independent of the system can be illustrated with respect to the waterworks associated with a monastic watermill and the monks who own the whole complex. The construction of leets, ponds and dams in the immediate environs of a watermill was undertaken to reduce the uncertainty associated with the volume of water flowing to the mill. Certain

On Henry of Eastry, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury from 1285–1331, see Knowles (1948), Ch. 5. Henry pursued a “scientific” farming policy, kept detailed accounts of the priory’s financial dealings and inventories of its possessions, and personally supervised building projects, ushering in an unprecedented period of prosperity for the priory. On John of Laund, prior of Bolton Priory in North Yorkshire (fl. early fourteenth c.), see Kershaw (1973). Amongst other achievements, John farmed out most of the priory’s mills on profitable terms, collected tithes on mills for the first time in decades and more than doubled the priory’s mill revenues over the course of his priorship. On Richard the Engineer (fl. 1277–1315), see Colvin (1963), Vol. 1, pp. 204–6 and Pacey (1996), p. 24. Richard built Conway Castle, as well as siege engines and bridges and pontoons in north Wales. In later life, he managed the highly profitable Dee mills of Chester. 11 Hughes (1987), p. 53.

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aspects of the mill’s environment were therefore modified and incorporated into the system of built structures that enabled the mill to function, their purpose being to give the mill a more predictable operating regime.12 Unlike the various waterworks surrounding the mill, the meadow in which the mill was situated should only be considered part of the system to the extent that it performed a functional role in the system, e.g., to provide a means by which the mill could easily be approached by customers, or to provide a source of additional income for the miller or mill-owner from the grass that was cut from it, which in turn was re-invested into the operation of the mill. Although the legal title to the property considered mill, meadow and appurtenances to be a single entity, for the purposes of analysis in this context the environment of the mill meadow was only in a limited sense part of the technological system that constituted the watermill. On the other hand, the majority of the monks of the nearby monastery who owned the watermill were dependent on the mill for their household’s grain, but had no say over the management and operation of the mill, which was the sole responsibility of the abbot or another senior ecclesiastical or lay official. The monks were part of the environment of the mill’s operation, in that they were dependent entities, but they did not have any direct impact on the way the mill was run, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances such as mass fatalities as a result of the plague! They should not, therefore, be regarded as part of the system. The boundaries of a technological system are constituted by the limits on the control of the system exercised by human and artefactual operators. The control centres of a given technological system are often nested hierarchically over geographic space in order to more effectively extend its operating environment.13 A good example of this with respect to medieval farming technology is the system of mother houses, daughter houses and cells that was developed by monastic orders such as the Cistercians to effectively manage their agricultural holdings. Close oversight of the management of monastic granges by monkish administrators living on site enabled the Cistercians

12 In the case of a windmill, it might be sited at the top of a hill to catch the wind, or have an artificial mound built for the same purpose. In the case of a watermill run by tidal power, it might be built in the middle of a dam wall at the mouth of a bay sheltered by islands, or beside an artifically enhanced tidal pool. 13 Hughes (1987), p. 54.

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to extract a higher income from their holdings than were they to have attempted to manage them from a distance through lay officials, for example.14 The human actors in a technological system, whether they be lords, ecclesiastical or lay officials, craftsmen, farmers, merchants, labourers, or millers, may be components of the system, but they are not artefacts of the system. Apart from their more obvious roles as inventors, developers, builders and managers of the system in question, human actors play the crucial role of completing what Hughes describes as “the feedback loop between system performance and system goal and in so doing . . . correct errors in system performance”.15 Without human beings to direct, monitor and maintain them, technological systems soon fall apart. This insight can be illustrated with reference to the role of the miller in maintaining the operation of a mill. The miller socialized with and served customers, ensured that the mill was in good working order by performing necessary repairs and maintenance, and provided the owner (if it was not the miller himself ) with the agreed fees to continue as tenant or farmer.16 Likewise, the role of a lay or ecclesiastical official in maintaining the operation of mills held by a secular lord or religious house was to ensure that there were reliable and competent miller servants operating demesne mills, and capable tenants for mills at farm. The officials had also to ensure that rents were paid on time for mills at farm or that renders of grain from demesne mills were consistent with the level of custom. When the leases ran out on mills at farm, they had to ensure that the rents charged on new leases were competitive, and that entry fees were charged to compensate for any loss of income to the lord. If demesne mills or mills at farm required repairs, the officials had to oversee those repairs, and ensure that any materials stipulated to be the responsibility of the lord in mill leases were supplied to the lessee. In these ways, millers and lay and ecclesiastical officials ensured

14

See Lucas (2003), Chs. 4 & 5. Hughes (1987), p. 54. 16 The consequence of millers failing to properly monitor their mills’ operation could result in catastrophic damage. See, for example, Langdon (2004), p. 245, citing Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1993, pp. 361–2. 15

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that their mills remained operational and performed their socially agreed functions. Although the autonomy of administrators and workers in a technological system can be curtailed through the routinization of the tasks they perform, the degree to which they exercise autonomy is also dependent on the maturity and size of the system. One of Hughes’ more important insights is that the more extensive and older the technological system, the more routinized and less adaptable it becomes. However, large technological systems do not fade away and die like organisms, they acquire a momentum which tends to exert a strong influence on the activities of other systems, groups and individuals in the surrounding environment. They are thus able to exert a wide range of developmental constraints upon the society in which they are embedded, which includes closing off certain developmental pathways.17 During the modern period, the large-scale, integrated technological system of the fossil fuel and automotive industries is an obvious case-in-point. During the pre-modern period, the monastic system acquired similar momentum. From the time that it first came into being in England in the early sixth century until its Dissolution in the middle of the sixteenth century, the monastic system accumulated enormous wealth and political and economic influence. Over the centuries, the monasteries channeled large sums of money into building construction and were responsible for clearing and draining large tracts of land for farming and settlement. They were also responsible for educating the (predominantly male) children of the élites, and for introducing (or reintroducing) to England technological innovations such as drainage and water supply systems and some industrial milling techniques. In all of these ways, the “unworldly” monks had a wider influence on social and technological developments than their cloistered reputation would have us believe. Their activities in different parts of the country canalized social and technical development in certain directions, just as one would expect from the kind of mature, large-scale technological system that Hughes has envisaged.18

17 Hughes (1987), pp. 54–5, 76–80. He further develops these ideas in Hughes (1994). 18 Also drawing on Hughes’ observations about the momentum of large technological systems, Langdon has recently suggested that the scale of the medieval milling industry was sufficiently large to display the resilience characteristic of such systems:

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In coming to grips with how the various technological system elements are coordinated and work together to produce a range of outcomes, Hughes argues that it is necessary to be analytically clear about where the focus of attention lies. Because they are formed of nested hierarchies of sub-systems, the researcher may wish to focus on the physical artefacts that interact with one another at one level of the larger system, or the physical artefacts plus the organizations that run them. On the other hand, the components that make up a single physical artefact may be the main focus of attention. How the researcher renders his or her description, and acknowledges the complexities of analysis involved, will determine how partial, or even distorted, is the analysis. Hughes illustrates his point by drawing attention to engineering textbooks that limit their analyses of technological systems to describing the interaction of artefacts, while ignoring the social and political aspects of system growth and management, and neoclassical economists, who usually treat technical factors in production systems as exogenous.19 The three levels of analysis can be illustrated with respect to premodern milling technologies.20 At the lowest or micro level, the focus of attention might be upon the design features of an individual milling technology and how these differ over time and geographic regions. This kind of analysis was the primary mode undertaken in Chapters One and Three, where the design features of handmills, beast mills, watermills and windmills were discussed in detail.21 At the mid range

Far from being destroyed by the plague, [the medieval milling industry] maintained its infrastructure of personnel and materials and underwent significant technical adjustment through the building of such things as many more industrial mills . . . it was able to attract new classes of entrepreneurs even when direct seigneurial interest began to fail, and . . . a body of law gradually built up around milling that very much reinforced its particular direction. Once established, the system seems to have had its own very distinctive and powerful course. As befitting an early society, the creation, consolidation, and eventual weakening of this technological system is something that took place over a much longer period than it would today, but nonetheless it seems to fulfil the kind of model that has characterized the creation of large technological systems in more recent centuries [Langdon (2004), pp. 134–5]. 19 Hughes (1987), p. 55. 20 Partially arising from the influence of Hughes and trends in the social construction of technology literature, Stewart Russell and Robin Williams have identified a variety of micro, meso and macro analyses in recent literature in the social studies of technology; Russell & Williams (2002), pp. 44–6, 66–9. 21 An alternative micro analysis might involve the study of how the resolution of specific design problems enabled the success of a particular milling technology, à la the discussion in Langdon (2004), Ch. 3.

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or meso level, the interaction or mutual shaping of various physical artefacts that were components of a single milling technology might be the focus of attention. This kind of analysis was also undertaken in Chapters One and Three in relation to the discussions about the various technical elements that had to be combined to build the earliest vertical-wheeled watermills, vertical windmills and post-mills.22 At the highest or macro level of analysis, the role of social groups and institutions in the development of various milling technologies might become the focus of attention. This kind of analysis was the main approach undertaken in Chapters Two, Five and Nine, where the role of different social groups and institutions in the adoption of different milling technologies contributed to the formation of distinct regional milling economies comprised of different milling sectors.23 Hughes’ discussion of interfaces and interchanges within technological systems is also pertinent to the discussion of pre-modern technology. At all levels of analysis, a technological system has inputs and outputs, which constitute the interfaces between system components.24 They also constitute the resources and products required for system operation and the functional realization of its goals. For example, at the micro level, a conventional vertical-wheeled watermill received the input of grain for processing, and manufactured flour as its output. At the meso level, improvements in the design and construction of medieval buildings in general contributed to improvements in the construction of watermills and windmills. At the macro level, a number of lay officials took profits from their lord’s investment in a number of mills as output and reinvested those profits into mill maintenance and further mill construction as input. Questioning the simplistic idea that there is a linear trajectory to the development of all technologies, Hughes proposes an alternative model of variable phases of technological development. He notes that such phases can be discerned through whatever activity predominates during a particular period of technological development,

22 An alternative meso analysis might be the study of whether a single social group was responsible for reintroducing a particular milling technology to a specific region, à la the discussion of the role of the monasteries in the diffusion of watermilling technology in Chapters Two and Five. 23 An alternative macro analysis might be the study of the role of certain large scale environmental factors such as geology, rainfall, wind regimes and tidal range in shaping regional milling economies. 24 Hughes (1987), pp. 55–6.

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and describes them as “invention, development, innovation, transfer, and growth, competition, and consolidation”. The phases are not sequential, and can overlap and be retraced. Furthermore, different actors play crucial roles during the different phases, and the technologies concerned may be deemed radical or conservative within their social milieu depending on which phase they are experiencing, i.e., the radical phase corresponds with invention, development and innovation, and the conservative phase with growth, competition and consolidation.25 If we look to the development of milling technology in medieval Europe, it would appear that this development not only went through a number of different phases, but occurred in a more sporadic fashion than has usually been acknowledged. Contrary to much popular opinion within the history of technology, the Latin Church was not the primary source of Roman milling lore in early medieval Europe. Well-established milling traditions already existed in Ireland, France and Italy long before the arrival of monasticism and organised Christianity, some of which had been initiated by the Romans themselves. While the evidence from England during the same period is not so definitive, all of the indications are that although its milling traditions underwent a transformation following the withdrawal of Roman governance, this transformation pre-dated the earliest phase of extensive monastic activity in the country. What is more, the evidence from early medieval Italy demonstrates that the Church, as an important player within the new feudal ruling élite, was responsible for imposing more authoritarian and extractive milling practices upon the lower orders of society than had previously existed. The evidence from other parts of medieval and early modern Europe suggests that the Church played a similar role in those countries as well. While it is difficult to trace the developmental phases of most premodern milling technologies, the development of the post-mill provides a useful exception. The radical nature of its initial invention can be illustrated by the fact that it took more than forty years for it to be built in significant numbers anywhere in England or on the Continent, despite the many advantages which it offered to regions with limited watermilling capacity. Innovations in its design and

25 Ibid., pp. 56–7. See also Langdon (2004), p. 69, for a slightly different perspective on this topic.

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construction continued for well over a century after its initial invention, and included changes to the construction of post-mill foundations, as well as the sails, braking system and turning mechanism. Unknown inventor-entrepreneurs managed to persuade forward-looking secular and ecclesiastical lords to construct the earliest post-mills in the last decades of the twelfth century, while manager-entrepreneurs such as the abbots of the larger East Anglian monasteries oversaw the rapid growth in the construction of post-mills in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. While the role of financier-entrepreneurs appears to have generally been quite limited in the pre-modern period, there is some evidence that some of the more entrepreneurial abbots of the larger religious houses managed to persuade financiers to lend them the money that they needed for technical improvements and investment, which included the construction of more mills.26 The lack of initial appeal experienced by the new invention of the post-mill leads us on to a discussion of Hughes’ important concept of “reverse salients”. Hughes defines them as “components in the system that have fallen behind or are out of phase with the others . . . [r]everse salients are comparable to other concepts used in describing those components in an expanding system in need of attention, such as drag, limits to potential, emergent friction, and systemic efficiency.” He illustrates the idea with the example of how a productive unit within a manufacturing system that has had its output increased forces modifications to other system components in order to maintain the efficiency of overall system output. Until such time as the lagging components are modified, usually by invention, such components are reverse salients.27 Langdon has recently made some use of this concept with respect to the design of the waterworks feeding watermills and the foundations of post-mills. Both components of the technological systems of watermills and windmills required adaptive changes and developments over extended periods of time to address stresses and strains on both types of structures that were imposed on them by the natural environment. Langdon notes that the elimination of reverse salients with respect to various milling

26 For a detailed discussion of the role of entrepreneurs in the milling economy of medieval England, see Langdon (2004), pp. 178–218, 218–31, 252–6. 27 Hughes (1987), p. 73.

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technologies was generally more evident during the medieval period than startling technological breakthroughs.28 Having explored the potentials of applying various concepts developed by Thomas Hughes to the understanding of technology in the pre-modern period, we will now turn our attention to the alternative conceptual framework of sociotechnical networks developed by John Law. Emerging initially from the constructivist theories of Bruno Latour and Michel Callon and what has come to be known as Actor Network Theory,29 Law has developed his network theory through a number of publications.30 The discussion here focuses on his explication of the theory in his well-known paper, “Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion” (1987). Law’s paper begins with a brief outline of constructivist approaches to the sociology of technology (especially that of Callon) and the systems-theoretic approach of Hughes. He argues that Callon’s and Hughes’ approaches are the most fruitful in that they do not privilege the social in understanding technological change, unlike some of those under the rubric of the social construction of technology. He notes that while social factors may be important and sometimes even dominant in the shaping of a particular technological system, “this is a purely contingent matter and can be determined only by empirical means.” He explains that natural, economic or technical factors may be just as important or obdurate in shaping the technological system in question, as well as the social structure that results from the growth in a particular system’s influence.31 The influence of these shaping factors can be clearly illustrated with respect to a range of milling technologies. For example, the natural conditions of local and regional environments played an important role in the kinds of powered mills that could be sited in a particular location. Climate, topography and geology had a direct and obvious bearing upon the placement and practical utility of

28

Langdon (2004), pp. 83–4, 134, 304. See, for example, Latour (1987), Callon (1987). See also Russell & Williams (2002), pp. 41–2, 53–4, 56–8, 69, 81, for a cogent summary of the research program’s aims, methods and limitations. 30 See, for example, Law (1987a), Law & Callon (1988), Law (1992), (1992a), Law & Bijker (1992). 31 Law (1987), pp. 111–13. 29

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watermill and windmill technology. Such factors as rainfall, tidal range, the size of waterways and their rate of flow, and the direction and prevalence of winds, were critical to their success. There are also a number of more specific ways in which the environment shaped or conditioned the development of milling technology, such as the materials available for use in construction and the techniques developed to render mills resistant to extreme weather conditions. The economic conditions created by an agricultural surplus and growing populations played an important role in the growth of milling capacity in a number of different societies during the pre-modern period and subsequently. Growing populations in increasingly stratified societies generated networks of demand and consumption for milled products, sometimes class-based, sometimes not, which in turn depended on whether the product concerned was considered a luxury or a necessity. Such changing networks of demand and consumption also conditioned the size of the pool of craftworkers with the relevant skills to construct mills to meet that demand. The state of technical knowledge at any given time and place conditioned the kinds of materials used in construction and the building techniques deployed. For example, the technical limitations in the properties of wooden components used in mill construction during the medieval period were overcome to some extent by advances in joinery and incorporating metal and stone parts, but it was not until the modern period that metal construction enabled vast improvements in mill efficiency and performance.32 The archaeological and manuscript evidence suggests that the cultural transmission of technical knowledge during the pre-modern period occurred over vast distances and time periods, extending across the Eurasian landmass and into Africa. Technical traditions that had originated in China, the Near East, and the Hellenic, Roman and Islamic civilizations during the ancient and early medieval periods were carried along well-established trade and transport routes in the form of skilled craftsmen, mechanical treatises, and oral lore. Without this extensive network of embodied and text-based knowledge, no craft tradition of milling could have been established, as there was of course no institutionalised method of acquiring craft skills throughout the period concerned. While mechanical treatises illustrating the

32

Langdon (2004), pp. 132–4.

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workings of different kinds of mills were undoubtedly the province of the wealthy and the learned, we have no reason to doubt that millwrights, carpenters and artisans of varying social status throughout Eurasia and North Africa were at least aware of their existence, if they had not directly seen them themselves. Oral modes of transmission were far from perfect, however. The fact that some of those technical advances made by the Romans either remained unknown to medieval Europeans (in the case of the turbine), or took as long as a millennium to be reintroduced (in the case of the cam and trip-hammer), can most plausibly be explained with respect to the fall of the Roman Empire and the loss of knowledge and social structure that went with it. Such startling discontinuities undermine simple notions of progress and demonstrate that the accumulation and transfer of knowledge from pagan to Christian societies over the course of the last two millennia has not been as straightforward as is generally assumed. The disintegration of the institutions and supporting social infrastructure of the Roman imperial state (i.e., transport routes, a common language of the élite, standardised legal, political and administrative codes and institutions) must be recognized as the major contributing factor to the loss of technical knowledge which seems to have occurred, reminding us of the respect shown by early moderns for the achievements of the ancients, such as Isaac Newton’s famous comment that he and his contemporaries were dwarves sitting astride the shoulders of giants. In agreement with Callon, Law states that “the stability and form of artifacts should be seen as a function of the interaction of heterogeneous elements as these are shaped and assimilated into a network [italics in original].” In common with Hughes, Law suggests that the bringing together of a number of disparate components of varying malleability into a single artefact constitutes what he calls “heterogeneous engineering” whose aim is to produce a sociotechnical network of juxtaposed elements. The notion of heterogeneous engineering is thus the counterpart to Hughes’ notion of “system building”, while the notion of the sociotechnical network is the counterpart to Hughes’ notion of “technological system”.33 Because the notions of technological system and sociotechnical network are essentially interchangeable, like technological systems,

33

Law (1987), p. 113.

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sociotechnical networks can be analysed at different levels of scale, from the micro to the macro.34 We can therefore conceptualise the technology of the European post-mill, for example, as forming one sociotechnical network that was part of, and had strong links with, a larger sociotechnical network that constituted the medieval milling industry. The heterogeneous elements that the former juxtaposed can again be teased out from the micro to the macro. At the micro level of post-mill design, the elements juxtaposed included wood construction techniques borrowed from watermills and other buildings, existing technical artefacts such as machine-driven millstones and the gearing mechanism from watermills, and novel technical artefacts such as windmill sails, foundations and braking systems. At the macro level, the functional elements juxtaposed included social factors such as laws of distraint and those governing the operation and ownership of windmills, political factors such as who had sufficient wealth and status to own and operate mills, economic factors such as the costs of construction and maintenance, and environmental factors such as local wind regimes. While acknowledging his conceptual debt to Hughes, Law argues that an important difference between the network and the system models is the emphasis of the former on conflict. In the network model, those elements that prove difficult to tame or hold in place have to be vigilantly maintained by the actors who brought them together, otherwise the network will fall to pieces and the technology will be rendered inoperable: “[t]he network approach stresses this by noting that there is almost always some degree of divergence between what the elements of a network would do if left to their own devices and what they are obliged, encouraged, or forced to do when they are enrolled within the network.”35 Law points out that while there are obviously differences in the degrees to which various elements of the network may be deemed recalcitrant, for the purposes of analysis, the environment of a sociotechnical network can for all intents and purposes be considered hostile. This point is well-illustrated by the environmental stresses placed on the operation of windmills and watermills. Storms and gales were 34 Although Law does not elaborate on the idea in this paper, it has certainly been articulated in later versions of Actor Network Theory. See Russell & Williams (2002). 35 Law (1987), pp. 113–14.

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a constant threat to the operation of both types of mill, and various techniques were developed over the centuries by millwrights and carpenters to minimise the risks of damage to mills posed by inclement weather. However, the failure of millers to properly maintain and monitor the activity of mills could also result in severe damage to the mill, or even destruction.36 Heterogeneous engineering is the activity of associating uncooperative elements into networks that are self-sustaining and, by definition, resist dissociation. It is therefore necessary to treat natural and social elements of the network using the same analytical vocabulary, as their respective roles in the network do not necessarily differ in kind. The aim of the analysis is to discover the particular patterns of forces which come into play within and against a particular network, rather than assuming from the outset that one particular element (usually the social) is fundamental to understanding the network’s structure.37 It is these emphases on the conflictual nature of network-building, the contingent processes that constitute sociotechnical networks, and the extent to which heterogeneous engineers must overcome a variety of obstacles to effectively combine disparate elements, that are particularly analytically useful for understanding technological development in general, and pre-modern technology in particular. Law defines sociotechnical networks as emergent phenomena that are more than the sum of their parts: they possess attributes that are not possessed by any of their components. He defines technology as “a family of methods for associating and channeling other entities and forces, both human and nonhuman . . . a method . . . for the conduct of heterogeneous engineering, for the construction of a relatively stable system of related bits and pieces with emergent properties in a hostile or indifferent environment . . . [technology] is nothing other than a set of channeled forces or associated entities.”38 It follows from this that any particular sociotechnical network is always at risk of dissociation if challenged by a stronger, hostile network. The adversary could take the form of any number of different elements in the environment of the challenged network. As Law notes, the network’s environment is “filled with indifferent or overtly

36 37 38

See n. 16 above. Law (1987), p. 114. Ibid., pp. 115–16.

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hostile physical and social actors”.39 A network’s success is measured by its ability to resist dissociation by these hostile forces. This often requires the incorporation of newer, stronger and more formidable allies into the network.40 Such conflict between networks or between a network and its environment is called a “trial of strength” in the SST literature.41 While Law’s case study illustrates the theory of sociotechnical networks through a discussion of the obstacles that had to be overcome by the Portuguese in order to achieve maritime expansion, the theory can be just as well illustrated with reference to a range of milling technologies. For example, the kind of conflict between competing sociotechnical networks that occurs in a trial of strength can be seen in the many disputes that arose in high medieval England between peasants, townsfolk and lords over the use of handmills and manorial water- and windmills, and during the early medieval period, the presumed conflict between the lower social orders who favoured the horizontal-wheeled watermill and the élites who favoured the verticalwheeled watermill. In constructivist terminology, the social groups that favoured the use of the rotary quern, i.e., the middling to poorer households of peasants and townsfolk were, through their actions, presenting a trial of strength to the social groups that favoured the use of the watermill and windmill, i.e., the wealthy households of the gentry, clergy and nobility. Some members of the lower classes favoured the rotary quern because it was cheaper or more convenient than using the manorial mill, whereas the upper classes favoured windmills and watermills because it was their social privilege to own them and because they were an effective means of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. The conflict between the two competing technological systems was therefore engendered by the jockeying of feudal élites for economic gain and political authority over members of the lower orders who used handmills as an emblem of political as

39 The notion that physical entities can have the status of actors is one that is peculiar to Actor Network Theory. See, for example, Latour (1987a). 40 Law (1987), pp. 116–18. 41 The phrase probably originates from the work of Bruno Latour; see Latour (1987a).

