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The parts of an Anglo-Saxon mill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Philip Rahtz  and
Donald Bullough
Philip Rahtz
Affiliation:
The University of Birmingham
Donald Bullough
Affiliation:
The University of St Andrews
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Extract

The literature on watermills is extensive, and includes many papers on what is usually called the ‘horizontal’ mill, that is to say mills with a horizontal wheel and a vertical shaft, as against those with a vertical wheel and a horizontal shaft. It is here proposed that the type under discussion in this paper, sometimes called the ‘Norse’ or ‘Greek’ mill, should be called the ‘horizontal-wheeled’ mill, and the other the ‘vertical-wheeled’ mill.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 6 , December 1977 , pp. 15 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 15 note 1 There has always been confusion here. Curwen, E. C. (‘The Problem of Early Water-Mills’, Antiquity, 18 (1944), 131)CrossRefGoogle Scholar called the former ‘vertical’ and the latter ‘horizontal’. That confusion still exists is shown in the latest discussion on mills (Horn, W., ‘Waterpower and the Plan of St Gall’, JMH 1 (1975), 219–58)Google Scholar, where the mill with a caption ‘Horizontal wheel…’(Ibid. fig. 10a, p. 232) is described in the text as a ‘vertical mill’ (ibid. p. 226).

page 15 note 2 Cf. Bennett, R. and Elton, J., History of Corn Milling II (Liverpool, 1899), 6 and 12.Google Scholar

page 15 note 3 Syson, L., British Water-Mills (London, 1965), pp. 163–6.Google Scholar

page 15 note 4 E.g. MacAdam, R., ‘Ancient Watermills’, Ulster Jnl of Archaeology 4 (1886), 9Google Scholar (basic mill-names in thirty-two languages); Goudie, G., ‘On the Horizontal Water Mills of Shetland’, Proc. of the Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland 20 (1886), 279, 281Google Scholar and passim (a list of basic mill-names mainly derived from MacAdam (Ibid.) and comparative names in Shetland, Norwegian and Scottish Gaelic); Curwen, ‘Early Water-Mills’, pp. 139 and 141 (names in English, Shetland, Norwegian and Scottish and Irish Gaelic); Williamson, K., ‘Horizontal Water-Mills of the Faeroe Islands’, Antiquity 20 (1946), 84–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (names in Faeroese); Lucas, A. T., ‘The Horizontal Mill in Ireland’, Jnl of the R. Soc. of Antiquaries of Ireland 83 (1953), 1–36Google Scholar (names in Irish Gaelic); Syson, , Water-Mills, pp. 163–6 (names in modern English).Google Scholar

page 16 note 1 Williamson, , ‘Faeroe Islands’, p. 84.Google Scholar

page 16 note 2 E.g. MacAdam, , ‘Ancient Watermills’, p. 9.Google Scholar

page 16 note 3 E.g. the latest studies concerning the molae of the Plan of St Gall (Horn, ‘St Gall’).

page 16 note 4 Water-Mills, pp. 163–6.

page 16 note 5 Hodgen, M. T., ‘Domesday Watermills’, Antiquity 13 (1939), 261–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 16 note 6 Ibid. p. 266.

page 16 note 7 Ibid. p. 262.

page 16 note 8 Ibid. figs. 1–5.

page 16 note 9 Note in MA 2 (1958), 183–5.Google Scholar

page 16 note 10 Water-Mills, pl. IX (opposite p. 67) and p. 30.

page 16 note 11 Birm. 289: 1220 ± 100 BP: a.d. 730

290: 1162±100 BP: a.d. 788

291: 1240±110 BP: a.d. 710

292: 1195 ± 90 BP: a.d. 755

(all dates based on Libby half-life and uncorrected by calibration curves).

page 16 note 12 Rahtz, P. and Sheridan, K., ‘A Saxon Watermill in Bolebridge St, Tamworth’, Trans. of the South Staffordshire Archaeol. and Hist. Soc. 13 (1971–1972), 9–16.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 Goudie, ‘Shetland’.

page 17 note 2 Lucas, ‘Ireland’, and later papers.

page 18 note 1 Originally in MacAdam, , ‘Ancient Watermills’, p. 6.Google Scholar

page 18 note 2 Trent, E. M., ‘Examination of Bearing from Saxon Water-Mill’, Hist. Metallurgy 9 (1975), 19–25.Google Scholar

page 18 note 3 Birm. 491: 1000 ± 110 BP: a.d. 950 (Libby half-life, uncorrected). I am grateful to Dr W. McCutcheon of the Ulster Museum for supplying the sample; and to Professor F. W. Shotton and the radio-carbon laboratory at Birmingham for carrying out the determination and those listed above, p. 16, n. 11.