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well as economic resistance. The élites, for their part, exercised their social power through legal struggle and physical coercion, and in most cases were victorious. While its deployment was far more restricted than that of the rotary quern and the beast mill, in that it could only be used in regions that were hydrologically and topographically suitable, there is some historical evidence that the horizontal-wheeled watermill was a technology that favoured more egalitarian social arrangements. In a trial of strength between emerging feudal élites and clan-based, peasant and mercantile communities, however, those social groups that constituted the technological system of the vertical-wheeled watermill were in many cases able to dissociate enough of the elements that constituted its rival to render it inoperable as an alternative technology. Probably most significant in this respect was the appropriation of communal and peasant holdings by powerful magnates as gifts to secure the loyalty of their vassals. Another strategy probably involved the élites persuading craftsmen with the knowledge to construct watermills to abandon the horizontal-wheeled watermill in favour of the vertical-wheeled watermill. Given the generally slow pace of change in medieval societies, these processes would have taken generations. As with those attempts by feudal élites to suppress the use of handmills in medieval England, it was the institutionalization of hierarchical power relations as various feudal systems took shape between the ninth and thirteenth centuries that enabled such victories. To conclude this section, it should be noted that there have been a number of important conceptual developments in SST over the two decades since Hughes’ and Law’s papers first appeared. Nevertheless, the essential elements of both theoretical frameworks have remained intact as models upon which to build further and more elaborate theories of technical change in the modern period. As I have tried to show in the previous pages, both theories provide useful conceptual tools for understanding technological development in the pre-modern as well as the modern periods. In future research on the role of milling in the medieval economy, I hope to further demonstrate just how useful such concepts can be.

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conclusion ‒ chapter ten Do mills have politics?

One of the most commonly held views about the social relations of technology in the modern era is that technology can be used or abused. According to this view, technology is neutral. Using technology appropriately involves employing it and maintaining it for the purposes for which it was designed, while abusing technology means going against this principle. It involves neglecting it or deliberately attempting to disassemble it, destroy it, or use it for a destructive or negative purpose. However, there are at least two major difficulties with this way of conceiving of our relationship with technology. First and perhaps most important, it immediately forecloses the possibility of considering whether particular technologies are socially desirable separate from the achievement of their functional goals, or how indeed the range of choices currently available came to be so. Second, it dictates the conclusion that it is simply a matter of individual choice as to how we use different technologies. We are constructed only as active shapers to the extent that we conform with the model of use and abuse in our individual relationships with technology. A corollary of this view is that the inventors, designers, builders and managers of the technologies that surround us have little agency in their relationships with the technology on which they work. These people are simply following the inherent “logic” of the technological trajectories that have evolved over the centuries, much like the machines on which they work! Any social obligations that they might wish to fulfil or social objectives that they may wish to achieve have only cosmetic effects on the design, construction or use of those technologies, because their path of development and the conditions in which they thrive are virtually predetermined from the outset. Like the myth of technological determinism, the use-abuse model of technology is a legitimating fiction that obscures social power relations and the role of individuals, groups and institutions in shaping technological choices and outcomes. It has also been the subject of considerable critique within the social studies of technology. In his widely read and reproduced discussion of whether artefacts have politics, from his book The Whale and the Reactor (1986), Langdon Winner makes a sustained argument for the case that most technologies are flexible with respect to the social and political arrangements in which they can become embedded and which they promote

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in their turn, but that some are inherently political in their aims and constitution. It is therefore misleading and irresponsible to regard technology in general as politically (and morally and ethically) neutral, as many modernist scholars and popular pundits have done in the past, and will no doubt continue to do well into the future. Winner’s thesis has important ramifications for understanding whether certain kinds of technology favour certain kinds of social and political arrangements, and how different individuals, social groups and institutions within a given society shape the technologies that are most commonly used. It is therefore useful in understanding the political processes at play in relation to ancient and medieval milling technologies. Winner argues that technologies can be inherently political in two senses. The first involves the design of a particular technology, which can open certain social options while simultaneously foreclosing others. The second sense is more comprehensive, in that it regards a technological artefact or system as being entirely political in its function. According to this view, certain technologies actually dictate, or at least are highly compatible with, the existence of certain social and political arrangements that ensure their perpetuation. The first sense of inherently political technologies is illustrated by Winner with reference to the low-hanging overpasses on Long Island designed by Robert Moses, master builder for the city of New York between the 1920s and 1970s. Moses deliberately had these overpasses built to specifications that would prevent buses containing poor whites and racial minorities from gaining access to the recreational facilities on the island, i.e., the overpasses were too low to accommodate buses. It was, therefore, not the overpasses as elements of transport technology per se that were inherently political, but Moses’ élitist and racist attitudes which informed a key element of the design of the overpasses.42 Winner illustrates the second sense with respect to nuclear power technology, which “requires the creation and maintenance of a particular set of social conditions as the operating environment of that system” [italics in original]: in this case, the strategic necessity of maintaining a techno-scientific and military-industrial élite to operate and oversee the production, maintenance, development and security

42

Winner (1989), pp. 28–9; Gandy (2002), pp. 126–37.

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of that technology. A weaker version of Winner’s second sense of inherently political technologies holds that certain technologies are strongly compatible with, rather than completely dictate, certain social and political arrangements. Solar power technology, for example, while favouring decentralization and democratic control at a local or regional level, does not dictate that such arrangements are neccessary for its successful operation.43 If we follow Winner’s reasoning and apply it to pre-modern milling technologies, we can differentiate between those milling technologies that are highly flexible with respect to the social and political forms of life in which they can become embedded, and those which are strongly compatible with, or which dictate, certain social and political arrangements. While the most primitive kinds of handmills—the concave grinding stone and the saddle quern—are undoubtedly flexible with respect to the forms of social and political life they support, in societies where they provide the only method for grinding grain, they require their (female) operators to dedicate several hours of each day to grinding. It is, therefore, only in those societies in which no more efficient milling technologies existed, and women had sufficient time each day to expend on grinding, that these kinds of handmills were widely used. If we apply the social categories of structuralist anthropology and combine them with our current knowledge of the historical development of milling technologies, we can conclude that the kinds of societies in which primitive handmills were useful were hunter-gatherer societies, chiefdom societies, and some of the earliest states.44 It is also worth noting that as human societies developed more stratified and patriarchal social relations (particularly in the transition from chiefdoms to states), hand-grinding became less of a communal task for the women of the tribe or village, and more of a task relegated to lower class women and female slaves. It would seem, therefore, that the use of these primitive types of handmill was most compatible with egalitarian societies that enjoyed a low level of material culture, as well as stratified and hierarchical societies that had not yet acquired or developed more sophisticated grinding equipment. 43

Ibid., pp. 31–2. See Service (1975), for an explication of the characteristics of these various social orders. 44

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The inventions of the hopper-rubber, lever mill and rotary quern in the first half of the first millennium BCE marked the emergence of a new attitude to the design of milling technologies: a conscious effort to reduce the labour required of the grinder. While the earliest efforts to mechanize the grinding process did not liberate the women concerned from having to perform that labour, they did relieve those women from some proportion of their previous daily workload. We can thus see how these particular technological artefacts shaped certain social outcomes in the societies concerned. The political ramifications of their ownership and use was to reduce the amount of labour required of women to perform a common domestic task. It did not transform their social status, however, or the political arrangements in which they found themselves. Of these three new labour-reducing mills, it was of course the rotary quern that became the most common and widely distributed. Being relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, the rotary quern was deployed in an extremely varied range of geographical locations, and used by a wide range of different kinds of people, from household slaves and women of the lower classes, to legionaries and women of the middle classes. In other words, the technology of the rotary handmill fitted comfortably into existing patterns of social and political power, and while it undoubtedly liberated some women and slaves from many additional hours of tedious labour, it did so only to free them for work on other tasks. It was, therefore, flexible in the kinds of political and social arrangements in which it could become embedded. Interestingly, it was not until the widespread diffusion of the watermill and feudal social relations that the rotary quern takes on a more political hue, as an alternative and already well-established technology that threatened the gains made by the newer technology. We have seen evidence from medieval England that the use of the rotary handmill in a domestic setting (and sometimes even a small-scale commercial setting) was a more economical alternative to water- or windpowered milling for many families, and a symbolic if not actual political threat to lords who held the legal right to force their manorial tenants to use their mills.45 This evidence suggests that the rotary handmill tended to encourage a more egalitarian availability of milling

45

See, for example, Holt (1988), Ch. 3; Langdon (1994).

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resources which posed a potential threat to élite milling monopolies and was, therefore, sometimes the focus of disputes between lords and tenants over self-governing rights. But it did not and perhaps could not transform social and political relations of power. The beast mill was, like the rotary handmill, similarly used in a wide range of different contexts, from commercial bakeries, workshops and military barracks to monasteries, villas and manors. Unlike the rotary quern, however, it appears to have first emerged in an urban commercial setting. Although significantly more expensive than a rotary handmill to build and maintain, the construction of beast mills was cheap enough to enable their successful deployment in a range of socio-political settings, from militaristic proto-states to feudal, mercantile and imperial states. One example of the first type of society that was covered in the book is Anglo-Saxon England, and of the second, Anglo-Norman England, while ancient and medieval China and the Roman Empire represent examples of the fourth kind. Because the situation in medieval England is the best-documented and studied, it is worth examining the political and economic role of the horse mill at different stages there in a little more detail. Beast mills in the form of horse mills appear to have first become commonplace in England after the Black Death. In the wake of a prolonged demographic decline as the result of successive waves of plague between c. 1350 and 1500, many wind- and watermills that had previously been profitable were allowed to fall into ruin, and lordly milling monopolies allowed to lapse. After many lords had also converted grain mills to fulling mills or other industrial mills in their attempts to maintain a reasonable income from those mills, the existing grain milling capacity was insufficient to meet a patchy growth in demand during the fifteenth century.46 While watermills were generally more profitable to build, rebuild and maintain than post-mills, both were capital intensive enterprises, ensuring that lordly investors were more inclined to put their efforts into larger mills and complexes. With the relaxation of lordly suit of mill, a space was left in the industry for smaller entrepreneurs to invest in a cheaper milling technology that produced a similar product at a lower price, enabling further growth in the sector of the milling industry that was outside of lordly control. In the context of England at least, the

46

Langdon (2004), pp. 28, 47–8.

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popularity of the horse mill does appear to have benefited from the changing structure of the milling industry in the late middle ages, although the extent to which it altered social and economic relations remains under-determined.47 Its more widespread use was, therefore, largely the result of a transformation in social power relations in the wake of the Black Death, but the growth in its use also contributed to that transformation by providing an alternative form of mill ownership that was more affordable for the lower social orders.48 The invention of watermills was the culmination of the labourreducing goal that first emerged in the earliest mechanised handmills almost a millennium earlier. Along with the compartmented waterwheel and the industrial waterwheel, watermills were amongst the first commonly used technologies to harness renewable energy. Although watermills did not require the muscle-power of women, slaves or beasts to move them, the cost of constructing and maintaining any kind of watermill was beyond the means of most individuals in ancient and medieval societies. Indeed, early medieval Irish law stipulated that the ownership of watermills was primarily a privilege of the wealthy and noble.49 Like the beast mill, the horizontal-wheeled watermill appears to have had some very clear and direct social and political ramifications, in that it allowed tribal, peasant and mercantile communities with weak lordship, limited capital, and less refined tastes in ground cereals to deploy a milling technology over which they could exercise a great deal of control independent of political élites. Predictably, such advantages made the horizontal-wheeled watermill a focus of élite efforts to ensure its demise in areas where it threatened their authority and/or profits. As we saw in Chapters One and Two, evidence of how such political efforts were played out historically can be found from Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Denmark in the seventeenth century.50

47 See Holt (1988), Ch. 10. Langdon (2004), Fig. 2.7, has more recently shown a sharp rise in horse mill numbers throughout England in the period from 1390 to 1540. 48 Whereas replacement watermills could cost anywhere in the vicinity of £40–70 in the late fourteenth century, a horse mill could be built for as little as £5–6. See Langdon (2004), pp. 38–9, 179, 329. 49 Kelly (1997), p. 482. 50 The Danish evidence is briefly discussed in relation to an article by Jespersen in Chapter One, n. 70.

332

conclusion ‒ chapter ten

The vertical-wheeled watermill had both economic and design advantages over its simpler and less expensive rivals. While conventional vertical-wheeled watermills were relatively expensive to build and maintain (a brand new watermill cost thirty to forty times the annual wage of an average worker in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries), their location on a dependable waterway produced a secure and predictable income. They also yielded a better return on investment than other milling technologies such as post-mills, produced a finer grade of flour than their alternatives, and in terms of ownership and control of mills contributed to the aura of status and power that clung to the social groups that owned them. It was for these reasons the favoured milling technology of the élites. As we have seen, the construction of vertical-wheeled watermills was restricted to royal estates, monasteries, country villas and manors, as well as areas in which there was a large urban or military population. These were also places in which there was a significant demand for the more finely ground flour which could not be produced by either handmills or the various kinds of “sweat mill” driven by human and animal power. By implication, this meant that the verticalwheeled watermill could only thrive in a social order that was hierarchical, and in which the legal and political system enabled capital accumulation in the hands of a small élite. The construction of such mills could only be undertaken by those who could afford a significant capital outlay. This could be offset to some extent by groups of investors becoming shareowners in a mill, but such shareholding (or moieties) in vertical-wheeled watermills remained relatively infrequent throughout ancient and medieval times, although it did vary to some extent from region to region and country to country.51 At least on the face of it, the vertical-wheeled watermill can be seen as an authoritarian form of technology, a view which was undoubtedly held by Bloch,52 as well as Pierre Dockès.53 However, it is too simplistic to unproblematically label vertical-wheeled water-

51 As we saw in Chapter Two, Squatriti has noted that share-owning in (probably mostly horizontal-wheeled) mills declined in Italy from the ninth century onwards, and that this was related to a concentration of mill ownership in fewer and more powerful hands (i.e., those of “rulers, magnates, and especially ecclesiastical officials [and] institutions”) as the Italian feudal system came into being; Squatriti (1998), pp. 142–5. 52 See Bloch (1967). 53 Dockès (1982).

the social shaping of milling technology

333

mills in this way. Both Holt and Langdon have shown with respect to England that in circumstances where lordly compulsion was relatively weak and a competitive market existed for milling (i.e., particularly in the towns), many peasant households still appeared to favour taking their grain to a watermill or windmill over grinding at home. While some possible reasons for this have been canvassed in Chapter Five, my purpose here is to simply point out that how the milling industry was structured in terms of which classes and groups owned and controlled which milling technologies, and how the law operated in relation to milling practices, varied from region to region and country to country, and therefore had a strong influence on the general population’s perceptions of which kinds of milling practices were of the greatest benefit to them. We need to understand what the alternatives were in each case, and why a technology that may appear oppressive on the face of it, may have actually been more liberatory than the milling technology for which it may have offered an alternative, e.g., the rotary handmill. At a more fundamental level, it needs to be recognised that ancient and medieval ruling élites, whether religious, military, or aristocratic, were parasitic upon the technological innovations of artisans and craftworkers of the lower classes in situations in which they perceived that it was in their interests to be so. Those technologies which required large initial capital outlays or long-term investments in order to return a reasonable profit were obviously beyond the means of most people during this period. Being generally conservative and risk-averse, ruling élites tended to favour investments in those economic sectors in which there was a strong, dependable and continuous demand, i.e., precisely those sectors of everyday life outlined in the first chapter which experienced technological innovation in the ancient world, i.e., water supply, housing, transport, food production and entertainment. By investing strategically in such technologies within dependable markets, members of these élites could not only minimize their risks but maximize their profits. In making this argument, however, we should remember that it is only in those areas where there was an extensive state apparatus with a relatively uniform legal system and the coercive powers to back it up that this kind of appropriation and investment could take place. The extent to which different societies improved the rationality of these processes can be seen in the surviving legal and financial documents; most notably during the Roman, and early and

334

conclusion ‒ chapter ten

high medieval periods in Italy, France and England. During those periods and in those places in which the state was either weak or non-existent, the law based on custom and tradition, and property rights based on clan relations (such as early medieval Ireland, early Anglo-Saxon Britain, Islamic Spain and post-classical Italy), the rotary handmill and horizontal-wheeled watermill appear to have predominated. In late medieval England, the horse mill appears to have provided the lower orders of society with a substitute the horizontalwheeled watermill, enabling them to gain a larger share of the powered milling sector than they had possibly enjoyed since the early middle ages. It is worth paraphrasing Paolo Squatriti’s comments in relation to early medieval Italy on these points, while keeping in mind that their relevance is more general. Having made a number of similar observations to those made in this chapter, he argues that the main cultural, economic and geographical factors shaping the kinds of milling technology that emerged in different regions of Italy were “hydrology, the availability of muscle power, cultural predispositions [pertaining to] . . . certain cereal products, capital, and population levels”.54 Because these factors “varied hugely throughout Italy at different times in the early medieval centuries . . . milling technologies did too.”55

Conclusion The broader lesson that can be drawn from this discussion about the relationship between technological and cultural development in the pre-modern period is that the environment, demographics, social structure and socio-economic relations play as important a role in the constitution of pre-modern technologies as they do in modern technologies. The contingent elements that constitute any particular pre-modern technology must be closely analysed in order to understand how and why a particular technology was successful in a particular cultural context, and to what extent its success in that context contributed to social change. As we have seen, such an analysis of necessity requires an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses the

54 55

Squatriti (1998), p. 139. Ibid.

the social shaping of milling technology

335

disciplines of geography, sociology, economics, and various branches of historical enquiry, as well as archaeology if the focus of study lies outside the past century or so. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that this book will be seen in some quarters as an extension of the Annaliste approach to historical writing. While I certainly do not reject such a characterization, the historiographical methods pursued in this book owe just as much to the rapprochement between neoMarxist and neo-Malthusian approaches to medieval history that have been a feature of British medieval studies over the last few decades, as well as the eclectic contextualism of recent trends in the historiography of the sciences.56 The various approaches embodied in these hitherto separate research traditions can be further strengthened by utilizing the insights outlined from the social studies of technology to provide the basis for a new empirical research program in pre-modern technology. It is hoped that this book may provide a model for similar research in future.

56 On recent trends in the historiography of the middle ages, see, for example, Astill & Langdon (1997), Ch. 1, and of the sciences, Henry (2002), Ch. 1.

APPENDICES

China

Kansu region, China China throughout China Japan China Middle East?

20 CE

129 CE

180 CE

3rd & 4th c.

7th c.

855

> 10th c.

water-powered rice-hulling machine/rice-huller using waterwheel

Place

Date

Type

al-Hassan & Hill (1986): 214–5

Needham (1965): 202, citing Yu-Yang Tsa Tsu 5: 1b.

Hay (1969): 321

Ibid.: 392–3, citing Shih Shuo Hsin Yü, cf. 3B: 31b; Chin Shu 43: 7a; Wang Yin Chin Shu; Chin Shu 33: 13a.

Ibid.: 390, n.d., citing Fu Chhien, Thung Su Wên.

Ibid., citing Yü Hsü, Hou Han Shu 117: 22a.

Needham (1965): 392, citing Huan Than, Hsin Lun.

Citation

The table below is a compilation of references to ancient and medieval industrial mills taken from the most frequently cited literature in the history of technology, as well as a selection of relevant works from ancient and medieval archaeology and medieval social and economic history. Any citations of dubious veracity are marked with an asterisk. Underlining of text marks the divide between reliable and unreliable documentation. Where authors have not given a location, they generally mean to indicate somewhere in Western Europe.

APPENDIX A: INDUSTRIAL MILLS IN EURASIA AND NORTH AFRICA, 20 TO 1600 CE

China

China China China China China

China Trent, Italy

31 CE

c. 230

c. 250

420

c. 424–9

5th & 6th c.

814

1214

water-powered bellows

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

*Blaine (1966): 125, citing Urkundenbuch des Hochstiftes Trient (Codex Wangianus), ed. Rudolk Kink, Vienna, 1852, no. 242: 453–5: werki qui laborant argentum ad rotas. The wheels concerned may have

Ibid.: 373, citing Yuan-Ho Chün Hsien Thu Chih.

Ibid.: 378, citing Anyang Hsien Chih. This is the earliest unambiguous reference to the use of waterwheels with bellows cited by Needham.

Ibid.: 370, citing Phi Ling, Wu Chhang Chi, cf. TPYL 833: 36.

Ibid.: 372, citing Tai Tsu, Hsi Chêng Chi, in Shui Ching Chu 16: 26

Ibid., citing Chin Shu 34: 9b.

Needham (1965): 370, citing San Kuo Chih 24: 1b.

White (1964): 81, citing H. Chatley, “The development of mechanisms in ancient China”, Engineering 153 (1942): 175, who apparently cites the date as c. 50 AD, which was corrected to 31 AD by Dr Annaliese Bulling in a letter to White, the latter date also confirmed by J. Needham, “L’Unité de la science: l’apport indespensable de l’Asie”, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 2.1 (1949): 579.

Citation

340 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place

Hradish monastery, Moravia, Slovakia

Tarn dist., France

Devonshire, England San Marcello, Italy Nivernais, France

Date

1269

1283

1295

1390

1399

Blaine (1976): 128, citing “L’évolution de la sidérurgie en Nivernaise”, Techniques et civilisations 3.5

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, G602, March 13, 1390.

Ibid.: 131, citing L.F. Salzman, English Industries of the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1923: 56 (new edn.), citing Pipe Roll 28 Edward I.

Ibid.: 126, citing Charles Cabie, “Moulins à fer dans la Montagne Noire,” Revue du Tarn, 1903: 240; Gille, “Cartulaire de la sidérurgie française”, Pr. III, Revue d’histoire de la sidérurgie 4 (April–June 1963–2): 120, 123, the latter stating that this is the earliest French document to make reference to hydraulic forge-hammers.

Blaine (1966): 129 and idem (1976): 176, citing Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Moraviae 4 (1268–1293), ed. Antonius Boczek, Olmütz, 1845: 37: duo molendina que vulgo hutte dicuntur . . . in fluvio Bistrecie (“two mills that will be commonly devoted to a hut for smelting lead . . . in the river of Bistrecht”).

been animal- or human-powered, rather than water-powered.

Citation

appendix a 341

sawmill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Ruwar, Germany

Jerash, Jordan Ephesus, Turkey Middle East? Korsun, River Ros, Russia

6th c.

7th c.

?

1195

Germany

14th & 15th c.

397 CE

Place

Date

*Lewis (1993): 173–4, citing George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia, New Haven & London, 1948: 300.

al-Hassan & Hill (1986): 54

Wikander (2000): 405

Seigne (2002).

Ausonius, Mosella, l. 361–4. The passage concerned reads: praecipiti torquens cerealia saxa rotatu / stridentesque trahens per levia marmora serras / audit perpetuos ripa ex utraque tumultus (“[from] the turning of mill-stones in a headlong rotation and the drawing of creaking saws through smooth blocks of marble, [can be] heard an incessant din from both banks”). Translation after Wikander (2000): 404.

Blaine (1966): 133, citing Forbes (1956a): 71–5; John U. Nef, “Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilization”, The Cambridge Economic History 2, Cambridge, 1952: 462.

(1954): 161: “Un bail du 22 novembre 1399 révèle l’esistance à Raveau d’une place de forge avec le ‘sault d’eau’”. Blaine notes that “a hammer seems to be implied here, but bellows may have been involved also.”

Citation

342 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Swiss Jura German Alps

Aude region, France Gille (1969a): 457 Isère region, France Breslau, Silesia, Poland France

Saint-Sernin Abbey, Toulouse, France

Prémol Mtns, France Reynolds (1983): 90, citing Thérèse Sclafert, Le Haut-Dauphiné au Moyen Age, Paris, 1926: 197–8, 202, 435.

1268

early 14th c.

early 14th c.

early 14th c.

c. 1300

1303

1304

Gille (1969a): 457

Ibid.: 156, citing Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, s.v., molendina de planchia, molendina reseguae (resega = serra or saw).

Blaine (1966): 157, citing Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis, ed. H. Markgraf & J. Schulte, Breslau, 1889: 112.

Ibid.

Blaine (1966): 156, citing Alfred Ribeaud, Le moulin feodal: Dissertation sur l’évolution du régime feodal et la condition des usines hydrauliques dans la principauté épiscopale de Bâle, Lausanne, 1920: 11: tria molendina et unum serram, cum areis ibidem contiguis.

Gille (1969a): 457

It is not clear from Lewis’ citation whether the source for this reference is verifiable.

1268

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 343

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Dauphiné, France Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany

France Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany England France San Marcello, Italy

R. Roise, Dauphiné, Blaine (1966): 156, citing Sclafert, op. cit., France pp. 197–202, citing Archives départementales de l’Isère, B2946, f382 & b2946, f482.

1307

1322

1330

1337

1376

1376

1384

1386

Muendel (1974): 211, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, T279, January 26, 1384.

Usher (1988): 186, citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Forbes (1958): 611

Usher (1988): 186, citing Poppe, Geschichte der Technologie 2: 34–6.

Ibid.: 156, citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Ibid.: 157, citing Walter Kuhn, “Das Spätmmittelalter als technisches Zeitalter”, Ostdeutsch Wissenschaft 1 (1954): 73, citing a municipal law of Augsburg: molitori dicto Hanrey pro asseribus et swaertlingis.

Ibid., citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 435, citing Archives départementales de l’Isère, H, 787, rouleau No. 22.

Blaine (1966): 156, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 435, citing Archives départementales de l’Isère, H, 820.

Dauphiné, France

1304

Citation

Place

Date

344 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place 2 mills in Bibbiena & Incisa, Firenze, Italy Augsburg, Germany France France France 8 mills throughout Firenze, Italy

Cutigliano, Italy Masiano, Italy France

Date

c. 1387

1389

1391

1393

1400

early 15th c.

1402

1404

1415

Usher (1988): 186, citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Ibid., citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, F307, July 28, 1404, 35r–36r.

Muendel (1974): 211, citing Cronache di ser Luca Dominici, ed. G.C. Gigliotti, Pistoia, 1939, 2:92.

Muendel (1981): 105. Five of these sawmills were in the quarter of San Giovanni, four of which were on the torrent Dicomano, and another on the river Arno near Pratovecchio. Another three were located in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella, two of which were in Firenzuola, while the other was in Scarperia. See: Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 79: 246r; 325: 517v, 521r, 542r, 576v; 179: 333v; 178: 91r, 274r, 255v.

Ibid., citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Ibid., citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Ibid., citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Usher (1988): 186, citing Poppe, op. cit.

Muendel (1981): 104, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA), 103r & 48r.

Citation

appendix a 345

forge mill/“hammer mill”

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Spain

China

1627

c. 883–904

Nuremberg, Germany

1584

Compludo monastery, Leon, Spain

13 mills throughout Pistoia, Italy

c. 1427–30

7th c.

Breslau (Wroclaw), Poland

1427

Japan

Madeira

1420

670

Place

Date

*Ibid.: 243, citing Formulae Sangallenses, ed. K. Zeumer, MGH Leges 5, 1886: 385, in which there is a reference to molinis vel pilis in a charter recording a grant of property. See also Horn (1975): 254, in which the relevant text in Latin is quoted. It is nevertheless unclear what these pilis were used for.

*Horn (1975): 242–3. The date suggested by Horn is not justified, but the forge concerned is probably medieval.

Needham (1965): 401; Hay (1969): 321.

Needham (1975): 404, citing Chhi Chhi Thu Shuo.

Blaine (1966): 154, citing Theodor Hampe, Nürnberger Ratsverlässe über Kunst und Künstler 2: 128.

Muendel (1974): 212, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 189, 260, 261, & 265, 2v.

Usher (1988): 186, citing Du Cange, op. cit.

Blaine (1966): 158, citing Abraham Peritsol, Itinera Mundi (c. 1547), ed. & trans. Thomas Hyde, Oxford, 1691, ch. XVII: 114: serrae quae ligna secant per vires cursus octo fluviorum minorum.

Citation

346 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

England

Bayonne region, Gascony, France Cistercians in France Forbes (1956): 610

Cardedeu, Catalonia, Gille (1969a): 456. Cf. Blaine (1966), pp. 122–3, Spain where he cites Antoni Gallardo i Garriga and Santiago Rubio i Tuduri, La Farga Catalana, Barcelona, 1930, pp. 42–4, as having listed single forge mills at Cardedeu in 1104, Sant Andreu de Palomar in 1138, Gurb in 1155, and Vicarises i Rellinas in 1185, as well as fourteen around Barcelona between 1131 and 1162. Blaine notes, however, that no manuscript references are provided, although at p. 44, Garriga and Tuduri note that, “En 8 d’octubre de 1190, el rei Alfons II d’Arago donà a Bernat Ferrer i descendents la seva farga dels Molins del Llobregat, que feia poc havia fet

1086

late 11th c.

12th c.

1104

*Ibid., citing Bertrand Gille, “Problème du moulin à eau”, Techniques et civilisations 2 (1951): 34.

*White (1964): 84. White’s citation of a passage from Domesday Book for Somersetshire, 1862: xii, based on the supposition that the mill rent being paid in blooms of iron indicates that it was a forge-mill, is dubious. See Holt (1988): 149.

*Forbes (1956): 611. Forbes’ source for this claim is probably the same as that cited by White below.

England

1086

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 347

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place

? Issoudun, France Catalonia, Spain 14 mills, Catalonian Pyrenees Soröe Abbey, Sweden

Bordesley Abbey, England

Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, England Évreux, Normandy, France

Date

1116

1116

1138

1151

1197

late 12th c.

c. 1200

1202

Bautier (1960): 604, citing F. Lot & R. Fawtier, Le plus ancien budget de la monarchie française, Paris, 1932: 174 a.: molendina fabrorum.

Blaine (1966): 130, citing Rodney F. Butler, The History of Kirkstall Forge: 1200–1945 AD, Kirkstall, 1945: 1.

Holt (1988): 151. See, for example, “Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1985”, Medieval Archaeology 30 (1986): 153. There is some uncertainty about whether this was a forge mill or water-powered bellows.

*Ibid. There is no reason to attribute this mill to 1197, which is the date of the grant of the village of Toaker to Soröe Abbey, not the date at which the aforesaid reference appears (see the entry below).

Gille (1969a): 456

Ibid.

Holt (1988): 149

Forbes (1956): 610

construir, a condicio de guardar l’edifici vivint—hi i fer i adobar, les eines de ferro que s’haguessin de menester per als molins del rei.”

Citation

348 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Evry, Champagne, France Toaker, Halland, Sweden

Catalonia, Spain France Oberpfalz, E. Germany ? s. Champagne, France Ariège dist., France

Date

1203

1224

1224

13th c.

13th c.

13th c.

13th c.

1237

Ibid.: 127, citing Eugène Schneider, Le carbon, son histoire, son destin, Paris, 1945: 38, in which the author apparently “refers, without documentation, to an act of 1237 which granted the right to use water-courses ‘indispensible à la marche du martinet ou du soufflet de la forge’.”

Forbes (1956): 610

Forbes (1953): 51

Blaine (1976): 169, citing Monumenta Boica 36.1, ed. Academia scientarum boica, Munich, 1852: 357, 531–2.

Gille (1969a): 456

Hill (1998): XVIII-10

Blaine (1966): 117–18 and Blaine (1976): 169, citing “Liber donationum monasterii sorensis”, Scriptores rerum danicarum medii aevi 4, Bk. 121, ed. P.F. Suhna, Copenhagen, 1776: 471: de molendino, ubi fabricatur ferrum. Cf. Bautier, op. cit.: 606, n. 1; Holt (1988): 150.

Ibid.: 605, citing Actes Champenois: Archives Nationales, S4955, 1. 1, No. 10: martellos molendinorum Templi.

Citation

appendix a 349

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Yonné, France

?

throughout central & Blaine (1966): 129, citing Kuhn, op. cit.: 73–4; Kuhn, eastern Europe Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung in der Neuzeit 1,

1299

14th c.

14th c.

Lilley (1948): 39

Ibid.: 128, citing Comptes royaux (1285–1315), ed. Robert Fawtier & Francois Maillard, Paris, 1953, t. 1: 102, no. 2117, citing a roll from the baillage Toussaint, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, dated 1299: de censu molendini ad ferrum.

*Forbes (1956): 127, citing Raymond Barbe, Recueil des titres authentiques, chartes, privileges, franchises, actes de concession, régalements divers concernant les mines de fer de Hancié (Arièges), Toulouse, 1865: 7. The reference here to water rights being made available for the mines need not have involved water-power, it may have simply been for the washing or separating out of ores.

Ariège dist., France

1293

Citation Blaine (1966): 126, citing Charles Cabie, “Moulins à fer dans la Montagne Noire”, Revue du Tarn, 1903, p. 240: “G. Audeband et G. Fort, coseigneurs d’Escoussens, donnent en acapte à Guillaume Metge des terres dans la montagne, à condition qui’ils y construisent un moulin à battre le fer au lieudit la Baugassara, et à côté un four.”

Place

1283

Date

350 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Chingley, Kent, England Saxony, Germany

Arvieux, Ibid.: 126, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 604, citing Archives R. Colombet, France départmentales de l’Isère, B 3010, f539 and b 2960, f673. Arvieux, Ibid.: 126, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 436–7, citing R. Colombet, France Archives départmentales de l’Isère, B 2496, f167. Lorraine, France

Württemberg, Germany Silesia, Poland

1300

1311

1316

1323

1336

1337

Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Blaine (1966): 129, citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Blaine (1976): 128, citing Alfred Weyhmann, Geschichte der älteren lothringischen Eisenindustrie, Metz, 1905, citing Archives départmentale de Meuse, Bar-le-Duc, B 311, s259 (from Briey): “quils doibvent faire une forge faisant fer par eaue . . . lequel leur auroit permis d’y faire encors une fournaise.”

Blaine (1966): 129, citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Holt (1988): 150, citing Crossley (1981): 36.

Cologne, 1955: 213. Kuhn apparently provides “a fully documented list”, in Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, pp. 212–6.

1st half 14th c.

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 351

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

nr. Liverpool, Lancashire, England

Thuringia, Germany Warley, Yorkshire, England

Arvieux, Blaine (1966): 126, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 201, citing R. Colombet, France Archives départmentales de l’Isère, B 3004, f436: nunc vero, ipse nives subito, propter nemorum peruriam que ipsas aquas emitunt, non veniunt ad utilitatem martineti. N. Bohemia, Czech Republic Upper Silesia, Poland

1346

1348

1349

1350

1357

1361

Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Blaine (1966): 130, citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Holt (1988): 150, citing Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield 1348–50, ed. H.M. Jewell, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Wakefield Court Rolls Series, 2, 1981: xxi; H. Jewell, D. Michelmore, S. Moorhouse, “An Oliver at Warley, West Yorkshire, CE 1349–50”, Historical Metallurgy, Vol. 15, 1981: 39–40.

Ibid.: 129, citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Ibid.: 131, citing H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry from c. 450 BC to CE 1775, London, 1957: 342, citing British Museum, Add. MS. 32103, fol. 140.

Erzgebirge, Germany Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

1340

Citation

Place

Date

352 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Oberpfalz, Germany Lusatia, Germany Catalonia, Spain

Prussia, Germany Brandenburg, Germany Gavinana, T. Maresca, Italy San Marcello, Italy Creskeld, Yorshire, England

Date

1364

1366

1368

1372

1380

1388

1390

1395

Holt (1988): 150, citing M.L. Faull & S.A. Moorhouse, West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Survey to AD 1500 3, Wakefield, 1981: 775–6. Cf. Blaine (1966): 131, who cites Schubert, op. cit.: 342, who in turn cites Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds,

Ibid., citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, G602, March 13, 1390, 49v–50r.

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, G387, August 8, 1388, 49v–50r.

Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Blaine (1966): 130, citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Blaine (1976): 127, citing Gallardo I Garriga & Rubio I Tuduri, La Farga Catalana, Barcelona, 1930: 46–7: un moli per a fer ferro, sota els termes I vila de Prats.

Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Ibid., citing Kuhn, Geschichte der Deutschen Ostsiedlung, op. cit.

Citation

appendix a 353

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place

T. Brana, nr. Ripalta, Italy Nivernais, France

R. Boldua, W. Hungary

3 mills, Yorkshire, England T. Liesina, Italy

Byrkeknotte, Weardale, England

Date

1395

1399

1399

15th c.

1400

1400

Holt (1988): 150, citing G.T. Lapsley, “The account roll of a fifteenth century iron master”, English Historical Review 14 (1899): 509–29.

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, P448, August 7, 1400.

Holt (1988): 150, citing M.L. Faull & S.A. Moorhouse, West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Survey to AD 1500 3, Wakefield, 1981: 775–6.

Blaine (1966): 130, citing Elemer Mályusz, Zeigmondkori oklevéltár, Vol. 1, Budapest, 1951: 677–8. An act dated 24 Oct. 1399, states: in Zalona, super fluvio Boldua . . . unum molendinum vulgo hamor dictum.

Blaine (1976): 128, citing “L’évolution de la sidérurgie en Nivernaise”, Techniques et civilisations 3.5 (1954): 161: “Un bail du 22 novembre 1399 révèle l’esistance à Raveau d’une place de forge avec le ‘sault d’eau’”.

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, G387, October 23, 1395, 7r–7v.

Deed C. 25. The smithy here apparently “had a watercourse leading to one wheel (unius rote).”

Citation

354 appendices

Act of Charles the Bald, France Saint-Vaast d’Arras, Vaux-sur-Somme, France Vaux-sur-Somme, France

861

862

867

Ibid., citing Tessier, op. cit., t. 11: 174, 18, No. 304: camba I et duobus molendinis.

Ibid., citing Le Prévost, Memoires pour servir a l’histoire du département de l’Eure, t. 1: 460, 47: de molendinis et cambas.

Ibid.: 602, citing G. Tessier, Actes de Charles le Chauve, t. 11: 2, 21, no. 225: molendinum unum cum camba superposita.

Gorze Abbey, France Bautier (1960): 601, citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Gorze, ed. A. d’Herbomez, Paris, 1898: 42, 14.

Needham (1965): 404, citing Thang Yü Lin 4: 2b.

Holt (1988): 150, citing Cleere & Crossley, The Iron Industry in the Weald, Leicester, 1985: 106–8, 309–67.

770

Weald region, Sussex, England 189 sites (less than 20 from before early 16th c.)

15th–16th c

Muendel (1974): 210, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 189, 260, 261 & 265.

Muendel (1981): 104, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA), 99r.

malt mill/“beer” mill

11 mills throughout Pistoia, Italy

1427–30

China

San Godenzo, Firenze, Italy

1425–7

Citation

747

Place

Date

water-powered fan

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

appendix a 355

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Saint-Sauveur, Montreuil-sur-Mer, France

Act of King Henry I, Bautier (1960): 602, citing Georges de Lhomel, Saint-Sauveur, Recueil de documents pour servir à l’histoire de Montreuil-sur-Mer, Montreuil-sur-Mer . . ., supplément . . ., Compiègne, 1907: France 3, no. 2: molendinum duos cervisiae usibus de servientes. Unsourced citation by Gille (1969a): 456. This act was a confirmation of charters of 987 & 996, to which Gimpel was presumably referring in the previous citation. Évreux, France Lillebonne, France St Georges de Boscherville Abbey, Normandy, France

987 & 996

1042

1088

1100

1100–1135

Bautier (1960): 602, citing Actes de Henri II, t. 11: 191, no. 594 (1187–92): molendinum braisarium. This mill was apparently attached to a hospice run by the abbey.

Gille (1969a): 456

Bautier (1960): 602, citing Prévost, op. cit., t. 1: 206, 9: molendinum bresarium.

Gimpel (1988): 14

Ibid.: 601, citing Polyptique de l’abbaye de Saint-Remi de Reims, ed. B. Guérard, Paris, 1853: 21; Polyptique de l’abbaye de Montiérender, ed. Charles Lalore, Paris: 2; Polyptique de Saint-Vanne de Verdun, ed. B. Guérard, cf. Guérard, 1853: 119.

Saint-Remy de Reims, Montiérender, Saint-Vanne de Verdun, France

9th & 10th c.

Citation

Place

Date

356 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Béthune, France 4 mills nr. Brussels, Belgium Orchies, France Jumièges à Duclair Abbey, Normandy, France Liége, France

England Lübeck, Germany

Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, England England

Date

1138

c. 1173

1188

1188 & 1190

mid 13th c.

1251

1262

1269/70

1297

Latham (1999): 55

The Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, ed. S.F. Hockey, Camden Fourth Series 16, Royal Historical Society, London: 93–4.

Blaine (1966): 75, citing Urkundenbuch der Stadt Lübeck (Codex diplomaticus Lubecensis), ed. Verein für lübeckische Geschichte 1.269, Lübeck, 1843: 247–8: unum [molendinum] last tritici et unum last bracii avenacii.

Latham (1999): 302

Blaine (1966): 75, citing Cartulaire de l’église Saint-Lambert de Liége 1, ed. S. Boormans & E. Schoolmeesters, Brussels, 1893: 568: molendinum brasium. Cf. Bautier (1960): 603.

Ibid., citing J.-J. Vernier, Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumiège, Société d’histoire de Normandie, t. 11: 58, no. 129: molendinum ad brasium fuerit ibi.

Ibid.: 603, citing Archives nationale, JJ 61, no. 324.

Bautier (1960): 620, citing Martens, Introduction à l’étude des moulins à eau de Bruxelles, no. 34: 16.

Forbes (1958): 610

Citation

appendix a 357

sugar mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

32 mills, Jordan Middle East

St Mary Nuova

early 11th c.

1124

1176

Corbie Abbey, France

1448 Persia

Grove Priory, Bedfordshire, England

1318 1341–2

10th c.

Fécamp, France

1314

Ibid.: 78, citing von Lippman, op. cit.: 284, citing

Blaine (1966): 79, citing Edmund O. von Lippman, Geschichte des Zuckers seit den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Beginn der Rübenzucker-Fabrikation, Berlin, 1929: 291–293, citing J.C.M. Laurent (ed.), Peregrinationes medii aeni quottuor, Leipzig, 1864: 163.

al-Hassan & Hill (1986): 54

Pacey (1990): 10–11

Bautier (1960): 603, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v., molendinum brasarium.

“Three Records of the Alien Priory of Grove and the Manor of Leighton Buzzard”, ed. Robert Richmond, The Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Vol. VIII, BHRS, Aspley Guise, 1923: 24–5.

Bautier (1960): 603, citing L. Delisle, Études sur la condition de la classe agricole . . . en Normandie au Moyen Age, Paris, 1903: 481, n. 67: molendina ad grusum et ad thanum.

Stratford-upon-Avon, Holt (1988): 148, citing Red Book of Worcester: 244. England

?

Citation

Place

Date

358 appendices

Samarkand, Uzbekistan England Admont, Austria

Austria

Plauen region, Saxony, Germany

Iglau, Moravia, Slovakia

973

1086

1135

1175

1317

1400

Blaine (1966): 141, citing Zycha, op. cit., Vol. II: 333–4. Cf. Kuhn, op. cit.

Blaine (1976): 175, citing Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 75–7; Adolph Zycha, Das böhmische Bergrecht des Mittelalters auf Grundlage des Bergrechts von Iglau, Vol. 1, Berlin, 1900: 181, n. 1 & 228–9, n. 10: erzmulen.

*Ibid.: 141, citing Urkundenbuch des Herzogtums Steiermark, no. 575: 544: unum molendinum et unum stampf. Cf. Forbes (1953): 51, who provides no source. Neither this nor the above reference refer unambiguously to waterpowered stamps, however.

*Blaine (1966): 140, citing Urkundenbuch des Herzogtums Steiermark, Vol. 1, ed. J. Zahn, Graz, 1875: 170, no. 171: molendinum unum et stanf unum.

*Forbes (1958): 611

Hill (1998): V-184, and al-Hassan & Hill (1986): 54, 242–4, citing al-Biruni, Kitab al-Jamahir . . ., ed. F. Krenkow, Hyderabad, Deccan, 1936: 233–4.

Rocco Pirro, Sicilia sacra, Palermo, 1733: 454: molendinum unum, molendas ad cannas mellis, quod saracenice dicitur masara. Blaine explains that the Arabic word masara “was used to indicate a place where oil, sugar or wine was produced.”

Abbey, Monreale, Sicily

stamping/ore-crushing mill

Citation

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

appendix a 359

hemp-beating machine (human or animal-powered?)

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Grenoble, France

Graisivaudan, France Forbes (1958): 610 Dauphiné, France Domène, France

1040

1040

1040

1058

Bautier (1960): 575. The source for this reference is not clear from Bautier’s footnote.

Gille (1969a): 456

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de l’église cathédrale de Grenoble, dits de Saint-Hugues, no. XLVI, ed. J. Marion, Collection des Documents inédits, Paris, 1869: 120.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-André-leBas-de-Vienne, ordre de Saint-Benoît, ed. U. Chevalier, Collection des cartulaires dauphinois, Vienne, 1869, t. I: 153, no. 209: nichil de molendinis seu bathedoriis et thelonariis . . . habere presumat.

Vienne, Dauphiné, France

Bautier (1960): 572, citing P.-E. Girard, “Essai historique sur l’abbaye de S. Bernard . . . de Romans”, Complément textuel du cartulaire, Lyon, 1869, no. 95: 13: molendario et batedorios. See the reference to the same mill under “fulling mill”.

Ibid., citing Agricola, De Re Metallica: 279–87, 310–21.

1025

Germany

mid-16th c.

Ibid., citing Das mittelalterliche Hausbuch, ed. cit., pl. 40. The reference is to the earliest known illustration of an ore-crushing mill.

St Bernard de Romans Abbey, Dauphiné, France

Germany

c. 1475

Citation

c. 990

Place

Date

360 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Abbey of Pinerolo, Italy

Givray, France Abbey of Pinerolo, Italy Domène, France

Grenoble, France

Givray, France Domène, France

Date

1064

c. 1066

1078

1085

c. 1085

1095

1100

Ibid.: 573, citing Cartulaire monasterii beatorum Petri et Pauli de Domina, op. cit.: 17, no. 13: de campo baptenterii.

Bautier (1960): 575, citing Cartulaire de Saint-Sauveuren-Rue, op. cit.: 13, no. 28: molendinos et batentenos.

White (1964): 84, citing K. Lamprecht, Beiträge zur Geschichte der französische Wirtschaftsleben im elften Jahrhundert, Leipzig, 1878: 105, n. 28.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire monasterii beatorum Petri et Pauli de Domina, ed. C. de Monteynard, Lyon, 1859: 87, no. 98: Hugo prior . . . dedit Petro Baschat unum battenterium tali convenientia ut annuatim redderet supradictus monachis sextarios salis . . ., et si voluerint suum cannabem battere, faciat sine mercede.

Ibid., citing C. Cipolla, op. cit.: 347, no. 8 & 350, no. 9: molendinis, batenderiis, fullatoriis.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de Saint-Sauveur-en-Rue, op. cit.: 27, no. 67: molendinos et batifols.

Ibid.: 573, citing C. Cipolla, Il gruppo dei diplomi Adelaidi in favore dell’abbazia di Pinerolo, Biblioteca della Società storica subalpina, Pinerolo, 1889: 325, no. 2: batenderia.

Citation

appendix a 361

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Languedoc, France Avignon region, France Avignon region, France Languedoc, France Pignerolo, Italy

Champagne, France

Valentinois, Gerond, Ibid.: 574, citing P.-E. Giraud, op. cit., Part I, Preuves: France 240, no. 335: in bateoribus que tenet Gerondus Molners. Bourgignon region, France

1101

1101

1109

1129

1131

1149

1164–70

1171

Ibid.: 573, citing Gallia Christiana, t. IV, instr., col. 21: batandos ad corticem pulverisandam (“beater for pulverizing things like bark”).

Ibid., citing Blampignon, op. cit.: 204: furnos, molendina, battatoria, folones.

Ibid., citing Cartario di Pinerolo fino all’ anno 1300, ed. F. Gabotto, Pinerolo, 1899: 55, no. 38: cum molendinis, batendeiirs, fullatoriis, mercatis.