page 18 note 4 Gerefa c. 9 (Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, F. (Halle, 1903–1916) 1, 454)Google Scholar: ‘fiscwer and mylne macian’; cf. c. 16 (Gesetze 1, 455): the ‘mylewerde’ among those whom ‘he sceal to tolan fylstan’. The post-Conquest Leges Edwardi confessoris c. 12.8 (Gesetze 1, 639) declare that ‘si molendina, piscaria vel alia quelibet opera’ which interfere with public waterways (defined in c. 12 pr.) are constructed, they are to be destroyed and ‘forisfactura regis’ paid.

page 18 note 5 Where the earliest occurrence of molendinum is given as 1080 and of molinum as 1086.

page 19 note 1 Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. Birch, W.de Gray (London, 1885–1999Google Scholar; cited henceforth as BCS), no. 191; Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters (London, 1968Google Scholar; henceforth cited as Sawyer), no. 25.

page 19 note 2 BCS 418, Anglo-Saxon Charters I: Charters of Rochester, ed. Campbell, A., (London, 1973)Google Scholar, no. 19; BCS 789 (Sawyer 491): ‘unam molinum iuxta dirivativis cursibus aquarum Lamburnam’ (for dirivativis etc. cf. BCS 734 of 939, 788 of 943, etc.); BCS 1121 (Sawyer 713) and below, p. 22, n. 1; BCS 1346, Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden 3rd ser. 92 (1962), 102Google Scholar (Sawyer 572): for the problem of the original recipient see esp. Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, , p. 416.Google Scholar

page 19 note 3 BCS 1163, translated by Quirk, R. N., ArchJ 119 (1962), 175Google Scholar; Edwards, E., Liber Monasterii de Hyda (Rolls Ser., 1866), pp. 228–31Google Scholar (Sawyer 845). For the (later) sites of the Itchen mills see Biddle's, M. map of ‘Winchester c. 993–1066’, Tenth-Century Studies. Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and ‘Regularis Concordia’, ed. David, Parsons (London and Chichester, 1975), p. 129.Google Scholar

page 19 note 4 Hodgen, , ‘Domesday Watermills’, p. 266Google Scholar; for the view that her widely quoted figure of 5,624 mills is somewhat low, see Lennard, R. V., Rural England (Oxford, 1959), p. 278Google Scholar f. The windmill is not recorded before the last decades of the twelfth century, when it appears in Normandy and England almost simultaneously (Lynn, White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), pp. 87–8Google Scholar and 162, with references to the principal texts and literature). It may be assumed therefore that all references to (structural) mills before 1066 are to watermills.

page 20 note 1 Bloch, M., ‘The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill’, (1935)Google Scholar, unrevised English translation in Bloch, , Land and Work in Medieval Europe (London, 1967), pp. 138 and 156.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 Lennard, , Rural England, p. 280.Google Scholar

page 20 note 3 Liber vitae patrum, 18: ed. Krusch, B., Monumenta Germanise Historica, Script. Rer. Merov. 1 (1883), 734Google Scholar f.; MGH, Capitularia 1 (1883), ed. A. Boretius, no. 77, c. 19 (for the date see Ganshof, F. L., Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 155–6 (1954), 62–6)Google Scholar. For venna, recorded exclusively in Francia until the eleventh century, see esp. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexikon Minus, s.v., and cf. Jud, J., Romania 47, 486Google Scholar; von Wartburg, W., Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch XIV [U–Z] (1961), 247–8Google Scholar, notes that, in contradistinction to the medieval Latin evidence, OFr vanne, ‘planche mobile qui se lève et se baisse pour ouvrir ou fermer le passage à l'eau dans une écluse’, is recorded from 1274, two centuries earlier than OFr venne, ‘engin de pêche’.

page 20 note 4 Ed. Levillain, L., Le Moyen Age 13 (1900), 358–9Google Scholar; Codex Diplomatics Cavensis 1 (Naples, 1873), no. 156. Conciare (apparently found only in south and central Italy) is translated by Niermeyer, Lexikon Minus, s.v., as ‘build, arrange, repair’; but a primary meaning ‘furnish, equip’ fits all his places better, and cf. conciatua (below). The force of medium is not clear to me: an adverbial use, whether for ‘internally’ or ‘half-(furnished)’, seems syntactically unlikely, but none of the other senses of medium (Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis, s.v.) seems any better.Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 Codex Diplomaticus Caietanus (Monte Cassino, 1887), no. 19 (p. 33)Google Scholar of 906; Regesto di Farfa, ed. Giorgi, I. and Balzani, U. (Rome, 1888)Google Scholar, nos. 66 of 1013 and 695 of 1035. I interpret s(c)andaliciis as ‘the shingle cladding of the mill-house’; cf. the examples of scandulicius, ‘shingle-covered’, from this same area in Niermeyer, Lexikon Minus, s.v., one of them from Gregory of Catino's Chronicon. Ligamentariis is more difficult. Novum Glossarium, s.v. ligamentorium, has only one place, a letter of Pope Agapetus II (955) (Migne, Patrologia Latina 133, col. 922D): ‘ad ipsos aquimolos cum ligamentorio et introitu suo’, and translates ‘canal (Ital. allacciamento)’. But Arnaldi's Lexikon, from which this is taken, has ‘allacciamento’, canalis?, rightly expressing doubt, since the sense of a linking channel is found only in modern technological language (as ‘allacciamento telefonico’). Something to do with the structure of the mill seems indicated; and cf. the document next cited, where ligare and lignamenta (‘timber planks’) are associated.