Ibid.: 575, citing Gallia christiana novissima, op. cit., col. 873, no. 5117.

Ibid.: 575, citing D’Albanes, op. cit., col. 869, no. 5091: postquam molendina molere potuerint et batitoria batuere per unum annum.

Ibid.: 574, citing D’Albanes, Gallia christiana novissima, Avignon, Avignon, 1920, col. 866, no. 5080: idem.

Ibid.: 575, citing Gallia christiana novissima, op. cit., col. 866, no. 5080: batitoria.

Ibid.: 576, citing E. Blampignon, Histoire de sainte Germaine, op. cit.: 202.

Champagne, France

1101

Citation

Place

Date

362 appendices

hemp mill (waterpowered )

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Forez, France Domène, France

Saint-Galmier, Forez, Ibid.: 576, citing Les chartes du Forez antérieures au France XIV e siècle, eds. Perroy, Dufour, Mâcon, 1933, no. 331: concedimus . . . molendina, malleos sive bateors. Abbey of Cluny, France Auvergne, France

1251

1251

1257

1264

1266

Ibid., citing Cartulaire du prieuré de Saint-Flour, ed. M. Boudet, Monaco, 1910: 123: molendina mea de Rueyra et batifolla.

Ibid., citing Chartes de Cluny, ed. Bruel, t. VI: 537, no. 5074: molendinum et les bateors.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire . . . de Domina, op. cit.: 2, no. 1: in Dominam fluvium, molendinum et battenterium et curtilum unum.

Ibid., citing idem.

Ibid., citing G. Collino, Le carte della prevostura d’Oulx . . . fino al 1300, Pinerolo, 1908 (Biblioteca della Società storica subalpina): 270, no. 255.

Oulx, France

Ibid., citing Arch. nat., LL 1583: 66–70 (fol. XXXI).

Bautier (1960): 575, citing Cartulaire . . . de Domina, op. cit.: 240, no. 33 & 243, no. 233.

1226

Domène, France

c. 1200

Gille (1969a): 456

Braine, nr. Soissons, Aisne, France

Vienne, Lyons region, France

1184

Citation

1209

Place

Date

appendix a 363

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Auvergne, France Jasseron, Bresse, France Auvergne, France

Auvergne, France throughout France Dauphiné, France Dauphiné, France Act of Duke de Berry, France R. Drevonne, Dauphiné, France Tullins, Dauphiné, France

Date

1280

1283

1284

1286

13th c.

1309

1363

1385

1391

1406

Ibid.: 575, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 365: massia batutoria, for beating hemp and bark.

Ibid., citing Arch. dép. de l’Isere, B 3997, also Sclafert, op. cit.: 479.

Ibid.: 572, citing Du Cange, op. cit., sv. batannum: batannum pannorum sive batemis.

Ibid.: 574, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 403, n. 7: de exitu gauchatorii et batitorii de Fontanilibus, 25 sol. tur.

Bautier (1960): 573, citing Du Cange, op. cit., sv. bastitorium.

Gille (1969a): 456

Ibid., citing Cartulaire du prieuré de Saint-Flour, op. cit.: 311.

Ibid., citing Baluze, Histoire généalogique de la maison d’Auvergne, t. 11, Paris, 1708: 134: aliquod molendinum, battifol, seu laus [corrigez: feulons] seu malleos.

Ibid., citing S. Guichenon, Histoire de Bresse et de Bugey, Lyon, 1650, Preuves: 106: molendina, baptitoria et fullanos.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire du prieuré de Saint-Flour: 249.

Citation

364 appendices

paper mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Syria Jativa, Spain Baghdad, Iraq Persia

Baghdad, Iraq Damascus, Syria Samarkand, Uzbekistan Catalonia, Spain

?

?

?

10th c.

c. 950

c. 1000

1041

c. 1150

T. Lima, nr. Cutigliano, Italy

c. 1427–30 Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Pagliericcio, Firenze, Italy

1425–7

8th c.

Place

Date

Hill (1998): XVIII-10

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.: 42

Pacey (1990): 10–11, 42, citing Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, al-Hassan and Hill, Liu Guojun and Zheng Rusi, also Jean Gimpel, as sources for his information on water-powered paper mills.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

al-Hassan & Hill (1986): 54

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 265, 2v.

Muendel (1981): 104, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA 9772), 98v; also Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto 181, 442v.

Citation

appendix a 365

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Blaine (1966): 103, citing Aurelio Zonghi, “Le antiche carte Fabrienesi”, Zonghi’s Watermarks: 114. Pacey (1990): 42

400 mills in Fez, Morocco s. Champagne region, France Fabriano, Italy Fabriano, Italy Fabriana (sic), Italy Jativa, Valencia, Spain

Fabriano, Italy Genoa, Italy

1184–1213

13th c.

1268

1276

Ibid.

1280

1283

1292

Ibid.: 457

Gille (1969a): 456

Blaine (1966): 104, citing Augustin Blanchet, Essai sur l’histoire du papier et de sa fabrication, Paris, 1900: 52–3: et non teneamini aliqui vestrum operari papirum in molendino quod Nos ibi constructo faciebamus, nec Nos ipsum molendinum vel aliquem alium de cetero faciemus ibi construi. Blanchet cites Archivo general de la Corona de Aragon en Barcelona Registro, no. 46, fol. 16, del reg. Pedro III el Grande.

Gille (1969a): 456

Forbes (1956): 610

*Blaine (1966): 101. See idem: 102–3, in which Blaine questions the veracity of this information.

Pacey (1990): 42

Jativa, Valencia, Spain

1151

Citation

Place

Date

366 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Padua, Italy Treviso, Italy Venice, Italy Ambert region, France Troyes, France

gradual spread of Ibid.: 108–115, for detailed documentation of when papermill technology and where the technology spread. throughout Europe Grenoble, France throughout France Nuremberg, Germany Nuremberg, Germany

early 14th c.

early 14th c.

early 14th c.

1326

1338

c. 1340– c. 1590

1344

late 14th c.

1389

1390

Gille (1969a): 456; Pacey (1990): 42

Forbes (1958): 611

Ibid.

Gille (1969a): 457

Blaine (1966): 108, citing P. Pietresson de Saint-Aubin, “L’origine de l’industrie papeterie à Troyes”, Le bibliographie moderne, Vol. 24, Pt. I, 1929: 46–7, citing Archives de l’Aube, Hôtel-Dieu-SaintNicolas, layette 55, registre sur parchemins, fol. 16r.

Pacey (1990): 42

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Bologna, Italy

early 14th c.

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 367

fulling mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Scandinavia England Austria, Bohemia, Britain Scandinavia Fukien, China Kuangtung, China

15th c.

c. 1490

1500

pre-1600

?

c. 1690 St Gall Abbey, France

Switzerland

15th c.

9th c.

Place

Date

*White (1964): 83, citing R. Meringer, “Die Werkzeuge der pinsere-Reihe und ihre Namen (Keule, Stampfe, Hammer, Anke)”, Wörter und Sachen, Vol. I, 1909: 23–4; V. Geramb, “Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Walkerei”, ibid. Vol. 12, 1929: 37–46; A. Dopsch, Die Wirtschaftsentwicklung der Karolingerzeit, vol. 2, Weimar, 1913: 145. White comments, however, that these claims “strain the evidence”. See also Horn (1975): 237–46, in which he is adamant that the pilis depicted in the abbey’s plans were waterpowered, although he is not explicit about what they would have been used for.

Ibid., citing Kuangtung Hsin Yü.

Needham (1965): 394, citing Wang Shih-Mou, Min Pu Su.

Ibid.

Reynolds (1983): 85

Pacey (1990): 42

Ibid.

Gille (1969a): 456

Citation

368 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Serchio, Tuscany, Italy Middle East

St-Bernard de Romans Abbey, Dauphiné, France Milan, Italy

Grenoble, France

Dauphiné, France

Forez region, France *Ibid.

983

c. 990

c. 990

1008

c. 1040–50

1050

1066

*Forbes (1956): 610

*White (1964): 84, citing K. Lamprecht, Beiträge zur Geschichte der französische Wirtschaftsleben im elften Jahrhundert, Leipzig, 1878: 105, n. 28.

*White (1964): 83, citing G. Giulini, Memorie spettanti all storia di Milano, Vol. 3, Milan, 1760: 67. As stated earlier, Wikander (2000a): 406, argues that the fulling mills supposedly found at Serchio, Dauphiné and Milan “are matters of doubt”.

*Blaine (1976): 168. See the same entry under hemp mill.

Hill (1998): V-184, citing Al-Muqaddasi, Ahsan al-taqasim . . ., ed. M.J. de Goeje, Vol. 3 of BGA, Leiden, 1906: 409. The passage concerned describes such a mill, but does not refer to any specific mills.

*White (1964): 83, citing A. Uccelli, Storia della tecnica dal medio evo ai nostri giorni, Milan, 1945: 132.

Pacey (1990): 10–11

Persia

10th c.

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 369

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Normandy, France c. 50 mills throughout France Forez region, France Gille (1969a): 456 Champagne region, France Vaucluse canal, France Champagne, France Tuscany, Italy

throughout N. Italy

1086

c. 1086–1366

late 11th c.

late 11th c.

1101

1101

1107

12th c.

Ibid., citing Renato Piattoli, op. cit.: 41, and Renato Piattoli, Le carte del monasterio di S. Maria di Montepiano: 1000–1200, Rome, 1942: 396; Isis Origo, The Merchant of Prato, New York, 1957: 36; Giovanni Collino, Le carte della prevostura d’Oulx, Pinerolo, 1908:

Blaine (1966): 86, citing Renato Piattoli, Lo statuo dell’arte dei pardroni dei mulini sulla destra del fiume Bisenzio, 1296, Prato, 1936: 189: unum ex iamdictus molendinis est positum a la gualchera.

Ibid.

Forbes (1958): 610

Ibid.

Bautier (1960): 621–6. See idem for a comprehensive listing of all of the relevant sources.

Gille (1969a): 456

White (1964): 84, citing R.V. Lennard, “An early fulling mill”, Economic History Review, Vol. 17, 1947: 150.

St Wandrille Abbey, Rouen, France

1080

Citation

Place

Date

370 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place

throughout N. Italy

throughout France Kreuznach, Germany

? Saint-Tommarp Abbey, Skane, Denmark

Date

12th c.

12th c.

12th c.

2nd half 12th c.

1161

Blaine (1966): 89, citing Lauritz Weibull, “Waldemar I’s privilegium för Tommarps kloster”, Scandia, Vol. 15, 1943: 87: molendina etiam aquatica in ampne

Lilley (1948): 39

Blaine (1966): 91, citing Gustav Schmoller, Die Strassburger Tucher-und Weberzunft, Strasbourg, 1879: 417, citing J.H.M. von Poppe, Naturlehre im Lichte unserer Zeit mit den neussten Erfindungen und Entdeckungen, 2nd edn., Stuttgart, 1847: 145.

Gille (1969a): 456

Muendel (1981): 85. For fulling mills on the confluence of the Dudda and Masselone, see Pagliai, Regesto di Coltibuono: 223–4, 245; for those on the Arno, Greve and Pesa prior to 1200, see Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze: Vol. I, Florence, 1972: 1166, n. 5; for those on the Bisenzio, see Fantappiè, Le carte di propositura: 200 & 277 (cf. Davidsohn, op. cit.).

270, no. 255; Umberto Forti, Storia della tecnica italiana alle origini della vita moderna, Florence, 1940: 91; Julius von Pfluk-Harttung, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, Vol. 3, Tubingen, 1888: 252, no. 256.

Citation

appendix a 371

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

England England Italy 13 mills throughout France

124 mills throughout Carus-Wilson (1941): 48–50. Carus-Wilson provides England the manuscript sources for all of these mills set out in a table, so I will refrain from reproducing them here. 16 mills throughout England 19 mills throughout England

late 12th c.

late 12th c.

1182–1408

c. 1185–1327

c. 1189–1314

c. 1189–1407

Lucas (2003). These mills were located by the author during a trawl of published sources for forty ecclesiastical estates, and appear in Lucas (2003), Appendix E. It should be noted that there is some cross-over between the mills cited by Lennard and myself, although the references to the two mills concerned are drawn from different sources.

Lennard (1951): 342–3. Likewise for Lennard.

Usher (1988): 185, citing Du Cange, op. cit., s.v. molendinum.

Ibid.

Gille (1969a): 456

Forbes (1956): 611

Tummathorp situata videlicet Walkemølla. The document concerned dates to 1430 and refers to a grant of 1161.

1168

Citation

Place

Date

372 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place 28 mills held by the Cistercians throughout England s. Champagne, France Poland Pistoia, Italy Spires (Speyer?), Germany 7–11 mills throughout W. Midlands, England Trier, Germany

Hospital of Holy Trinity, Lacy, Wales

Date

1189–1540

13th c.

1212

1220

1223

1226–1500

1246

>1253

Jack (1981): 112, citing Carus-Wilson (1941): 45–6, 48.

Blaine (1966): 92, citing Urkunden zur Geschichte der . . . mittlerheinischen Territorien, Vol. 3, ed. Alfred Hilgard, Coblenz, 1874: 656, no. 878: molendinum aptum ad preparandum pannos.

Langdon (1991): 434. Langdon does not provide details as to the sources of his information on fulling mills, but a general bibliography can be found at the end of his article.

Blaine (1966): 91, citing Urkunden zur Geschichte der Stadt Speyer, ed. Alfred Hilgard, Strassburg, 1885: 34, no. 34: galcmulen.

Muendel (1974): 211, citing Liber censuum, ed. Q. Santoli, Pistoia, 1915: 85.

Gille (1954): 10, citing Wasivtynski, La régale du moulin dans le droit polonaise du Moyen Age, Warsaw, 1936: 16.

Forbes (1958): 610

Donkin (1978): 188. See idem for details of the sources.

Citation

appendix a 373

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Zurich, Switzerland

Basel, Switzerland

Weidenau, Silesia, Poland

205 mills throughout Jack (1981): 86–130. See idem for details of the Wales sources. Pistoia, Italy

Speyer, Germany

1258

1262

1267

1272–1547

1296

1298

White (1964): 89, citing F. Mone, “Zunftorganisation

Muendel (1974): 211, citing Statutum potestatis comunis Pistorii anni MCCLXXXXVI, ed. L. Zdekauer, Milan, 1888: 187: De rebus furatis de molendinis vel gualcheriis.

Ibid.: 93, citing Urkundensammlung zur Geschichte des Ursprungs der Städte in Schlesien und der Ober-Lausitz, ed. G.A. Tzschoppe & G.A. Stenzel, Hamburg, 1832, no. 84: 411: molendina textorum, que Walkmolen Theutonice dicuntur.

*Ibid.: 91, citing Urkundenbuch der Stadt Basel, Vol. 1, ed. Rudolf Wackernagel & Rudolf Thommen, Basel, 1890: 45: in qua panni preparantur dictam vulgariter Walchun.

Blaine (1966): 92, citing Urkunden der Stadt und Landschaft Zürich, Vol. 3, ed. Jacob von Escher & P. Schwizer, Zurich, 1894–5: 132: der walchen . . . an dem nuwen graben.

Muendel (1974): 211, citing Liber focorum districtus Pistorii. Liber finium districturs Pistorii, ed. Q. Santoli, in Fonti per la storia d’Italia, Vol. 93, Rome, 1956: 320.

Piteccio, Pistoia mtns, Italy

1255

Citation

Place

Date

374 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

55 mills throughout England 120–130 mills throughout England Lüben, Silesia, Poland

San Salvestro Abbey, Muendel (1974): 211, citing Muendel (1972): 63. R. Agna, Italy Porta al Borgo, Ripalta, Italy Ripalta, Italy Ripalta, Italy

1327

1335

1350

1381

1385

1386

Ibid., citing Archivio dell’Opera di San Iacopo, Vol. 5, 64v.

Ibid.: 213, citing Archivio dell’Opera di San Iacopo, Vol. 5, 62r.

Ibid., citing Archivio di Stato di Pistoia, Provv., Vol. 27, June 14, 1381, 201v–202r.

Blaine (1966): 93, citing Kuhn, “Das Spätmittelalter als technisches Zeitalter”, op. cit.: 86, citing unpub. diss. by A. Schodrok, Die schlesische Tuchweberei und-hundlung von den Anfängen bis 1526, Freiburg, 1948.

Gille (1969a): 456. The source for Gille’s information is presumably an aggregate total of those mills listed by Carus-Wilson (1941) and Lennard (1951).

Langdon (1994): 12, citing Inquisitiones Post Mortem, Edward II, Public Record Office, London, C134, files 1–104.

vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert”, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, Vol. XV, 1863: 280.

1307–27

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 375

apparel/cloth mill (moulins à parer)

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Aniane, Hérault, France

Aniane, Hérault, France Aniane, Hérault, France

1123

1158

7 mills throughout Pistoia, Italy

c. 1427–30

1120

60 mills throughout Firenze, Italy

1407–16

Lérins, Provence, France

Augsburg, Germany

1389

c. 1040

Place

Date

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye d’Aniane: 295, no. 155.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye d’Aniane: 275, no. 131: si molendinus paratorius ibi fuerit.

Ibid.: 578, citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye d’Aniane, ed. L. Cassan & E. Meynial, Société archéologique de Montpellier, Montpellier, 1900: 277, no. 134: si molendinum feceritis paratorem.

Bautier (1960): 577, citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Lérins, ed. H. Moris & E. Blanc, Paris, 1883, I: 314, no. 307: si quis in rivo qui nominatur Spagnola . . . molendinum vel paratorem fecerit.

Muendel (1974): 212, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile antecosimiano, Catasto 189, 260, 261, 265, 2v.

Muendel (1981): 99, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA 9772).

Blaine (1966): 93, citing Paul von Stettin, Kunst-Gewerb und Handwerks Geschichte der Reichs-Stadt Augsburg, Augsburg, 1779, I: 141: walkmul.

Citation

376 appendices

clothing mill (moulins drapier)

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Toulouse region, France

Toulouse region, France Toulouse region, France Toulouse region, France Toulouse region, France Toulouse region, France Toulouse region, France

1293–4

1294–7

1295

1299

1299

1299

late 13th c.

Sallèles d’Aude, France

Sémalem, Montpellier, France

1192

1116

Place

Date

Bautier (1960): 579, citing Sabarthès, Dictionnaire topographique de l’Aude: 267.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. III, no. 28370.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. I, no. 11307.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. I, no. 11292.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. I, no. 11254.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. III, no. 28264.

Ibid., citing Comptes royaux (1285–1314), t. III, no. 28228.

Ibid.: 579, citing R. Fawtier & F. Maillard, Comptes royaux (1285–1314), Recueil des historiens de la France: Documents financiers, Paris, 1953, t. III, no. 9089.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de Maguelonne, ed. J. Rouquette & A. Villemagne, Montpellier, 1912, t. 1: 387, no. 214: in casali . . . in quo solebat esse molendinus parator et modo est annonerius.

Citation

appendix a 377

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Minervois, nr. Carcassonne, Aude, France Gurgy, France

Promillac, Silvanés, France Saint-Chinian, nr. Saint-Pons, Hérault, France

Montrichard, France Ibid.: 580, citing W. Wiederhold, Papsturkunden in Frankreich, Berry, Bourbonnais . . ., Berlin, 1910, 85: 110: apud Castrum novum duo molendina in ripa Caris fluminis in loco qui dicitur Nantolium et in clusa eorumdem molendinorum duas sedes ad molendina construenda, unum ad pannos, alterum ad corticem.

1148

1160

1164

1168

1179

Ibid.: 579, citing Du Cange, op. cit., sv molendinum: ut molendinos ibi draperios et bladerios aedificent.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire de Silvanès, ed. P.-A. Verlaguet, Rodez, 1910: molendinum ad parandum.

Ibid.: 580, citing M. Quantin, Cartulaire général de l’Yonne, t. II, Auxerre, 1860: 115: un moulin est dit ad parandos pannos.

Ibid.: 579, citing D’Albon, Cartulaire général de l’ordre du Temple, Paris, 1913, no. 521: si ibi molendini draperii edificati fuerint, nostros proprios drapos . . . sine pretio sint parati.

Ibid.: 580, citing Vaissete, Histoire de Languedoc, t. V, preuve 510, coll. 561: ad operandum pannos.

Narbonne, France

1130

Citation

Place

Date

378 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Dijon, France

Santas Creus, France Narcy, France

Cessenon, SaintChinian, Hérault, France

Aude region, France Ibid., citing Arch. dép. de l’Aude, H 7, fo. 85: rota bladeria.

1185

1188

1228

1262

1282

Ibid.: 579, citing Receuil de historiens de la France, t. XXIV, 2: 660: quod molendinum vocatur Molendinum Draperium.

Ibid., citing Cartulaire du prieuré de La Charité-sur-Loire, ordre de Cluny, ed. de Lespinasse, Nevers, 1887: 220, no. CV: duo molendina, unum scilicet ad corticem et unum ad pannos, sita juxta Narciacum in loco qui dicitur di Bossons.

Ibid., citing El “Llibre Blanch” de Santas Creus, ed. F. Udina Martorell, Barcelona, 1947: 294, no. 297 & 319, no. 319: molendinum draperium.

Ibid., citing Chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Étienne de Dijon de 1155–1200, ed. G. Valat, Paris, 1907 (Collection de textes relatifs au droit et aux institutions de la Bourgogne): 106, no. 91: cum venerint ad molendinum, prius primum bladum quod erit in tramioa, bladum suum statim molent et pannos proprios ibidem et canabem consuetudinarie preparabunt.

Ibid., citing E. Berger & H.-F. Delaborde, Recueil des actes de Philippe-Auguste, roi de France, t. I, Paris, 1916 (Chartes et diplômes publiés par les soins de l’Académie de Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres): 57, no. 41.

Saint-Pierre et Saint-Ambroix de Bourges, France

1181

Citation

Place

Date

appendix a 379

silk mill

tea mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

China Lucca, Italy Lucca, Italy

Lucca, Italy Lucca, Italy Cologne, Germany

1090

1272

1330

1335

1487

1562

< 260 mills, Chiangsi, China

1097

Limoux, France

1340 100 mills, Chiangsi, China

Issoudun, France

1305

1083

Place

Date

Ibid.: 99, citing Georg Witzel, “Gewerbgeschichtliche Studien zur niederländischen Einwanderung in

Ibid., citing R. Patterson, “Spinning and Weaving”, in Forbes (1956): 206, fig. 171.

Ibid., citing Telesforo Bini: 54: unum filacterium filandum sericum.

Ibid., citing Telesforo Bini, “Su I Lucchesi a Venezia: Memorie dei secoli XIII e XIV”, Atti della Reale Academia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, XV, 1855: 54: unum filacterium ad filandum sericum.

Blaine (1966): 100, citing Bertrand Gille, “Le moyen age en Occident”: 532, without source.

Needham (1965): 382, citing Tshan Shu.

Ibid., citing Sung Shih, ch. 94: 3b; Hsing Shui Chin Chien, ch. 97: 142b.

Needham (1965): 398, citing Sung Shih, ch. 94: 3b; Hsing Shui Chin Chien, ch. 97: 142b.

Ibid.: 579, citing Arch. dép. de l’Aude, H 335: molendini draperii.

Ibid.: 580, citing Fawtier-Maillard, op. cit., no. 6083: pro operibus factis apud Exoldunum in molendino ad pannos.

Citation

380 appendices

Provence, France Poblet monastery, Catalonia, Spain

1101

late 13th c.

Graisivaudan, Dauphiné, France Comune della Torre, Santa Croce, Firenze, Italy

1330

early 15th c.

Muendel (1981): 105, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 315: 986v.

Ibid.: 77, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 366: in aquageo rivi de Furet . . . sunt molendina, trolhandaira [oil-mills], citing Arch. dép. de l’Isere, B, 3327.

La Paute, Dauphiné, Blaine (1966): 76, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 519, citing France Archives départementales de l’Isere, B. 3020, f.4.

Reynolds (1983): 73

Blaine (1966): 76, citing Luis Domenech y Montaner, Historia y arquitectura del monasterio de Poblet, Barcelona, 1927: 8 & 10, citing Archivio de Reus, armario II (Codices de Poblet), doc. CCXXVII, fol. 148 & doc. CCCXXXIV, fol. 219.

Forbes (1956): 610

1316

13th & 14th c. ?

La Paute, Dauphiné, Blaine (1966): 76, citing Sclafert, op. cit.: 369, citing France Archives départementales, de l’Isere, B. 3020, f4 (1315). Pierre d’Auris was given permission to construct troyllia (oil mills) within an existing complex of watermills at La Paute.

Deutschland im 16. Jahrhundert”, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, XXIX, 1910: 426.

11th c.

Citation

oil mill

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

appendix a 381

tanning/bark mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Issoudun, France Notre-Dame d’Issoudun, France

Charment, nr. Paris, Blaine (1966): 94, citing Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame France de Paris, Vol. I, ed. B. Guérard, Paris, 1850: no. 293: fecerunt tres molendinos apud Charment communiter, duos ex hiis ad annonam et tercium ad tannum. 34 mills throughout France (including some of those listed below)

1116

1116

1138

c. 1134–1374

Bautier (1960): 594–601.

*Bautier (1960): 596, citing Eugène Hubert, Receuil général des chartes intéressant le département de l’Indre, 12 e siecle, in Revue archéologique et historique du Berry, t. VII, 1901: 144, no. CXIV. Bautier does not reproduce the relevant text.

*Ibid.

Graisivaudan, France *Forbes (1956): 610

*Gille (1969a): 456

Ibid.: 104, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA), 28v, 58v.

11th c.

2 mills in Candell, Santa Croce, Firenze, Italy

1425–7

Ibid., citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 79: 156v.

Romans, France

Pagliericcio, Firenze, Italy

early 15th c.

Citation

990

Place

Date

382 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Saint-Maixent Abbey, France

Pontoise, France Burgundy, France ? Italy Italy Normandy, France Cumberland, England Saint-Martin de Pontoise Abbey, France France

Date

1134–64

1142

1142

1154

1154

1154

1162

1165

1172

1175

Ibid., citing H.-L. Labande, Histoire de Beauvais et de ses institutions communales jusqu’au commencement du Xve siecla, Paris 1892: 203, n. 7: molendinum ad tannum molendum.

Bautier (1960): 595, citing Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Pontoise, ed. J. Depoin, Pontoise, 1895–1901, t. 1: 134, no. 167: molendinum tannum molens.

Holt (1988): 148, citing Pipe Roll, 11 Henry II, Pipe Roll Society, 1887: 54.

Ibid.

Gille (1969a): 456

Blaine (1966): 97, citing Storia della tecnica italiana: 91.

Usher (1988): 185, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. molendinum.

Ibid.

Gille (1969a): 456

Bautier (1960): 595, citing A. Richard, Chartes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’abbaye de Saint-Maixent, in Archives historiques du Poitou, t. XVI: 362, no. 247.

Citation

appendix a 383

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Toulouse, Languedoc, France

? throughout W. Europe England Saint-Maixent, Poitou, France ? England Saint-Martin de Pontoise Abbey, France ?

Date

1177

2nd half 12th c.

13th c.

1206

1210

1217

1217

1218

1228

Usher (1988): 185, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. molendinum.

Bautier (1960): 595, citing Cartulaire . . . de Saint-Martin, op. cit., t. 11: 413, no. 670.

Forbes (1958): 611

Usher (1988): 185, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. molendinum.

Bautier (1960): 595, citing A. Richard, op. cit., t. XVIII: 28–30, no. 409.

Latham (1999): 302, molendinum tanerez.

Gille (1969a): 456

Lilley (1948): 39

Blaine (1966): 96, citing Germain Sicard, Les moulins de Toulouse au Moyen Age, Paris, 1953: 49, citing Archives privées de la Société Toulousaine d’Electricité de Bazacle, I, l, Infeodations de 1177 et 1248 (P. J. No. 1).

Citation

384 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place ? Prato, Siena, Italy

Toulouse, Languedoc, France

Silesia, Poland

Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, England ?

Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, England England

Date

1231

1237

1248

1267

1269–70

1279

1288

1289

Latham (1999): 302: molendinum ad conterendos cortices (“a mill for grinding bark”).

Holt (1988), p. 148, citing Carus-Wilson (1941): 45, citing PRO Ancient Extents 86 (1).

Usher (1988): 185, citing Urkundensammlung zur Geschichte des Ursprungs der Städte in Schlesien und der Ober-Lausitz, no. 84: 411: [at Weidenau] molendina cerdonum, que Lomelen vulgariter appellantur.

The Account Book of Beaulieu Abbey, ed. S.F. Hockey, 1975: 210

Ibid.: 97, citing Urkundensammlung zur Geschichte des Ursprungs der Städte in Schlesien und der Ober-Lausitz, no. 84: 411: [at Weidenau] molendina cerdonum, que Lomelen vulgariter appellantur.

Ibid.: 96, citing Sicard, op. cit.: 49, citing Archives privées de la Société Toulousaine d’Electricité de Bazacle, I, l, Infeodations de 1177 et 1248 (P. J. No. 1).

Blaine (1966): 97, citing Alessandro Lisini, Inventario delle pergamane conservate nel diplomatico dal 736 al 1250 nel archivio di stato di Siena, Vol. I, Siena, 1908: 287.

Ibid.

Citation

appendix a 385

Truro, Cornwall, England England Pagliericcio, Firenze, Italy Prato, Firenze, Italy

Cetica, Firenze, Italy Ibid., citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 181: 643r. Tavistock Abbey, Devon, England (conv. to fulling mills)

1337

1349

c. 1387

early 15th c.

early 15th c.

early 15th c.

copper mill

12th c.

1313

Harz region, Germany

Ibid.

China

Silesia, Poland

1335

Forbes (1953): 51

Ibid., citing Nung Shu, ch. 19: 13b, 14a.

Needham (1965): 363, citing Lou Shou.

Holt (1988): 148, citing Finberg (1951): 153–4.

Ibid.: 105, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 175: 195v.

Muendel (1981): 104, citing John W. Waterer, “Leather”, in Singer, et al. (1956): 151.

Latham (1999): 302: molendinum tannarium.

Holt (1988): 148, citing Caption of Seisin: 73.

Blaine (1966): 97, citing Kuhn, op. cit.: 86, citing Schodrok, op. cit.: 93, n. 44.

Holt (1988): 148, citing Searle (1974): 301.

Battle Abbey, Sussex, England

14th c.

Citation

Place

Date

water-powered tilt-hammer 1145

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

386 appendices

tool-sharpening/grinding mill

silver mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Evry, Champagne, France

Évreux, Normandy, France

1203

1204

Scandinavia

16th c. Wupper Valley, Germany

European Alps

16th c.

13th c.

Trient, ?

Scandinavia

16th c.

12th c.

European Alps

16th c. Trient, ?

Harz region, Germany

12th c.

12th c.

Place

Date

Ibid.: 604, citing: “Cartulaire Normand de Phillippe-Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint Louis et Phillippe-le Hardi”, in Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, XVI, ed. Léopold Delisle,

Bautier (1960): 605, citing Actes Champenois: Archives Nationales, S4955, 1. 1, No. 10. The reference is to a mill which the Templars permitted a smith to operate near their own mills at Evry. Bautier’s assumption that this was a tool-sharpening mill seems perfectly reasonable.

Forbes (1953): 51

Ibid.

Ibid.

Forbes (1956): 612

Forbes (1953): 51

Ibid.

Ibid.

Forbes (1956): 612

Citation

appendix a 387

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Barbeau Abbey, nr. Melun, France Nogent-sur-Seine, nr. Provins, France

Forez region, France Blaine (1966): 143, citing Chartes du Forez antérieures au XIV e siècles, Vol. III, ed. Georges Guichard, Mâcon, 1933: no. 331: molendinum . . . seu molam in qua acuntur cutelli. (“a watermill . . . that mill is for sharpening cutlery”). Cf. Forbes (1958): 610, who provides no source. Saint-Galmier, France Troyes, Aube, France

1249

1257

1257

1267

Ibid., citing T. Boutiot, Histoire de la ville de Troyes et de la Champagne méridionale, Troyes, 1870, t. 1: 453. The passage concerned appears to refer to an armour-polishing mill.

Bautier (1960): 605, citing B. Gille, Le moulin à eau: 604, n. 2: grandam molam in qua acuuntur cutelli (“a large mill for sharpening cutlery”).

Ibid.: 605, citing Arch. nat., J95, No. 34, & KK 1065, fo. 665 vo.: molendinum . . . ad quod ferramentur molentur (“a mill that is for grinding ironwork”).

Ibid.: 604, citing Cartulaire de Barbeau, l’Institute d’Histoire et de recherche des textes: ad molendinum ferramenta (“a mill for ironwork”).

1852: 288, n. 1079: molendina ad cultellos (“a mill for cutlery”). Cf. Holt (1988): 151.

1228

Citation

Place

Date

388 appendices

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Ober-Lausitz, Germany

Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, England Saint-Lazare de Beauvais, France Pont-Saint-Pierre, nr. Rouen, France ? Holy Trinity, Caen, Gloucestershire, England Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany Douai, France

Date

1267

1269–70

1270

1281

14th c.

c. 1306

1311

1313

Usher (1988): 186, citing Alfred Espinas, La Vie Urbaine à Douai, Vol. 2: 403–4.

Blaine (1966): 144, citing Stettin, Kunst-Gewerb und Handwerks Geschichte der Reichs-Stadt Augsburg, I: 141: Blankenmühle (“polishing mill”).

Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, ed. M. Chibnall, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, Economic History, new series, 5, London, 1982: 127–8.

Lilley (1948): 39

Ibid., citing L. Delisle, “Cartulaire normand . . .”, op. cit.: 249, no. 976: molendinum ad secures (“a mill for axes”).

Bautier (1960): 604, citing Cartulaire de la maladrerie de Saint-Lazare de Beauvais, ed. V. Leblond, Paris, 1922: 297, 389: molendinum ad cutellos (“a mill for cutlery”).

Hockey (1975): 36, Mss. 77 & 78. This was a horse-mill operated by the abbey’s smithy.

Blaine (1966): 143, citing Urkundensammlung zur Geschichte des Ursprungs der Städte in Schlesien un der Ober-Lausitz, ed. cit.: 411, no. LXXXIV: molendina . . . qui Slifsteyne dicentur.

Citation

appendix a 389

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Lüben, Silesia, Poland Dauphiné, France Florence, Italy

Ulm, Germany Aichach, Germany Toulouse, France

Nîme, France

5 mills in Santa Maria Novella & Santa Croce, Firenze, Italy

Date

1335

mid 14th c.

1378

1383

1389

1390

1390/1

early 15th c.

Muendel (1981): 105, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Catasto, 72: 227r; 78: 63r (2); 79: 600r; 189: 261r; 317: 479v.

Usher (1988): 186, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. Molendinum ad cutella. Cf. Gille, “Le Moulin à eau”: 8, who cites Archives de la commune de Nîmes, RR1.

Ibid.: 143, citing Germain Sicard, op. cit.: 49, citing Archives municipales de Toulouse, fonds du moulin du château-Narbonnais, 12e série, lre liasse, cahier de procédures (1390).

Ibid., citing Die Urkunden des Hochstifts Augsburg: 277, no. 564.

Blaine (1966): 144, citing Die Urkunden des Hochstifts Augsburg, ed. cit.: 258, no. 533.

Muendel (1981): 87, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 120 (CRIA 9608), 17v.

Bautier (1960): 605, citing Archives départementales de l’Isère, B4456 & B2981.

Blaine (1966): 144, citing Kuhn, op. cit.: 86, citing A. Schodrok, op. cit.

Citation

390 appendices

Ibid.

Candell, Santa Muendel (1981): 104, citing Archivio di Stato di Croce, Firenze, Italy Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA 9772), 10r.

1420

1425–7

13th c.

water-driven mining hoist

?

Forez, France

Milan, Italy

1467

1251

Ibid., citing Hampshire CRO, Winchester Pipe Roll 1465–6, Eccl. II, 155833.

Ecchinswell, Hampshire, England

1465–6

Forbes (1956): 613

Blaine (1966): 77, citing Cartulaire de prieuré de Saint-Sauveur-en-Rue (Forez), ed. H. Charpin-Feugerolles & C. Guige, no. CSSVII, Lyon, 1881: 77: parvum molendinum ad opus molendi sinapem.

Blaine (1966): 144, citing Bruno Thomas & Ortwin Gamber, “L’arte Milanese dell’armatura”, Storia di Milano, XI, Milan, 1958: 724, citing Emilio Motta, “Armaiuoli milanese nel periodo visconteoaforzesco”, Archivio storico lombardo (Milano), Ser. 5, Vol. XLI, 1914, no. 92.

Holt (1988): 151, citing Keene (1985), Vol. II: 1044 & 1046.

1410–11, 1428 Winchester, Hampshire, England

Ibid.

Holt (1988): 151, citing Somerset CRO, DD/L P17/4; P18/2.

Carhampton, Somerset, England

1405

Citation

Place

Date

mustard mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

appendix a 391

Iglau, Moravia, Slovakia ? Silesia, Germany

1315

1450

?

water-powered pump

woad mill

?

1590 ?

nr. Vizille, Dauphiné, France

1347

2nd half 12th c.

nr. Vizille, Dauphiné, France

1347

?

c. 1450

water-powered lathe

Forbes (1956): 612–3

?

early 14th c.

Lilley (1948): 39

Reynolds (1983): 76, citing Robert S. Woodbury, History of the Lathe to 1850, Cleveland, 1961: 46.

Forbes (1956): 610. See also Blaine (1966): 158–60 for a possible source.

Gille (1969a): 455

Lilley (1948): 39

Forbes (1953): 51

1st half 14th c. ?

Accounts of the Cellarers of Battle Abbey: 130: molend’ pomorum. Cf. Chapter Eight, n. 27 (this volume).

wire mill

Battle Abbey, Sussex, England

early 14th c.– early 16th c.

Blaine (1966): 171

Lilley (1948): 39

Blaine (1976): 175, citing Kuhn, “Das Spätmmittelalter als technisches Zeitalter”, op. cit.: 75–7.

Needham (1965): 404, citing Nung Shu, ch. 19: 16a; ch. 22: 6b.

Citation

apple cider mill (horse-driven)

China

1313

water-powered spinning mill

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

392 appendices

water-powered blast furnace

pigment/ paint mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Nuremberg, Germany

1532

Liège, Belgium

N. France

late 14th & 15th c.

1384

Gille (1969a): 456

?

14th c.

Blaine (1966): 134, citing René Evrard & Armand Descy, Histoire de l’usine des Venne, Liége, 1948: 27, 339 n. 29, citing Dépot des Archives de l’etat à Liége, Val-Saint-Lambert, Reg. 296, f52 (1384).

Ibid., citing Theodore Hampe, Nürnberger Ratsverlässe über Kunst und Künstler im Zeitalter der Spätgotik un Renaissance: 1449–1663, Vol. I, Vienna-Leipzig, 1904: 273, no. 1915: malmül.

Blaine (1966): 98, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, Vol. IV: 44, col. 1: molendina pastelleria.

Ibid.: 610

Forbes (1956): 611

Usher (1988): 185, citing Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. molendinum.

Péronne, France

?

late 14th c.

Ibid., citing Delisle, Études, op. cit.: 737, citing Archives Nationales, S6423, no. 14.

1376

Péronne, Somme, France

1379

Blaine (1966): 98, citing Georges Espinas, La draperie dans la Flandre française au Moyen-Age, Paris, 1923, Vol. II: 91, n. 6, citing Archives départementales du Nord, B 15270: 2 molins a waide.

England

2 mills in Hesdin, France

1348

Citation

1361

Place

Date

appendix a 393

Type

Appendix A (cont.) Place Jouet-sur-l’Aubois, Berry, France

Lille, France

Como, Italy

Dijon, Burgundy, France Grotta Ferrata, nr. Rome, Italy

Newbridge, Monmouthshire, England

Date

1402

1412

1429

1433

1463

1496

Ibid.: 139, citing Rhys Jenkins, “Ironfounding in England”: 37–8; idem, “The Rise and Fall of the Sussex Iron Industry”, Transactions of the Newcomen

Ibid., citing Antonio Averlino Filarete, Tractat Über die Baukunst, trans. Wolfgang von Oettingen, Vienna, 1890: 473–4, citing a ms. in the Biblioteca Nazional in Florence.

Ibid.: 138, citing Johannsen, “Die Quellen zur Geschichte des Eisengusses in Mittelalter”, Pt. I, op. cit., III, 5, 1911: 320.

Ibid., citing Angelo Angelucci, Documenti mediti per la storia delle armi a fuoco italiane, Vol. I, Pt. I, Turin, 1869: 132.

Ibid., citing Alexandre de la Fons-Melococq, De l’artillerie de la ville de Lille aux XIV e, XV e, et XVI e siecles, Lille, 1845: 15. The references here and in the following three citations refer to the manufacture of objects such as cannons, mortars and cannonballs which could only have been produced within a blast furnace.

Ibid.: 137, citing H.R. Schubert, “Early Refining of Pig Iron in England”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 28, 1951–3: 60, citing Archives Nationales, JJ157, no. 254.

Citation

394 appendices

1425–7

throughout Europe

16th c.

chalk-grinding mill

Nivernais, France

late 15th c.

Carraia, Santa Maria Novella, Firenze, Italy

Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, England

Ibid.

1509

15th c.

Place

Date

tin mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Muendel (1981): 104, citing Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Numeri Rossi 126 (CRIA 9772), 56v.

Holt (1988): 150, n. 18, citing “Medieval Britain in 1980”, Medieval Archaeology, 25, 1981: 226.

Ibid.: 134, citing Gille, “Le moulin à fer et le haut-fourneau”: 92–9.

Ibid.: 137, citing René Lespinasse, “Lettres de rémission concernant des paysans Nivernaise à la fin du quinzième siècle”, Bulletin de la Société Nivernaise des Lettres, Sciences, et Arts, Ser. 3, Vol. 16, 1896: 249, citing Archives Nationales, Tresor des Chartres, JJ225.

Ibid., citing PRO, ETR, Bundle 455, NO. 7331.

Society, Vol. I, 1920–1: 18–19; PRO, Exchequer Treasury of the Receipt, Misc. Books, Vol. VIII: 49, 75, 79, 96, 110, 139, 145, 150, 203. The references here are to payments made by Henry VII to one Henry Fyner for the production of artillery balls. Cf. H.R. Schubert, “The First English Blast-Furnace”, Journal of the Iron and Steel Industry, CLXX, 1952: 108–10.

Citation

appendix a 395

Raveau, Nivernais, France ? Nuremberg, Germany

Liége, France

England

nr. Dartford, Kent, England

1443

c. 1450

1532

1561

1588

1590

rolling & slitting/ cutting mill

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Ibid., citing Rhys Jenkins, “The Slitting-Mill”, The Collected Papers of Rhys Jenkins, Newcomen Society, Cambridge, 1936: 12, citing E. Howes, The Annales, London, 1631: “The cutting of yron barres in a mill . . . neere Dartford in Kent.”

Ibid.: 152, citing Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, op. cit.: 304–5, citing PRO, Chancery Patent Rolls, No. 133, membrane 27–8.

Ibid., citing Jean Yernaux, La métallurgie liégeoise et son expansion au XVII e siècle, Liége, 1939: 28, citing Archives de l’Etat à Liége, Conseil Privé, Dépêches, IV, fol. 89.

Ibid., citing Eobanus Hussus, “Urbs Norimberga: Carmine Heroica Illustrata”, ed. Johann Christopher Wagenseil, De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera Civitate Norembergensi Commentatio, Nuremberg, 1697: 430–1. The reference is to a poem of 1532 which refers to such mills.

Lilley (1948): 39

Blaine (1966): 151, citing “L’évolution de la sidérurgie en Nivernaise”, Techniques et civilisations, Vol. III, No. 5, 1954: 162.

Citation

396 appendices

polishing mill (gems)

Paris, France

Nuremberg, Germany

1480

1534

?

15th c.

Alsace, France

1469

boring mill (pipes & gun barrels)

France

13th c.

poppy & hemp oil mill

?

England

17th c.

c. 1450

Place

Date

winding mill

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

White (1964): 81, citing E. Babelon, Histoire de la gravure sur gemmes en France, Paris, 1902: 132.

Reynolds (1983): 76, citing an illustration by the anonymous Hussite engineer. See Needham (1965): fig. 2–14.

Forbes (1956): 613

Ibid., citing A. Hanaver, Études économiques sur l’Alsace ancienne et moderne, II, Paris, 1878: 370: “Le salaire est estimé à 12 sous par tonne d’huile de pavots, et à 8 sous par tonne d’huile de noix. Mais vu l’etablissement d’huiliers à eau, il sera permis aux huiliers, sur leur demande, de prende 1 ou 2 sous de moins.”

Blaine (1966): 77, citing Paul Baud, L’industrie chimique en France, Paris, 1932: 131. Blaine writes in his footnote to this entry that he has been unable to verify Baud’s source.

Lilley (1948): 39

Ibid., citing Rhys Jenkins, “Roller-Mills”, in op. cit.: 204.

Citation

appendix a 397

Paris, France

Tower Mint, London, England

Tyrol, Germany Rome, Italy

Segovia, Austria

Spain Rome, Italy

1551/2

1560–2

1575

1581

1583

1587

1599

coin mill

Place

Date

Type

Appendix A (cont.)

Ibid.: 150, citing Beck, op. cit.

Ibid.: 149, citing Phigius, op. cit.

Ibid., citing Castro M. del Rivero, “El ingenio de la Moneda de Segovia: Documento justificativos”, Revista de archivos, bibliotecos y museos, Vol. 40, 1919: 141–56; Jean Babelon, “A propos de la monnaie de Segovie”, Bulletin hispanique, Vol. 23, 1921: 304–17.

Ibid.: 150, citing Ludwig Beck, Die Geschichte des Eisens in technischer un kultur-geschichtlicher Beziehung, 2, Braunschweig, 1884: 529.

Ibid., citing Stephan Phigius, Herculea Procidius, Antwerp, 1587: 232–3.

Ibid.: 149, citing W.J. Hocking, “Simon’s dies in the Royal Mint Museum with some notes on the early history of coinage by machinery”, Numismatic Chronicle, Series 4, Vol. 9, 1919: 73.

Blaine (1966): 147, citing Les chroniques de Jean Carion Philosophe, trad. en français par maistre Jean le Blond, Paris, 1556: 329.

Citation

398 appendices

APPENDIX B: SELECTED PRE-MODERN INDUSTRIAL MILLS BY COUNTRY, 20 TO 1600 CE

Type

No. of documented mills

No. by country

Period covered

9

9

China: 9

20–855

bellows using waterwheels

14

15

China: 7 Slovakia: 2 France: 3 England: 1 Germany: 1 Italy: 1

31–814 1269 1283–1350 1295 14th & 15th c. 1390

sawmill

33

45

Germany: 5 Jordan: 1 Turkey: 1 France: 12 Poland: 2 Italy: 26 Madeira: 1

397–1584 6th c. 7th c. c. 1300–1415 early 14th c.–1427 1384–1430 1420

forge mill

60

236

Japan: 1 England: 200 France: 6 Sweden: 1 Germany: 8 Poland: 2 Czech R.: 1 Spain: 1 Italy: 16 Hungary: 1

670 c. 1200–16th c. 1202–1399 1224 13th c.–1380 1337–1361 1357 1368 1388–1430 1399

malt mill

24

24

France: 13 Belgium: 4 Flanders: 1 England: 5 Germany: 1

770–1448 c. 1173 1188 1251–1342 1262

9

5

Uzbekistan: 1 Germany: 3 Slovakia: 1

973 1317–mid 16th c. 1400

rice-huller

ore-crushing mill

No. of citations

appendices

400 Appendix B (cont.) Type

No. of citations

No. of documented mills

No. by country

Period covered

hemp mill 24 (human/animalpowered)

19

France: 18 Italy: 1

c. 990–c. 1200 1131

hemp mill 19 (waterpowered)

18

France: 16 Italy: 2

1209–1406 1425–1430

9

8

France: 3 Spain: 1 Italy: 4

11th c.–1330 late 13th c. early 15th c.–1427

fulling mill

55

>635

France: 91 Italy: 253 Germany: 5 Poland: 3 Wales: 206 Switzerland: 2

1080–1366 1107–1430 1161 1182–1540 12th c.–1389 1212–1335 1253–1547 1258–1262

tanning mill

37

>58

tool-sharpening 29 mill

31

oil mill

France: 37 c. 1134–1374 Italy: 5 1154–early 15th c. W. Europe: 5 1154–1279 England: 9 1165–early 15th c. Poland: 2 1267–1335 France: 13 Germany: 4 England: 5 Italy: 8 Poland: 1

1203–1391 1267–1389 c. 1269–1466 1378–1427 1335

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Wailes, Rex 1938–9 “Tide Mills in England and Wales”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 19, pp. 1–33. 1956 “A Note on Windmills”, in Singer, et al. (1956), pp. 623–8. 1957–9 “Essex Windmills”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 31, pp. 153–9. 1959–60 “Some Windmill Fallacies”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 32, pp. 93–109. 1967–8 “Horizontal Windmills”, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 40, pp. 125–32. 1979 A Sourcebook of Windmills and Watermills, Ward Lock, London. Walton, Steven A. (ed.) 2005 Wind and Water: The Medieval Mill, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Phoenix (forthcoming). Watts, Martin 2000 Water and Wind Power, Shire Publications, Princes Risborough. 2002 The Archaeology of Mills and Milling, Tempus Publishing, Stroud. Westell, W. Percival 1934 “Sandon Mount, Hertfordshire: Its Site, Excavation and Problems”, St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Transactions, pp. 173–183. White, Lynn Jr. 1940 “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages”, Speculum, Vol. 15, pp. 141–59; reprod. in White (1978), pp. 1–22. 1962 “The act of invention: Causes, contexts, continuities, and consequences”, Technology and Culture, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Fall), pp. 486–500. 1964 Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1st pub. 1962). 1967 “Technology in the Middle Ages”, in Kranzberg & Pursell (1967), pp. 66–78. 1968 Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA). 1972 “The Expansion of Technology 500–1500”, in Cipolla (1976), pp. 143–74. 1975 “The Study of Medieval Technology, 1924–1974”, in White (1978), pp. xi–xxiv. 1978 Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays, University of California Press, Berkeley (CA). 1980 “Technological development in the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages”, in Tecnologia, economia e società nel mondo romano, Atti del convegno di Como, 27–29 September 1979, Como, pp. 235–51. Wickham, Chris 1997 “Debate: the ‘Feudal Revolution’”, Past and Present, No. 155, May, pp. 196–207. Wikander, Örjan 1979 “Water-mills in ancient Rome”, Opuscula Romana, Vol. 12, pp. 13–36. 1980 Vattenmöller och möllare I det romerska riket, Lund (diss.). 1981 “The use of water-power in Classical Antiquity”, Opuscula Romana, Vol. 13, pp. 91–104. 1984 Exploitation of Water-Power or Technological Stagnation? A Reappraisal of the Productive Forces in the Roman Empire, Scripta. Minora Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis, Lund. 1985 “Archaeological evidence for early water mills—an interim report”, History of Technology, Vol. 10, pp. 151–79.

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INDEX

Abargavenny Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Abbasid Caliphate 61 Aberriw, Montgomeryshire: fulling mill at 269 Adalhard 240 Adour River, France: tide mills in 88, 96 Adriatic 88 Aethelbert 75 Aethelred 74 Affagart, Greffin 88 Afghanistan 65, 102, 105, 124 Africa 11, 61, 259, 320 North Africa 4, 18, 22, 26, 37, 39, 41, 49, 51, 65, 211, 229, 230, 244, 261, 278, 321 Aghlabid Emirate 61 agricultural mills 3, 9–198, 215, 236, 264 in China 84, 210 in Japan 84 rice-husking mills, see rice-husking mills see also grain mills Ahsan al-taqasim fi Ma"rifat al-Aqalim, medieval Arabic geography text 89 Aisne, France 242, 260 Al-Andalus, see Andalusia Al-Dimashqi, Arabic writer 101 al-Hassan, Ahmad Y. 62 n. Al-Istakhri, Muslim geographer 102 Al-Mas"udi, Muslim geographer 102 Al-Muqaddisi, Muslim geographer 89 Alfred the Great 73, 76 Algarve, Portugal: tide mill in 97 Algeria 61 Almería, Spain: large milling installation at 65 Amazon 48 Amberley, Sussex: early post-mill at 109 Andalusia, Spain 65, 66, 67, 68, 309 Andes Mountains 41 anemouria 105–6, 106

Angles 73 Anglo-Saxons 73–4, 75–6, 77, 81, 90, 162, 189, 203 n., 272, 330, 334 Anjou, France 112 animal-powered mills, see beast mills Annaliste historiography 335 Annals of Science 239 Antikythera mechanism, see astronomical clocks Antipater of Thessalonica 15 n., 32 Apechildewude mill, Essex 173 Apollonius of Perga 15 n. apparel mills, see fulling mills The Application of Water Power to Industry During the Middle Ages 206 n. aqueducts 45, 70, 161, 209 Arabia 62 Arabs 66, 67 Archaeologia Cambrensis 284 Archimedes 34 n. Ariège, France: early forge mill in 253 Aristotle 114 Armytage, W.H.G. 37 n., 42 n., 202 Arsic, Reginald 109 Arteaga, Spain: tide mill in 97 arubah 34, 38, 66 Arundel, Earl of 269, 288 Astill, Grenville 272–4 astronomical clocks 19 n., 30 Atkinson, J.C. 274 Attleborough, Norfolk: early post-mill at 109 Aude, France 227 Augustine, archbishop of Canterbury 73 Augustinians 172 n., 178–9, 181 n., 183–4, 185, 186, 188, 192, 194, 196, 197, 224 Ausonius 207, 236 Australia 9 Austria 219 automata, water-powered 51 Aveiro, Portugal: tide mill in 97

420

index

Avenches, Switzerland: earliest undershot watermill at 32 “Avènement de conquêtes du moulin à eau” 154, 155–6, 158, 165–7, 201, 307 Avening mills, Gloucs. 174 Avitsur, S. 38 n. Azores 107 Babylonians 61 Baghdad, Iraq 62 bakeries: commercialization of 18, 46, 48, 209, 330 Baillie, Michael 75 n. Balkans 39, 44 n. Baltic 78, 107 banalité, see suit of mill Banu Musa bin Shakir, Muslim mechanicians 102, 105 Barbegal, France: earliest overshot watermills at 32 Barceló, Miquel 67, 163 n. bark mills, see tanning mills Barking Abbey: tide mill at 93–4 barrow 45, 209 Barton, Cotswolds: forge mill at 266 n. Basalla, George 176 n. Basingwerk Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Basra, Iraq: early tide mills at 88–90, Basset, Jordan and Alice 135 Bath and Wells, bishop of: fulling mills held by 295 Baths of Caracalla, Rome: early overshot watermill at 32 Battle Abbey 129, 137, 138, 173, 174, 194, 224 n. cider mill at 249 n., 267 tanning mill held by 265 tide mill held by 99, 144–5 Bautier, Anne-Marie 3, 206 n., 213 n., 214, 215, 217, 219 n., 220, 221, 223, 225, 237–8, 242, 247, 249, 275 Bayeux, bishop of 89 Baynard’s Castle, London: tide mill at 93, 94 Bayonne, France: tide mills in 96 beast mills 14, 15, 17, 18, 22–4, 46, 48, 57, 70, 77, 82, 164, 237, 241, 242, 330–1

donkey mills 13, 22, 46 horse mills 13, 22, 23, 24, 77, 145, 166, 168 n., 187, 263–4, 265, 283, 330–1, 334 ox mills 24, 25 Beauchamp family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 288 Beaulieu Abbey, Hants. 129, 137–8, 190 n., 193, 224 n., 238 fulling mill at 95, 297 malt mills held by 238 n., 240 n. possible horizontal-wheeled watermill held by 39 n. shoe workshop at 183, 267 tanning mill at 95, 183, 265, 267 tide mills at 93, 94, 95 tool-sharpening mill at 183, 256, 267 Beaumans Castle 139 Beaumont, Waleran de (Earl of Worcester) 272 Bec, Abbey of 129, 134, 136, 138, 173, 193, 224 n. fulling mills held by 296–7 Bedford, Duke of: fulling mill held by 287 Beeford, Yorks.: early post-mill at 109 “beer mills”, see malt mills beer-making 236–7, 238, 239, 240–1 Belgium 111, 126, 280 Belisarius 62 Benedictines 157–8, 159, 163, 176, 177–9, 183–4, 185, 186, 188, 196, 220 n., 224, 229 n., 283 Bennett, Richard 105 n., 107, 155 Benoit, Paul 163 n., 180 n., 183 n., 221 n., 225–6 Berbers 66, 67 Berkerolles family: fulling mills held by 287 Béziers, France 161 Bigod family: fulling mill held by 287 Bijker, Wiebe 306 Birmingham, England 256 Bisson, Thomas 53 n. Black Death, see plague Black Sea 61 Blakenham, Suffolk: fulling mill at 296–7 Blaine, Bradford 32 n., 37 n., 76 n., 206 n., 213, 214, 215, 238–40, 266 blast furnaces, see water-powered blast furnaces

index Bloch, Marc 42, 43–4, 154–6, 157, 158–9, 160, 163, 165–7, 174 n., 175, 188, 195, 197, 201–2, 203, 204, 242 n., 307, 332 Blythburgh Priory 180 n. tide mill at 99, 144 Böckler, Georg Andreas 255 Bodleian Library 115 Bodmin Moor, Cornwall: tin mill at 274 Bohemia 112, 227 Bohun family 142, 288 fulling mills held by 287, 288, 293, 299 Boldon Buke 136 Bolivia 48 Bolton Priory 129, 137, 138, 146, 189 n. possible tanning mill at 265 Bordesley Abbey, Warwicks. 181, 224 n. metalworking mills at 251–2, 253, 254, 266, 272–4, 275, 276 boring mills 222, 397 borough mill sector 186, 197, 289 Boteler, Richard le 132 Boycott, Oxon. 131 Bradenstoke Priory 186, 188 Brady, Niall 80 Brandon, Suffolk 147 Breslau, Poland 257 bridge mills 62, 64, 66 n. Brightwell, Suffolk: fulling mill at 141, 142 Bristol, Gloucs.: possible industrial mill at 272 Brithdir, Montgomeryshire: combined cornmill and fulling mill at 142 Brittany 96, 112, 120, 122 British Library 115 Britons 73 Bromley-by-Bow, London 93 Buckingham, Bucks. 109 Bulgaria 107 de Burg’, Ralph 109 Burgundy, France 221 Burnley, Lancs.: fulling mill at 141 Burscough Priory 191 n. Burstall, Audrey F. 37 n., 44 n. Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: early post-mill at 109 Bury St Edmunds, abbey of: 109, 145, 179 n., 180 n., 224 n.

421

Butley Priory 180 n. Byzantine Empire 44, 51, 105–6, 107, 122, 208, 210, 212, 223, 228 n., 230, 236, 257 Caerleon, Newport: early fulling mills at 288 Caernarvon Castle 139 Caerphilly Castle: early fulling mill at 288 Callon, Michel 319, 321 cam 55, 202, 204, 209, 233–4, 240, 244, 251, 257 cannabis 241, 242 Canterbury, archbishop of: fulling mills held by 296, 297 Canterbury Cathedral Priory 184 n., 194, 224 n. Cardiff 166 Carhampton, Somerset: tool-sharpening mill at 267, 268 Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire: fulling mill at 269 Carmarthen Priory: fulling mills held by 286 Carnwyllion, Carmarthenshire: fulling mill at 270 Carolingian period 70, 71 Caspian Sea 61 Carcassonne, Seneschal of 225–6 Carreghofa fulling mill, Montgomeryshire 141, 298 Carus-Wilson, Eleanora 129, 134 n., 141, 201–2, 204, 213 n., 214, 215, 219 n., 220, 225 n., 248, 279, 280–4, 301 Castilian 66 Castle Donnington, Leics.: Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 Catalan 65, 66 Catalonia, Spain 67, 211, 253 Cato 13 n. Caton, Lancs. 174 fulling mill at 132 Celestine III, pope 110 n., 111–12 chalk-grinding mills 395 Champagne, France 221, 227, 251, 255 Chang’an, ancient capital of China 54 Channel Islands 73 Charles V 96 Chart, Kent 75 Chaworth, Patrick 293 Chaworth family: fulling mill held by 287, 293

422

index

Cheddar, Somerset 77 fulling mill at 295 Chemtou, Tunisia: triple-helix turbines at 38, 70 Cheng, king of Qin 54 Chichester Cathedral Priory 109, 191 n. China 3, 11, 15–17, 18, 20–2, 22–4, 26, 37, 41, 47, 51, 52, 54–60, 61, 67, 82, 83, 86, 92, 102, 105, 125, 207, 209–10, 230, 233, 238 n., 309–10, 320, 330 Chin Shu, early Chinese manuscript 56 Chirk, Denbighshire: fulling mills at 141, 142, 294, 298 Chuu Thao, early Chinese mechanician 56 Christian Malford, Wilts. 186, 188 Christianity 44 n., 45, 53, 78, 80, 81 n., 162 cider mill 249 n., , 267, 392 Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire: fulling mill at 297 Cirencester Abbey 129, 130–31, 135, 156, 175, 195 Cistercians 101 n., 158, 177, 178–9, 181, 183–4, 185, 186, 188, 192, 194, 196, 197, 221 n., 224, 248, 251, 253, 254, 255, 261, 267, 272–4, 283 “Clak” mill 39 n. Clare, Gilbert de 288 Clare family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 293, 294, 299 Clerkesmill 135 clockwork 202 cloth industry, see woollen industry cloth merchants 280, 281 clothing mills, see fulling mills Clun, Shropshire: fulling mill at 142 Cnut 74 Coates, S.D. 289 Cockersand Abbey 129, 132, 275, 276 coin mills 221, 263, 398 Colvin, H.M. 129, 133, 139, 144 Compludo, Spain: possible early forge mill at 209 n. constructivism 306, 319, 324 Conway Castle 311 n. Conwy Abbey: fulling mills held by 286

“copper mills” 222, 396–7 Corbet, John 268 Corbet family: fulling mill held by 287 Corbie, France: malt mills at 240–1 Corbridge, Northumb.: Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 Corcannon, Co. Wexford 80 n. Cordoba, Spain 62, 65, 66 n. Corringham, Essex: tide mill at 93, 94 Coutant, Yves 121 Coxwell windmill: used for grinding malt 238 n., 240 n. crank 19, 202, 204, 257 Crete 104, 122, 125 Crith Gablach (“branched purchase”) 79 Crocodilion River, Palestine 38, 41 Crossley, D.W. 134 Crusades 211 Ctesibius 34 n. Cuddie Springs, Australia 9 Cumberland: early tanning mill in 265 Curwen, E. Cecil 76, 97 n. Cutigliano, Italy 242 cutting and slitting mills: earliest evidence for 218, 221 Cydewain, Montgomeryshire: fulling mill at 297 Cymer Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Czech Republic 227, 254 Daglingworth, Gloucs. 135 Danegeld 74 Darby, H.C. 74 n., 204 n. Dauphin 259 Dauphiné, France 221, 227, 229 n., 241, 259, 262 David the Digger, labourer 149 Davies-Shiel, M. 39 n. De agri cultura 13 n. De Architectura 26, 32 De Braose family: fulling mill held by 287 De Ceithri Slichtaib Athgabála (“On the four sections of distraint”) 79–80 De Ingeneis 89 De Re Rustica, see De agri cultura De Roche family: fulling mill held by 287

index Dee mills, Chester, Cheshire 140, 311 n. dendrochronology 75 n., 80, 81, 90, 91 Denmark 37 n., 41, 112, 243, 246, 331 Derbyshire: water-powered bellows in 267 Despenser family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 294 Dickinson, J.C. 178 n. Dieppe, France: tide mills at 96 Dijon, France 161 Dinton, Bucks. 109 Diocletian 22 n. Discovery Programme 80 Dissolution (of the monasteries in England) 285, 299 Dockès, Pierre 332 Dolaucothi gold mine, Wales: possible Roman forge mill at 208 n. Domesday Book 39, 74, 76, 77, 84, 89, 93, 95, 162–3, 203, 204 n., 219, 220 n., 253 donkey mill, see beast mills, donkey mill Donkin, R.A. 219 n., 248 Dore, abbey of: fulling mill held by 286 double-entry book-keeping 202 dough-kneading machine 45, 209 Dover, Kent: tide mill at 88, 89 Dover Castle: early tower mill at 124, 148 Drachmann, A.G. 29 n., 32 n. Du Cange, Charles 237 Dublin 181 Duby, Georges 215, 240 Duignan, Michael 80 n. Dunster, Somerset: fulling mill at 295 Dunwich, Suffolk: early post-mill at 109 Durham: water-powered bellows at 267 Durham Cathedral Priory 129, 138, 184 n., 193, 224 n. bishop of 189 n., 195 bishopric of 136 Dyer, Christopher 275 Dyffryn, Monmouthshire: fulling mill at 293

423

Eastbridge Hospital, Canterbury 109 Ecchinswell, Hants.: tool-sharpening mill at 267, 268 Ecclesdon Down, Sussex: early post-mill at 109 The Economic History Review 280 Edgar, king of England 74 edge-runner mills 233, 234, 235, 249, 250, 267 n. Edward “the Confessor” 74 Edward I 94, 140, 219 Edward II 187, 219, 223, 275, 279, 282, 288, 289, 295 Edward IV 94 Egypt 26, 51, 61 Elcot, Berks.: royal fulling mill at 141 Eleanor of Aquitaine 140 Eling, Hants.: tide mill at 92–3, 94, 95 Elton, Hunts.: fulling mill at 295 Elton, John 105 n., 107, 155 Ely Cathedral Priory 109, 138 bishop/s of 136, 140, 145–6, 180 n. engineers: European 204 Islamic 62 England 3, 20, 39, 52, 71, 72, 73–7, 81, 82, 84, 85, 92–5, 111, 112, 124, 126, 128–53, 155–98, 201–2, 203–4, 213 n., 215, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223–5, 230, 231, 232, 242, 243, 246, 251–2, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 264–77, 288, 297, 329, 330–1, 334 English Channel 124 map of tide mills around 97 “The Enigmatic Watermill” 239 Enlightenment 207 environmental conditions: shaping mill development 51, 54, 126–7, 143, 163, 231–2, 311–12, 319–20, 322–3 Ephesus, Turkey: sawmilling installation at 208 n. Erickson, Clark 48 n. Esbouc, France: tide mills in 96 Esclusham, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 269 Eskdale, Cumbria: possible Roman forge mill at 208 n. Euphrates River 62

424

index

Eurasia 4, 49, 59, Evershaw, Bucks.: early post-mill at 110 “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems” 308–19 Évreux, France: early forge mill at 223, 253 early tool-sharpening mill at 256 malt mill at 238 Evry, France: early forge mill at 223, 253 early tool-sharpening mill at 255–6 Exe Bridge, Somerset: possible industrial mill at 272 Exploitation of water-power or technological stagnation? A reappraisal of the productive forces in the Roman Empire 43 factory complexes 18, 211 Falmouth, Cornwall 87 n. famuli: tollcorn used to pay 190 n. de Farnham, Simon 109 Fécamp Abbey: tide mill at 96 Feckenham, Worcs. 140–1 Felsted mill, Essex 174 “feudal revolution” 53 n. feudal monopolies, see seigneurial monopolies feudal systems 53, 155, 164 Fiefs and Vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted 53 n. Finland 78 n., 107 Finley, Moses 42, 43, 160 Firenze, Italy 220, 259 fishponds 140–1, 274 Fitzalan family 141–2, 288, 292 fulling mills held by 287, 294–5, 297, 298 Flanders 111, 112, 121, 126, 280 Flaxley Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Flockthorpe, Norfolk: early post-mill at 109 Florence, Italy 225, 256 Florentiis, Guisseppe de 40 n. Forbes, Robert J. 37 n., 39 n., 42, 45–6, 88 n., 105, 124, 160, 202, 222 n. Forest of Dean, Gloucs.: water-powered bellows in 267 Forez mountains, France 227, 242 forge mills 182, 205, 216, 216, 225,

231, 236, 244, 251–5, 252, 261, 263, 265, 346–55 earliest evidence for 218, 221, 251–3, 266, 272–4 in Roman era? 208–9, 251, 261 Latin and vernacular terminology for 254 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 399 Framlingham, Suffolk 145–6, 148 France 22, 46 n., 62, 71, 73, 77, 85, 92, 95–7, 107, 111, 112, 126, 155, 159, 160, 161, 164–5, 195, 213 n., 215, 217–23, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 237, 243, 246, 251, 252–3, 254, 256, 257–9, 260, 263, 264, 280, 282, 283, 334 Friskney, Lincs.: early post-mill at 110 fulling mills 4, 166, 236, 239, 241, 243–8, 245, 256, 260–1, 271, 278–302, 330, 368–80 as proportion of all industrial mills in England 181, 213–4, 223–4, 247–8, 278 as proportion of all industrial mills in Europe 214–5 as proportion of all industrial mills in France 213–4, 278 as proportion of all industrial mills in Italy 278 as proportion of all mills in England 282 construction costs of 129, 134 n., 141–3, 152, 191, 298 distribution of 281 dyehouses for 142, 293 earliest evidence for 218, 220, 243–4 in Denmark 243, 246 in England 181–2, 183, 191, 201–2, 204, 213–4, 220 n., 223–4, 226–7, 231, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247–8, 260, 261, 263, 265–6, 267, 278, 279, 280–4, 297, 298 in existing mill complexes 265, 283 in France 213–4, 218, 243, 244, 246, 247, 260, 261, 263, 278, 282 in Germany 243, 246 in Ireland 181 in Islamic societies 65, 211, 228, 243–4, 261

index in Italy 183, 231, 243, 246, 261, 282 in Poland 243, 246 in the Roman Empire? 209 n., 261 in Spain 243 in Switzerland 243, 246 in Wales 182–3, 189 n., 191–2, 227, 232, 243, 246, 247, 264, 265, 268, 269, 270, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284–302 Latin and vernacular terminology for 244–5 leases associated with 269, 270, 284, 285 n., 293–4, 297 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 246, 400 profitability of 152, 191–2, 225–6, 231, 248, 278, 281, 282, 295–302 relocation of 141–2 revenues 284, 290–301 sectoral analysis of ownership in Italy 183, 285 n. sectoral analysis of ownership in Wales 182, 270, 279, 284–9, 298–300, 301 stocks and hammers for 142, 143 tenter-yards for 132 workshops for 242, 281 fulling process 243, 244, 278 Furness Abbey 129, 132, 135, 174, 224 n., 274, 275 Fychan, Madog ap Dafydd 294 Garstang, Lancs.: fulling mill at 132 Gaucheron, André 96–7 Gaul, see Roman Empire, provinces of gearing 22, 29–30, 34, 251, 261, 273 lantern-pinion 255 right-angled 15, 16, 29, 48, 57 saqiya 25, 27, 45 geography 3, 45, 52, 70 geology 70 Germany 73, 213 n., 218, 219, 222, 227, 229, 230, 231, 232, 243, 246, 254, 256, 257, 263 Gevaudan, France 221 Giggleswick, Yorks. 132 Gille, Bertrand 42, 105 n., 157, 160, 202, 235 n., 251 Gimpel, Jean 33 n., 44 n., 77, 85, 86, 88, 98, 215, 236–7, 238, 239 Glastonbury Abbey 147 n., 168 n.,

425

172 n., 173, 179 n., 185–6, 188, 194, 224 n. Abbot John of 186 Glendower, Owen 292, 294 Glick, Thomas 59 n., 66, 67, 68, 174 n., 211 n. global history 2 Gloucester, earldom of 288 Glynceiriog, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 141, 142 Glyncothi, Carmarthenshire: fulling mill at 269 Glynfechan, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 294 Godstow Abbey 109 Gorze, abbey of 237 Gracedieu Abbey: fulling mill held by 286, 293 grain mills 1, 3, 65, 68, 129, 142, 206, 210, 211, 215, 224, 225, 226, 231, 236, 242, 261, 268, 277, 278, 282, 283, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 301, 330 see also beast mills, handmills, post-mills, tide mills, tower mills, watermills, windmills grain rubber, see handmills, grain rubber The Great Roll of the Exchequer 136 Great Roll of Durham 136 Great Shelford, Cambs. 136, 140 Great Wall of China 54 Greece 22, 37 Greek and Roman Technology 43 Greek and Roman Water-Lifting Devices 43 Greeks 15, 24, 26, 43, 45, 61, 207, 209 Greene, Kevin 42 n., 43, 45–6, 209 n. Gregory of Tours 161 Gregory the Great, pope 69 Grenoble, France 242 n. Grey of Ruthin family: fulling mills held by 287, 288 grinding mills, see tool-sharpening mills grinding slaves 46, 81, 204 de Grinstede, William 131 Groen, Paul 121 Grove Priory 193 malt mill held by 238 n. Gruffudd, Iorwerth ap 269 Guadalquivir, Spain large milling installation at 65 Guerra Gotica 62 n.

426

index

Guildford Castle 140 Gulf of Gascony: tide mills in 97 Gyffin Castle 133, 142 Hadleigh Castle: tide mill at 100, 144 Hadrian’s Wall: Roman watermill at 46 n. Hagbourne, Berks. 135 Halesowen Abbey 175 Halland, Sweden: early forge mill at 251 hammer mills, see forge mills Han dynasty 54, 56, 59, handmills 9–14, 46, 77, 92, 166, 187, 192, 197, 331, 332 grain rubber 9, 10, 11, 328 hopper-rubber 11, 12, 329 labour required for operating 20 lever mill 11, 13, 329 rotary 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19–22, 21, 24, 33, 48, 69, 92, 156, 324–5, 329–30, 333, 334 rynd for 19 saddle quern 9, 11, 12, 328 Harz Mountains, Germany 227 Hastings, John de 288, 297 Hastings family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 297 Haverford West Priory, Pembrokeshire: fulling mill held by 286 Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire: fulling mill at 297 Heidegger, Martin 310 hemp mills 222, 227, 236, 241–3, 260, 263, 360–5 associated with factory complex 242–3 earliest evidence for 218, 221, 241 Latin and vernacular terminology for 237–8, 260 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 400 Hempnall, Norfolk: early post-mill at 109 Henry II, of England 79 Henry II, of France 238 Henry III 140, 141 Henry of Eastry, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury 143–4, 310 Herbert, son of Ivo 89 Hereford Cathedral Priory 184 n., 193, 224 n.

Herefordshire, earldom of 288 Hero of Alexandria 105 de Heton, Elias son of Harsqui 135 Hetton, Yorks. 135 Hienhil, Suffolk: early post-mill at 109 Hill, Donald 61–2, 65, 75–6, 211 n. Hilton, Rodney 81 n. Hirst, Sue M. 272 historiography 1–3, 4–5, 202 n., 307, 308, 335 history: of science 205, 305, 335 of technology 44, 52, 201–3, 213, 305, 317 History of Technology 45 The History of the King’s Works 139 Hodgen, Margaret 76, 77 n., 203, 204 hoists 209 Holehaven Creek, Essex 94 Holt, Richard 39 n., 44 n., 74 n., 76 n., 85 n., 86 n., 90 n., 98–9, 109, 111–12, 118, 119, 120, 125, 128, 133, 136, 139, 143, 145–6, 153, 162, 165 n., 196, 204 n., 206 n., 215 n., 219 n., 220 n., 223, 225 n., 226, 236 n., 240, 247, 264, 279, 281, 282, 283, 295, 296, 333 Holy Roman Emperor 221 Holy Trinity, hospital of: fulling mill held by 286, 299 n. Holy Trinity Abbey, Caen 173, 174, 190 n., 194 early tool-sharpening mill held by 267, 268 fulling mill held by 297 de Honnecourt, Villard 236, 257, 259, 262 hopper-rubber, see handmills, hopper-rubber Horn, Walter 209, 238–9, 253 horse harness 203 horse mills, see beast mills, horse mills Horsley Down, London: tide mill at 93, 94 Hou Han Shu, early Chinese manuscript 56 Huan Than, a.k.a. Master Huan 51, 56 Huan Zi Xin Lun (New Discourses of Master Huan), early Chinese manuscript 55–6 Hudson, Philip 39 n.

index Hughes, Thomas 117, 306, 307 n., 308–19, 321, 322, 325 human-driven mills, see sweat mills Hundred Rolls 219, 220 n. Hungary 254 hydraleta, see watermill, vertical-wheeled hydraulic pumps 45, 209 hydraulic technologies 3, 51, 55, 66, 69, 161, 233 Iberia, see Roman Empire, provinces of Iberian Peninsular 65, 69 Ibn Hauqal, Muslim geographer 102 Iceland 78 Ickham, Kent: possible Roman forge mill at 208 n. Idrisid Caliphate 61 independent mills 169–70, 173–4, 175, 177, 183–9, 193–5, 197–8, 225 n., 268–71, 275, 277, 285, 289, 290, 292–3, 297, 300 India 41, 61, 102, 105, 125 Indonesia 102, 125 industrial mills, see also waterwheels, industrial applications for 68, 215–6, 226 archaeological evidence for 209, 210–11, 212, 214, 224 n., 251, 260, 264, 271–7 as proportion of all mills in England 283–4 bark mills, see tanning mills boring mills, see boring mills chalk-grinding mills, see chalk-grinding mills cider mills, see cider mills coin mills, see coin mills “copper mills”, see “copper mills” cutting and slitting mills, see cutting and slitting mills definitions of 3–4, 205–6 earliest dates of primary sources for 216 factors shaping extensive use of 227, 231 forge mills, see forge mills fulling mills, see fulling mills grinding mills, see tool-sharpening mills hammer mills, see forge mills hemp mills, see hemp mills horse mills used for industrial applications 263–4 in the Byzantine Empire 257

427 in China 68, 82, 84, 209–10, 212, 228, 230, 231, 259, 261 in the Czech Republic 227, 254 in Denmark 243 in England 181–3, 191–2, 204 n., 213 n., 218, 219–20, 223–5, 226–7, 228, 230, 231, 232, 243, 244, 247, 249–51, 253, 254, 255, 256, 260, 261, 263–77, 278, 279, 280–4, 297, 298 in France 182, 213 n., 217–9, 220–2, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 241–2, 244, 247, 249–51, 253, 254, 255–6, 257–9, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 275, 277, 282 in Germany 213 n., 218, 222, 227, 229, 230, 231, 232, 243, 254, 256, 257, 259, 263 in Hungary 254 in Ireland 181 in Islamic societies 65, 68, 84, 210–11, 212, 228–9, 230, 231, 243–4, 257 in Italy 182, 183, 213 n., 218–9, 220, 222, 223, 225, 226 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 242–3, 249, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 263, 264, 277, 278, 282 in Japan 84 in medieval Europe 68, 158, 181–3, 191–2, 196, 204–5, 212–302 in Poland 218, 222, 243, 249, 254, 256, 257, 259 in the Roman Empire 207–9, 212, 228, 230, 231, 254, 257, 261 in Spain 68, 221, 223, 226, 229, 243, 253, 254, 261, 278 in Sweden 222, 223, 251, 254 in Switzerland 243 in Wales 182, 191–2, 218, 219–20, 230, 243, 247, 262, 264, 265, 269, 270, 277, 278–80, 281, 282, 284–302 kinds of mechanisms 233–6 licenses to operate independently 225, 255, 268–9, 277 malt mills, see malt mills manuscript evidence for 209, 210, 212, 214, 216–7, 219–20, 223, 237–8, 244–7, 249–51, 253–4, 255–6, 257–259, 260, 263–71, 275, 279–302

428

index

mechanical parts of 233–6 mustard mills, see mustard mills numbers of 213–4, 216–7, 222 oil mills, see oil mills ore-crushing mills, see ore-crushing mills paint mills, see paint mills paper mills, see paper mills pigment mills, see paint mills polishing mills, see polishing mills poppy and hemp oil mills, see poppy and hemp oil mills profitability of 191–2, 225–6, 231, 275 see also, fulling mills, profitability of relative proportions in different countries 221–2, 223–4, 226–7 see also, fulling mills, sectoral analysis rolling and slitting mills, see rolling and slitting mills sawmills, see sawmills silk mills, see silk mills silver mills, see silver mills spinning mills, see spinning mills stamping mills, see ore-crushing mills sugar mills, see sugar mills tanning mills, see tanning mills tea mills, see tea mills tin mills, see tin mills tool-sharpening mills, see tool-sharpening mills water-powered bellows, see water-powered bellows water-powered blast furnaces, see water-powered blast furnaces water-powered lathes, see water-powered lathes water-powered mining hoists, see water-powered mining hoists winding mills, see winding mills wire mills, see wire mills woad mills, see woad mills workshops associated with 183, 237, 242, 248, 263, 267, 268, 269, 270–1, 275, 281 “An industrial revolution in the thirteenth century” 141, 201, 280, 301 industrial revolution of the middle ages (IRMA) 154, 201–32, 248, 263, 280–1 Industrial Revolution 201, 202 n., 205, 280

industrialization 3, 227 Inquisitiones Post Mortem 172, 187, 219, 220 n., 223, 275, 279, 282, 284, 288, 289, 294, 295, 296 Inquisitions Miscellaneous 284 Iran 38, 41, 61, 65, 82, 102, 105, 211, 229 Iraq 38, 61, 82, 89, 211, 229 Ireland 36, 37 n., 38–9, 40, 41, 52, 58, 71, 74, 78–81, 82, 83, 84, 90, 92, 98, 124, 159, 161–2, 165, 181, 215, 288, 334 irrigation 24, 26, 58–9, 65, 66, 67, 82, 233, 309–10, 233 Islamic societies 4, 24, 26, 52, 58, 61–2, 65–8, 82, 84, 102, 207, 210–11, 212, 228–9, 230, 231, 243–4, 257, 261 Italy 22, 32, 41, 46 n., 52, 62, 69–72, 74, 76–7, 82–5, 95, 159, 160, 163–5, 195, 215, 218–9, 222, 223, 225, 226 227, 228, 229, 232, 246, 254, 257, 259, 260, 263, 264, 278, 280, 282, 331, 334 Jack, Ian 129, 141–2, 143, 174 n., 219 n., 279, 280, 281, 282, 284–90, 298–300 Jaén, Spain: large milling installation at 65 James I, of Aragon 67 Játiva, Spain: industrial mills at 65, 68 Japan 37 n., 60, 82 Jerash, Jordan: sawmilling installation at 208 n. Jespersen, Anders 41 n. Jesus of Nazareth 48 Jewish money-lenders 135 Jin dynasty 54, 56 Jizhu, Zhao 55–6, 57 John le touker 269 John of Laund, prior of Bolton 137, 310 John the carpenter 146 Jordan 38, 71 Jutes 73 Jutland, Denmark 37 n. Kazakhstan 65 Kealey, Edward 85, 107, 109, 114 n., 118 Keene, Derek 269 Keil, Ian 129, 147 n.

index Keller, Alexander 39 n. Kelsale, Suffolk 146, 148 Kidwelly Castle: fulling mill at 293 Kiechle, F. 32 n. Killoteran, Co. Waterford 37 n., 40 n., 52 n., 80, 92 Kingsland, Heref. 134, 142 King’s Sombourne mills, Hants. 174 Kirchner, Helena 66–8 Kirkstall Abbey 181, 183, 224 n., 275, 276 early forge mill at 223, 251–2, 253, 254, 266 early tanning mill at 265 Kitah al Hiyal (Book on Mechanical Devices) medieval Arabic mechanical treatise 102 Klemm, Friedrich 105 n. Knights Hospitaller 93, 94 Knights of St John: fulling mill held by 286 Knights Templar 93, 94, 96, 109, 113, 247, 253, 256, 265–6, 274, 299 n. Korea 54, 60 Kosminsky, E.A. 220 n. Kuhn, Thomas 307 n. Kuhn, Walter 219 n. La Rochelle, France: tide mill at 96 Labourd, France: tide mills in 96 Lacock Priory 129, 195 de Lacy, Gilbert 299 n. de Lacy, Henry 141 Lake District, Cumbria 39 n. Lancaster family 288 fulling mills held by 287 Lancaster Priory 129, 132, 174, 224 n. Langdon, John 39 n., 40 n., 75 n., 76, 88 n., 97 n., 99, 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122 n., 124 n., 128, 129, 133, 134, 135, 139 n., 142, 143 n., 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 155 n., 162, 168 n., 186 n., 206 n., 215, 219 n., 220 n., 223, 224, 225 n., 226, 236 n., 247, 248, 264, 267, 268, 270, 275, 279, 282–4, 289, 295–6, 297, 311 n., 333 Languedoc, France 221 de Lannion, Chevalier Bryant 96

429

Larsen, Egon 105 n. Latham, R.E. 237 Latin America 11, 41 Latour, Bruno 319, 324 n. Law, John 308, 319–24, 325 Le Man, France 161 lead-pipes 45, 209 leat, see watermills, waterworks for leather industry 249, 275 Leicester, Leics.: urban cloth centre at 280 Leighton Grove, Notts.: malt mill at 238 n. Leiston Priory 180 n. Lennard, Reginald 204 n., 213 n., 214, 215, 219 n. Leominster, Heref.: early fulling mill at 265 “Les plus anciennes mentions de moulins hydraulique industriel et de moulins à vent” 237 lever mill, see handmills, lever mill Lewis, E.A. 289 Lewis, Michael J.T. 15 n., 29 n., 30 n., 43 n., 51 n., 100 n., 102, 105, 107, 113, 122, 208–9, 278 n. Libya 61 Lilley, Samuel 202 Lincoln, earl of: fulling mills held by 295 Lincoln, Lincs.: urban cloth centre at 280 Lionel, Duke of Clarence 293 Littleisland, Co. Cork: tide mill at 81, 90 Liverpool, Merseyside: forge mill at 266 Ljørring, Denmark 37 n. Llanblethian, Glamorganshire: fulling mill at 293 Llandaff, bishop of: fulling mill held by 286 Llangollen, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 141–2 Llanllugan Priory: fulling mill held by 286 Llantarnam Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Llanthony Secunda Priory: fulling mill held by 286 Llywel, Brecknockshire 142 fulling mill at 293–4 Loches, France 161 Lombards 69

430

index

London: urban cloth centre at 280 Long Island, New York 327 looms, horizontal 45 lords: investment in and ownership of mills 72, 99, 129–38, 154–98, 278–302, 329–34 Low Countries 86, 95, 105, 219 Lubien, Poland 256 lubricants 130 Lund, archbishop of 251 Luoyang, ancient capital of China 54 Luttrell Psalter 115, 255 n. Lydden, Kent: tide mill at 99, 100, 143–4 Machinae Novae 89 MacKenzie, Donald 306, 307 Madeira 107, 257 Magnusson, Roberta 70 n., 159 n. Mahee Island, Co. Down 90 Majorca, Spain 67 Malmesbury, Wilts.: possible industrial mill at 272 Malmesbury Abbey: Abbot William of 186 malt mills 166, 221, 236–41, 260, 355–8 earliest evidence for 218, 220 manuscript sources for 237–8 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 399 misleadingly labelled “beer mills” 215, 236–40, 260 workshop associated with 237 Malta 22, 122 Great Siege of 113 Mann, Michael 49 n. Mansell family: fulling mill held by 287 Marcellinus, Ammianus 208 n. Marlborough, Wilts. 134 Marlborough Castle: fulling mill at 142 Mar Dyke, Essex: tide mill at 93, 94 Margam Abbey: fulling mills held by 286 Marseille, France: possible Roman water-powered bellows at 208 n. martinet forges, see forge mills

Martres-de-Veyre, France: earliest evidence for breastshot watermill at 33 Marx, Karl 156 Matilda, Queen of England 94 Matson, Simon and Alice 135 McCutcheon, W.A. 39 n. McErlean, Tom 91 Meaux, abbey of 109 mechanical treatises 29, 52, 57, 102, 320–1 Medieval Archaeology 264, 271 The Medieval Machine 236–7, 239 Mediterranean 11, 15, 17, 22, 26, 34, 40, 44 n., 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 59, 60, 82, 86, 88–9, 122, 204, 209 Merffordd, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 297 Merida, Spain: large milling installation at 65 Mesopotamia 11 Meteorologica, Aristotelian treatise 114 Meyer, George M. 89 n. Middle East 22, 37, 41, 51, 124, 210, 244, 257, 278 militarization 49 military camps 46, 49 mill dam: for conventional vertical-wheeled watermill 170 n. for tide mill 87, 91, 96–7, 100, 144 mill leases 72, 95, 170–5, 184–5, 219 n., 268, 269, 270, 284, 285 n., 293–4, 297 maintenance conditions attached to 130–1 pledges and securities for 131–2 mill maintenance 40, 59, 128–39, 143, 145, 153, 168, 169, 170–1, 190–1, 313, 316, 322 mill management 72, 129, 168, 185, 187–8, 312 mill numbers 74, 76–7, 80 mill revenues 71, 110 n., 112, 114, 128, 129, 136–8, 145, 152, 153, 161, 168–9, 172, 173, 176, 185, 187–8, 189–90, 191–5, 219 n., 225 n., 248, 275, 276, 277, 279, 284, 290, 292 mill shares 71, 72, 79 n., 83, 132, 135, 332 Miller, Edward 168 n., 279, 280–1 millers 1, 131 n., 171 n., 313, 323

index in China 58 in Italy 72, 81 n. operating tide mills 87 operating post-mills 118, 120, 121 status of 190 using millstones to grind tools 255 wages and income for 137–8, 139, 190, 312 miller slaves 81 n. see also grinding slaves millhouses: for metalworking mills 272 for post-mills 112, 115, 117–18, 119, 120, 121, 126 for tide mills 87, 91, 108 for watermills 30 maintenance of 131 milling: authoritarian traditions of 41 n., 54, 58, 69, 82–4, 155, 159, 164, 196, 324–5, 332–3 competition for custom 41, 68, 153, 186 n., 188, 191, 193, 197, 269, 292–3, 300–1 economies 54, 59, 71–2, 189–95 efficiency 189–90 egalitarian traditions of 41, 53, 67, 69–71, 79, 82–4, 159, 164, 196, 325, 329–31, 334 investment 129, 135–6, 152–3, 190, 270–1, 332, 333–4 litigation in relation to 41, 58, 155–6, 161, 169, 172, 174–5, 185–6, 188, 269–70, 325, 329 sectors in England 186–7, 206 n. milling industry: in ancient and medieval China 59, 210 in medieval Europe 159, 179, 275, 279, 322 in medieval Islamic societies 65 shares of, held by different social groups 162–3, 187 millponds 170 n., 272, 273 for castle mills 139 for tide mills 87 maintenance of 130, 131, 132 mills: commercial 71, 72 manorial 71–2, 178, 268, 324 Mills in the Medieval Economy 114, 129, 267, 268, 279, 283 The Mills of Medieval England 98, 282

431

millstones 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19–20, 29, 30, 34, 58, 64, 77, 130, 134, 141, 143, 235, 255 in beast mills 14, 23 in bridge mills 64 in malt mills 240 in post-mills 112, 116, 119, 120, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 in ship mills 88 in tide mills 87, 91 in watermills 16, 17, 35, 36, 250 in windmills 101, 103, 108, 123 millwrights 80, 115, 117, 121, 132 n., 147, 148, 149, 321, 323 Milton (Southend-on-Sea), Essex 93 Milton Hall, Essex 146, 148 tide mill in 99 Minchinhampton, Gloucs.: Abbey of Holy Trinity’s mills in 174, 190 n., 194, 268, 297 early tool-sharpening mill in 267, 268 Minchinton, Walter 85, 87 n., 89 n., 90 n., 95–9 moieties (of mills), see mill shares mola asinaria, see beast mills, donkey mill mola versatilis, see handmills, rotary monasteries 4, 40, 53 n., 70, 330, 332 in China 57, 59, 82 in England 74, 81 n., 92, 93, 94, 109–10, 154, 173, 177–97, 224–5, 251–2, 256, 272–6, 310, 314, 318 in France 40, 237, 238, 241, 256 in Ireland 40, 78, 79, 80, 83, 90, 92, 127, 162 in Italy 69, 83, 164, 220 n. in medieval Europe 53 n., 154–9, 165, 176–7, 195–6, 203, 204, 209, 261, 311–13, 316 n., 317 in Sweden 251 in Wales 182–3, 285–9, 298–301 monastic innovation thesis 157–9, 160, 176, 177–8, 183, 195, 196, 198, 203, 225 monasticism 40, 154, 203 n. Monkton, Kent: early post-mill at 110 de Montfitchet, William 93 Montreuil-sur-Mer, France 237, 238 Morocco 61 Morrison, Richard 90 n.

432

index

Mortimer family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 293, 299 Moselle River 207 Moses, Robert 327 Mosul, Iraq 62 moulins caviers, see post-mills, hollow moulins cuves, see post-mills, hollow Mowbray family: fulling mills held by 287 Mucking, Essex (near Muckingford): tide mill at 93, 94 Muendel, John 183, 219 n., 220, 225, 242–3, “multiple mills” 57 multure 131, 193 chests for 120 Mumford, Lewis 44 n., 154, 155–8, 160, 167, 178, 196, 201–2 Murano, Italy 88 Murcia, Spain 62 Murphy, Donald 52 n., 92 mustard mills 391 Mydlington, Thomas 95 Nantes, France 96 Naples, Duchy of 69 Near East 37, 51, 82, 83, 320 Neath Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Needham, Joseph 11 n., 13 n., 17 n., 19 n., 33 n., 37 n., 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 n., 209 n. Neford mill, Norfolk 173 Nendrum, Co. Down: tide mill at 80, 81, 90–2, 91 neo-Marxism 302, 306, 335 neo-Malthusian historiography 302, 335 Nepal 41 Nether Chirk, Denbighshire: fulling mill at 142 Netherlands, the 77, 78 n., 97, 112 New Forest, Hants. 95 New York City, New York 327 Newborough, Anglesey 147, 148, 149–51 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.: early post-mill at 109 Newnham Priory 110 Newsham, Yorks.: early fulling mill at 265–6 Newton, Isaac 321 Norfolk, Earl of 145, 189 n. noria, see compartmented waterwheel Norman Conquest 74

Normandy, France 111, 112, 221, 227, 238 n., 251, 255, 267 n. Nørre Omme, Denmark 37 n. North Africa, see Africa North Sea 61 Northampton, Northants.: urban cloth centre at 280 Northumbria 73 Norwich Cathedral Priory 180 n. Notgrove, Gloucs. 76 Nottingham Castle 140 nuclear power technology 327 Nung Shu, Chinese mechanical treatise 57 Ó Cróinin, Daibhi 79 n. O’Lochain, Cuan 39 n., 161 n. Ober-Lausitz, Germany 256 Oboy Castle 288 Offa 73 Ogbourne St George, Wilts. 134, 142 oil mills 209, 221, 222, 381–2 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 400 Old Wardon Abbey 224 n. Old Windsor, Berks.: Anglo-Saxon mills at 75 Oleson, John Peter 19 n., 25 n., 43 olive presses 45 Olynthian mill, see handmills, lever mill Oman 61, 82, 211 ore-crushing mills 222 n., 359–60 earliest evidence for 218, 229 in Germany 218 in Islamic societies 65, 211, 228, 229 in medieval Europe 217, 218, 229 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 399 Orleans, France 112 Ormond family: fulling mill held by 287 Ormsby Abbey 110 Osbaston, Monmouthshire: fulling mill at 293 Oseney Abbey 109 Otterton, Devon 165 n. Ovitt, George Jr. 176 n. Oxford, Oxon.: urban cloth centre at 280 Pacey, Arnold 62 n., 125 paint mills 263, 393 Pakistan 65, 102, 105, 124 Palaeolithic period 11 Palestine 37, 38, 41, 46 n., 71

index Palladius, Roman writer 69 Palladius, bishop of Auxerre 78 “paltrok” windmill, see post-mills, “paltrok” type pandy, see fulling mills paper mills 365–8 in China 229 n. in medieval Europe 222, 229 in Islamic societies 65, 211, 228, 229 Paris, France 161 de Paveley, Reynold, lord of Brok 131 Peasants’ Revolt 166 Pelham, R.A. 281 Pelteret, David A.E. 81 n. Pembroke, Pembrokeshire: fulling mills at 298 Pennyhole Bay, Essex 94 penstock, see watermills, flumes for Peperynghey mill, Sussex 137 Persia 37 n., 61, 62, 86, 101, 105, 125, 126 Persian Gulf 89 de Peshale, Robert 109 Peter III 68 Peterborough Abbey 156, 175, 224 n. Pézenas, France 161 Philo of Byzantium 29, 51 Picardy, France 221, 227 Piémont, France 241 Pinch, Trevor 306 Pistoia, Italy 220, 242–3, 259 piston pumps 257 plague 132, 137, 145, 152, 153, 248, 273, 277, 282, 292, 293, 301, 312, 315 n., 330–1 Plauen, Germany 229 Pleistocene 9 Pleket, H.W. 42 n., 43 Pneumatica 29, 51, 105 Poland 112, 218, 222, 243, 246, 249, 254, 256, 257 polishing mills 263, 397 Pomerania 112 Pompeiian mills, see beast mills Ponte d’Ouve, France: tide mill at 96 poppy and hemp oil mills 263, 397 Portchester Castle 140 Portugal 41 n., 61, 92, 95, 107, 112, 208 n., 219 post-mills 104, 107, 116, 122, 332 bearings of 119 brakes for 120–21, 126, 322

433

building and construction 112, 114–21, 134, 148, 190–1, 330 construction costs of 3, 114, 133, 145–51, 152–3, 190–1 “cross-tree” foundations for 117, 149 foundations of 114, 115–17, 126 gear ratios for 119 “great post” for 115–17 hollow 112 hoppers for 120, 149 lantern-pinion gearing for 119 “mill-beams” of 117 millhouses for, see millhouses millstones for, see millstones origins of 85–6, 104–7, 124, 126–7 “paltrok” type 107, 108 profitability of 3, 126, 128, 133, 191, 332 roofs of 118, 149 rynds of 119 sack hoists of 120 sailbeam of (a.k.a. windshaft) 118, 119 sails and sailyards for 115, 119–20, 130, 146, 149, 322 “sheers” or “sheer-trees” of 117–18 size of 115, 120 spindles of 119, 149 “tailbeam” of (a.k.a. tailtree or “sweeps”) 118 Postan, Michael 168 n. Postern Mill, King’s Wall, Malmesbury, Wilts. 272 potter’s wheel 18 pottery, mass production of 45, 209 prayer wheels 105, 125 Prémol mountains, France 259 Premonstratensians 184 pre-Columbian civilizations 48 Prince of Wales 149 fulling mills held by 287, 288, 299 Procopius 62 n. Provence, France 221, 227 Purfleet, Essex: tide mill at 93, 94 quern, see handmill, rotary Quimiac Channel, France: tide mills in 96 Quintinus, Renaissance cartographer 113 Rahtz, Philip 76 n., 129, 134, 272 Ralph the Bastard 110

434

index

Ramsey Abbey 109, 179 n., 180 n., 224 n. Raqqa, Iraq 62 Raystown, Co. Meath 81 Ravenna, Exarchate of 69 Reading Abbey: early fulling mill at 265 reaping machine 45 Reculver, Kent: tide mill at 90 early post-mill at 109 recumbent stamps, see trip-hammers Redgrave, Suffolk 145 Renhold, Beds.: early post-mill at 110 “reverse salients” 117, 126, 307 n., 318–9 Reynolds, Susan 53 n., Reynolds, Terry 26 n., 29 n., 32 n., 33 n., 44 n., 55 n., 59, 65 n., 204 n., 210 n., 211 n., 239, 257, 282 n. Robert the Engineer 310 Rhodes, island of 113, 122 rice-husking mill 68, 209, 211, 339, 399 Richard the clerk 135 river boats 45, 209 River Arrow 272 River Dour 89 n. River Exe 272 River Lea 94 River Frome 272 Roger of Heysham 132 rolling and slitting mills 263, 396–7 Roman Church 69, 71, 83, 165 Roman Empire 18, 22, 26, 38, 44, 46 n., 48, 69, 70, 157, 160, 161, 195, 203, 207 provinces of 18, 22, 53, 73, 83, 208, 230, 231, 233, 236, 251, 254, 257, 321, 330 Roman period 20, 38, 40 n., 42–7, 48, 69, 78, 162, 333 Romania 41 n., 107 Romans 3, 15, 24, 43, 45, 53, 58, 61, 70, 125, 154, 158, 161, 163, 195, 203, 207, 209, 244, 278 Roman technology 43, 45–6 Rome: duchy of 69 siege of 62 Ropere, Robert 132 Rouen, archbishop of 96 Rouillard, Joséphine 158 n., 163 n., 180 n., 183 n., 221 n., 225–6

Rotharis, Lombard King 70 royal family (of England): fulling mills held by 287, 288, 299 Royle, Stephen A. 96 n. Rule of St Benedict 70 Rupelmonde, Flanders: tide mills in 97 Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West 240 Russia 105 Rynne, Colin 34 n., 58, 59 n., 75 n., 80 n., 81, 88–9, 253 n. St Albans, Herts. 166 St Albans Abbey 156, 175 St Bernard, France: tide mills in 96 St David’s, bishop of: fulling mills held by 286 St Denys’ Priory 174, 195 St Dogmael’s Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 St Gall Abbey 209, 238–9 S. Giovanni di Ruoti, Italy: earliest undershot watermill at 32 St Osyth Creek, Essex 93 St Osyth’s Abbey: tide mill at 93 St Patrick 78 St Peter’s Church, York: Treasury of 193 Saint-Bertin, Abbey of 161 Saint-Sauveur, monastery of 237, 238 Salisbury Castle 139–40 Salmon, John 114 n., 129, 147, 148 Salzman, L.F. 267 Samarkand, Uzbekistan 229 Samson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 310 saqiya, see gearing, saqiya sawmills 233, 236, 243, 257–60, 258, 262, 342–6 earliest evidence for 218, 221, 257–9 in China 260 in France 222, 227, 257–9, 262, 263 in Germany 259 in Islamic societies 65, 211, 257 in Italy 259, 260, 262 in medieval Europe 216, 257–60 in Poland 259–60 in Roman era 207–8, 257 kinds of mechanism 257, 262 Latin and vernacular terminology used for 257

index numbers in medieval Europe 217, 259, 399 Saxons 73 Saxony 227 Scandinavia 73, 78, 219 Schiøler, T. 29 n. Schotinhayt, Thomas 131 Schuster, John 3 Schwartz Cowan, Ruth 176 n. Scotland 39 n., 41 n., 73 Secundinus, bishop of Armagh 78 seigneurial monopolies 67, 68, 71, 83, 153, 155–6, 159, 167–9, 175, 195, 269, 300–1 seigneurial monopoly model 155–6, 159, 160, 195, 196–7, 198 Senchas Mór (“The Great Tradition”) 79 Senglea, Malta 113 Seville, Spain 65 Shatt al Arab 89 ship mills 62, 63 in Italy 88 Shui Pu Shih (“Ordinances of the Department of Waterways”) 57–8 Sibton Abbey 129, 130, 131–2, 146, 180 n., 188, 195, 224 n. abbot of 146 silk mills 380 Silk Road 54, 60, 62 n. silver mills 222 n., 387 Silverley, Cambs.: early post-mill at 109 Singer, Charles 45 Sistan, Iran 102 slavery 47 in the ancient world 42, 43–4, 45, 46, 50, 204 in the middle ages 44 n., 81 n. Smith, Norman 62 n. Soberton, Hants. 138 The Social Construction of Technological Systems 306 social shaping of technology (SST) 2, 4, 47, 232, 305–335 The Social Shaping Of Technology 306 sociology: historical 49 n. of science 205, 305–6 of scientific knowledge 306–7 of technology 52, 176 n., 305–35 sociotechnical networks 308, 319–24 Soham, Suffolk 145 solar power technology 328 Song dynasty 55, 59

435

Søro, abbey of 251 Sorondo, Antxon 39 n., 97, 113 Southampton Water, Hants. 95 Southend-on-Sea, Essex: tide mill at 94 Southwark, Surrey: tide mill at 144 Spain 39, 40 n., 41, 44 n., 58, 61, 62, 65–9, 77, 81 n., 83, 86, 92, 95, 112, 161, 164, 208 n., 210 n., 211, 212, 215, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 229, 230, 232, 261, 278, 309–10, 331, 334 spinning mills 392 Squatriti, Paolo 70 n., 71, 72, 160 n., 163–4, 174 n., 332 n., 334 Stackhouse, Yorks. 132 Stafford, Duke of: fulling mill held by 287 Stafford family 288 fulling mills held by 287, 294 stamping mills, see ore-crushing mills Stanley Abbey: early fulling mill held by 266 Standon, Herts. 134 Stephen, king of England 272 Stowe Manuscript 115 Strangford Lough, Co. Down 90 Strata Florida Abbey: fulling mills held by 286 Stratford Langthorne: monastery of 93, 94 Stroud, Gloucs.: Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 structuralist anthropology 49 n., 328 sugar mills 211, 358–9 suit of mill 132, 155–7, 166–7, 170 n., 171–2, 173, 174–5, 176 n., 177, 184–6, 187–8, 191, 192–5, 197, 277, 330 definition of 155 exemptions from 171, 174–5 introduction to England 167 licence for exemption from 166 proportion of ecclesiastical mills holding 184 tenants avoiding 156, 166, 175 see also, independent mills Survey of Medieval Winchester 269 sweat mills 22, 217, 218, 332 Sweden 112, 120, 221, 251 Swein, King of Denmark 74 Switzerland 32, 219, 243, 246 de Sylkeston, Mathew, carpenter 148–9

436

index

Syria 111, 229 “systems builders” 310 Taccola, Mariano 89 Talley Abbey: fulling mill held by 286 Tamworth, Staffs. 174 Anglo-Saxon mills at 75 Tang dynasty 55, 56, 59 tanning mills 182, 205, 213 n., 216, 221, 222, 226, 236, 248–51, 261, 263, 382–6 earliest evidence for 218, 220–1, 249, 265 in England 249–51, 261, 263, 265 in France 249–51, 261, 263 in Italy 249, 261 in Poland 249 kinds of mechanisms 248–9, 261 Latin and vernacular terminology used for 249 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 400 workshops associated with 248, 263, 267 Tanrigge Priory 109 Tarragona, Spain 104 n. Tavistock Abbey: tanning mills held by 265 Taxatio Ecclesiastica, a.k.a. Taxatio Nicholai IV 284, 293, 299 tea mills 380 Technics and Civilization 154, 156–7, 160, 201 technological change 195–6, 305–6, 309, 311, 318–9, 325 technological determinism 305–6, 326 technological development 2, 3, 4, 24, 38, 42–7, 48–9, 51–2, 59, 127, 157, 158, 196, 227, 305–6, 308–9, 314, 316–8, 320, 326, 327–8, 334–5 “technological dialogue” 125–6 technological diffusion 5, 18–19, 44 n., 47–50, 113, 125–6, 154, 210, 212, 227, 228–9, 230–2, 233 technological innovation 2, 15, 19, 42–3, 45–6, 47–50, 125–6, 155–6, 176 n., 202–3, 207–12, 219, 223, 225, 227, 228, 230, 231–2, 233, 302, 314, 317–8, 333 technological momentum 314 technological package 307 n. technological paradigms 307 n.

technological progress 46–7, 49, 154, 205, 305–6, 321 “technological retardation” 231 technological revolution: with respect to post-mill 126 technological stagnation 42–7, 202, 207 technological system 49, 305, 306–19, 321, 322, 323, 324–5, 327–8 Technology and Culture 4, 305 n. technology shelf 307 n. technology transfer 17, 126, 223, 317, 321 tenant mills, see independent mills Testour, Tunisia: triple-helix turbines at 38, 70 Tewkesbury, Gloucs. 166 textile industry, see woollen industry Thames estuary: tide mills on 93–5, 99 Thang Liu Tien, early Chinese mechanical treatise 57 Thomas the Mercer 130–1 three-field crop rotation 203 Tibet 105 tide mills 85–101, 124–6, 140, 157 archaeological evidence for 86, 90–2, 100 n. breastshot 94 building and construction of 87–8, 91, 95–7 causeway for 95, 96 construction costs of 100–01, 143–5, 152 damaged by floods and storms 143 in England 87, 89–95, 96, 98–101, 143–5, 267 n. in Flanders 97 in France 62 n., 87, 95–7, 98 in Iraq 89–90 in Ireland 36, 37 n., 80, 81, 98, 162 in Italy 88–9 in the Netherlands 97 in Portugal 97 in Spain 97–8 in Wales 98 legal codes relating to 97 location of 87, 92–9, 143 millhouses for, see millhouses millstones for, see millstones origins of 85–6, 93, 124–5 profitability of 98–101, 125, 152

index regional distribution of different types of 98 replaced by windmills 94, 99, 144–5, 152 undershot 94 with two waterwheels 87 Tigris River 62 tilt-hammers, see water-levers tin mills 395 Tintern Abbey: fulling mills held by 286, 293 Toaker, Sweden: early forge mill at 223, 251, 254 Tony family: fulling mill held by 287 tool-sharpening mills 182, 216–7, 221–2, 226, 233, 234, 236, 255–6, 261–2, 263, 265, 268, 269, 271, 275, 387–91 earliest evidence for 218, 221, 267, 268 horse-powered 267 kinds of mechanisms 255, 261 Latin and vernacular terminology for 255 lease conditions attached to 268, 269 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 256, 400 workshops associated with 268, 269 Tower of London: tide mill at 100 tower mills 113, 114, 123 building and construction of 122–4, 125 composite tower-post-mill? 147 costs of construction 122, 147–8 displacing post-mills 122 height of 122 origins of 124 petit pied (a.k.a. ventru) 122 Transoxiana 65 trapetum 45 trip-hammers 55, 56, 57, 68, 204, 208–9, 233–4, 239–40, 241, 242, 244, 260, 273 Trégastel, France: tide mill at 62 n., 96–7 Truro, Cornwall: early tanning mill at 265 Tucker, D.G. 289 tucking mills, see fulling mills Tu Yü, early Chinese mechanician 56

437

Tunisia 38, 41, 46 n., 48, 61, 70 turbine, triple-helix 38, 41, 48, 49, 70, 321 Turkey 46 n. Turks 113 Turweston, Bucks.: early tower mill or composite tower-post-mill at 147, 148, 149, 150–1, 170 n. Uccelli, Arturo 40 n. de Ufford, Baldwin 93 Ulverstone mills, Lancs. 174 Ummayyad dynasty 61 Undergod, Peter 299 n. University of Ulster 90 Uraicecht Becc (“Little Primer for law students”) 80 urbanization 18, 46, 49 Usher, Abbott Payson 118 n. Usk, Monmouthshire: fulling mill at 293 Uzbekistan 65 Valence family: fulling mill held by 287 Valencia, Spain 67 Valletta, Malta 113 Valor Ecclesiasticus 284, 299, 300 van der Veur, W. Th. 97 van Wijk, E. 97 Venice, Italy 88–9 Veranzio, Faustus 89 Verhulst, Adriaan 81 n. Verna, Catherine 158 n. vertical stamps, see trip-hammers Vietnam 54 Vikings 74, 79, 105 da Vinci, Leonardo 40 n. Vitruvius 26, 32, 34 n., 51 Vowles, Hugh P. 105 Wacjman, Judy 306, 307 Wailes, Rex 88 n., 92–5, 99, 119, 120, 122 Wales 4, 73, 93, 98, 133, 139, 143, 151, 152, 159, 182–3, 189 n., 191–2, 208 n., 215, 218, 219–20, 227, 230, 232, 243, 246, 247, 262, 264, 265, 268, 269, 270, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284–302 Walsh, David 272 Walter of Cheltenham 135

438

index

Walton on the Naze, Essex: tide mill at 93, 94 Walton, Steve 42 n. Walton, Suffolk 146, 148 tide mill in 99 Walton, Somerset 146–7, 148, 149, 150–1 Wang Jung, early Chinese mechanician 56 Warley, Yorks.: forge mill at 266 war machines 45, 46, 209 Washford, Worcs. industrial mill at 274 water, competition for access to 296 water rights 58, 188, 268, 269, 271, 290 watermills: archaeological evidence for 15, 18, 32, 33, 37–8, 46 n., 48, 52–3, 70, 74–5, 80, 82, 83, 86, 90, 161, 162, 163 n., 271–7 see also industrial mills, archaeological evidence for breastshot 30, 31, 33, 94 bridge mills, see bridge mills building and construction of 91, 190, 195–6, 331, 332 construction costs of 3, 133–45, 152–3, 190–1, 332 damaged by floods and storms 139–40 flumes for 17, 34, 66 gearing for, see gearing hoppers for 17 horizontal-wheeled 15, 17, 22, 30, 33, 34–41, 35, 36, 44, 48, 49, 55–7, 60–2, 66, 68–71, 74, 76, 80–6, 88, 90–2, 98, 124, 125, 161, 163–5, 195–6, 209, 210–11, 324–5, 331, 334 in Domesday Book 39, 74, 76, 77, 84, 89, 93, 95, 162–3, 203, 204 n., 220 n. irrigation and 58–9, 66, 67, 82 legal codes relating to 52, 57–8, 67, 68, 69, 79–80, 83, 155–6, 161, 162, 312, 331 manuscript evidence for 52, 69, 75–6, 83, 86, 129, 162, 163, 174 n., 177–95 see also industrial mills, manuscript evidence for millstones for, see millstones

moieties of 71, 72, 79 overshot 30–2, 31, 32–3 power output from 33, 40 profitability of 3, 128, 133, 136, 138, 191, 330 purchase of 129 revenues from, see mill revenues Roman-era 18, 43–7, 51, 53, 207–9 rynds of 17, 29 ship mills, see ship mills sluices for 30, 57 spindles for 16, 30, 34 undershot 30, 31, 32, 52 n., 94, 272 vertical-wheeled 15, 16, 18, 24, 29–34, 36 n., 38, 41, 44, 48, 55–7, 60–2, 70, 74, 76–7, 80–6, 88, 90, 92, 98, 124, 126, 133, 159–65, 195–6, 204, 207, 209, 211, 244, 272, 324–5, 332 waterwheels for 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 131, 142, 244, 257 (see also waterwheels) waterworks for 30–2, 34, 36, 58, 86–7, 130, 131, 133, 135, 152, 170 n., 269, 272, 274, 311–12 waterwheels: archaeological evidence for 26 compartmented 24–9, 28, 32, 33, 34, 45, 48, 51, 57, 60, 209, 233, 331 industrial 55, 57, 59, 60, 68, 84, 209, 245 n., 252 n., 331 water-levers 55 n., 240, 386 water-lifting devices 45 water-powered bellows 56, 57, 205, 209, 216, 236–8, 257, 263, 267, 273, 340–2 earliest evidence for 218, 223, 267 numbers in medieval Europe 217, 399 water-powered blast furnaces 216, 263, 393–4 earliest evidence for 218, 221 numbers in medieval Europe 217 water-powered fans 355 water-powered lathes 392 water-powered mining hoists 222 n., 391 water-powered pestles, see trip-hammers water-powered pumps 392 earliest evidence for 223 water-towers 45, 209 Watts, Martin 122 n, 148 n.

index Weardale, Durham: water-powered bellows at 267 weavers’ guilds 280 Weedley, Yorks.: early post-mill at 109 Wen di, first Sui emperor 55 Wessex, house of 74 West Cotton, Northants.: Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 West Farleigh, Kent 133 Westbury, Wilts. 131 Westhallimot, Kent: early post-mill at 109 Westminster Abbey 124 n., 147 Wexford, Co. Wexford: water-powered bellows at 267 Weybread, Suffolk 131 The Whale and the Reactor 326 Wharram Percy, Yorks.: Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 Whitchurch, Heref.: possible industrial mill at 271–2 White, Kenneth 43 White, Lynn Jr. 3, 19 n., 33 n., 37 n., 42, 44 n., 85, 86, 88, 98, 102, 105, 157, 158, 160, 167, 176 n., 177, 196, 202, 204 n., 206 n., 207 n., 215, 229 n., 239, 253 n. Whitland Abbey: fulling mills held by 286 Wicken Bonhunt, Essex: possible Anglo-Saxon mill at 75 Wickham, Christopher 53 n. Wigston Parva, Leics.: early post-mill at 110 Wikander, Örjan 20 n., 30 n., 37 n., 39 n., 42 n., 43, 44 n., 45, 46, 53 n., 61 n., 163 n., 207–8, 211 n., 229 n. William I, King of England 74 William of Stratford 131 Winchester, Hants.: bishop of 141, 144 tool-sharpening mills at 267 urban cloth centre of 280 Winchester College 93, 95 winding mills 222 n., 397 Windmill Psalter 114 windmills: archaeological evidence for 109, 115, 117 n., 119 construction costs of, see post-mills for crushing sugar-cane 65 for industrial applications 265

439

for pounding rice 102 for raising water 65, 102 horizontal 65, 85, 101–07, 103, 104, 124–6, 127 manuscript evidence for 109–12, 113, 114–15, 129 millstones for, see millstones “paltrok” type, see post-mills, “paltrok” post-mills, see post-mills replacing fulling mills 282 replacing tide mills 94, 99, 144–5 revenues from, see mill revenues vertical 85, 99, 101, 107–24, 127 Winner, Langdon 308, 326–8 wip molen, see post-mills, hollow wire mills 222 n., 392 Wiveliscombe, Somerset: fulling mill at 295 woad mills 263, 392–3 de Wode, William 110 women, role in milling 9, 18, 20, 176 n., 186, 190 n., 328–9, 331 Wood Hall, Suffolk: fulling mill at 295 Woodbridge, Suffolk: tide mill at 93, 94, Woodbridge Priory 93 Woodstock, Oxon. 141 Wookey, Somerset: fulling mill at 295 woollen industry: in England 280–4 in Wales 284–302 Worcester, bishop of: fulling mills held by 295 world history 2 Wormhoudt, France 111 n. Wrexham, Wales: fulling mill at 269 Wright, Richard 132 Wright, Thomas 132 Wulff, H.E. 62 n. Wyberton, Lincs. 186 n. Wye mills, Kent 173, 174 Wymondham Priory 109, 110 Xàtiva, see Játiva Yonné, France: early forge mill at 253 York, Yorks.: urban cloth centre at 280 York Castle 139, 140

TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGE IN HISTORY This new series of scholarly surveys is intended to offer an updating of the discussion of questions regarding the nature of technology and technological change first broached in the nine-volume survey by R. Forbes: Studies in Ancient Technology. The series will however take in not only the original scope of Forbes’ work namely the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, but will extend beyond this to cover the medieval and early modern periods. The volumes in the series will be in English, of 300-800 pp., divided into 10-15 topical chapters and aim to present to scholars, graduate students and to nonspecialist scholars the current state of knowledge in the various fields in the history of technology. 1. Astill, G. and Langdon, J. (eds.). Medieval Farming and Technology. The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10582 4 2. Wikander, Ö. (ed.). Handbook of Ancient Water Technology. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11123 9 3. Squatriti, P. (ed.) Working with Water in Medieval Europe. Technology and Resource-Use. 2000. ISBN 90 04 10680 4 4. G.R.H. Wright. Ancient Building Technology. Volume 1: Historical Background. 2000. ISBN 90 04 10680 4 5. Robert I. Curtis. Ancient Food Technology. 2001. ISBN 90 04 09681 7 6. Bryan Lawton. Various and Ingenious Machines. Volume 1: Power Generation and Transport & Volume 2: Manufacturing and Weapons Technology. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13609 6 7. G.R.H. Wright. Ancient Building Technology. Volume 2: Materials. 2 Vols. Part 1: Text; Part 2: Illustrations. 2004. ISBN 90 04 14007 7 (Set) 8. A. Lucas. Wind, Water, Work. Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14649 0

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