page 21 note 2 Regesto di Farfa IV, no. 651. For staffile(s), see Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 80 (1964), 465 ff.Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 BCS 949 and 950, new ed. by Gelling, M., ‘The Old English Charter Boundaries of Berkshire’, The Place-Names of Berkshire III, EPNS 51 (Cambridge, 1976), 742Google Scholar; BCS 902, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 682; and BCS 1121, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 691. For the lost Hurgrove in Steventon, see Gelling, Berkshire III, 692, and Gelling, , Berkshire 11 EPNS 50 (Cambridge, 1974), 418.Google Scholar

page 22 note 2 Above, p. 19, n. 3; Die angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benediktinnerregel, ed. Schröer, A.Google Scholar, Bibl. der ags. Prosa 2, 2nd ed. with supplement by Gneuss, H. (Darmstadt, 1964), p. 250Google Scholar. For the Oxford manuscript, see Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, no. 353; for the authorship of the translation, see Gneuss, H., ASE 1 (1972), 73–4Google Scholar, and Gretsch, M., Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in England und ihre altenglische Übersetzung (Ph.D. thesis, Munich, 1973), pp. 9–11.Google Scholar

page 22 note 3 De temporibus anni, ed. Henel, H., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 213 (1942), 4Google Scholar; NED, s. vv. ‘mill-wheel’ and ‘water-wheel’.

page 22 note 4 Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. Wright, T. and Wülcker, R. P. (London, 1884) 1Google Scholar, cols. 273.1 and 430.28. For the manuscript, see Ker, Catalogue, no. 143.

page 22 note 5 Cf. Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull' alto medioevo 19 (Spoleto, 1972), 469 ff.Google Scholar

page 22 note 6 Wright-Wülcker, , Vocabularies 1Google Scholar, col. 198.25. For the manuscript, see Ker, Catalogue, no. 240.

page 22 note 7 BCS 370 (Sawyer 186: contemporary); Wallenberg, J. K., Kentish Place-Names (Uppsala, 1931), pp. 141–5Google Scholar, where (p. 142) ‘there is still a mill. A stream with a rapid course passes through Greatness.’

page 23 note 1 BCS 550 (Sawyer 345); BCS 738 and 739 (Sawyer 391: highly suspect); BCS 675, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 697, with BCS 828, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 694; and BCS 926 (Sawyer 636).

page 23 note 2 BCS 687, Gelling, , Berkshire 111Google Scholar, 686; cf. Ibid. p. 676.

page 23 note 3 BCS 551 (Sawyer 218). Bosworth–Toller and NED cite BCS 299 (Sawyer 1556) – the bounds of Withington – with the date ‘c. 800’, but it is in fact of s. xi, although possibly copying an earlier text; for the bounds, cf. Finberg, H. P. R., Lucerna (Leicester, 1964), p. 24Google Scholar and n., and Finberg, H. P. R., The Early Charters of the West Midlands (Leicester, 1961), pp. 84–5Google Scholar. I do not understand why Smith, A. H., English Place-Name Elements 11 (EPNS 26)Google Scholar, 74, s.v. *pull, says ‘recorded only in OE p.ns.’: Bosworth–Toller has other places besides the present one.

page 23 note 4 BCS 877, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 663, and BCS 955 (Sawyer 621), the bounds at this point being those of the later Horsell against Chobham (Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A. and Stenton, F. M., with Bonner, A., The Place-Names of Surrey, EPNS 11 (Cambridge, 1934), 132)Google Scholar; and BCS 1112, Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. Farrer, W. (Edinburgh, 1914)Google Scholar, no. 6 (Sawyer 712), correcting the late manuscript's ‘on niy senforda’ to ‘on mylenforda’: one-and-a-half hides there were among the dependencies of Sherburn-in-Elmet in 963 and probably still in 1066.

page 24 note 1 BCS 630 and better in Birch, W. de G., An Ancient Manuscript (Hampshire Record Soc., 1889), p. 96Google Scholar: for the topographical interpretation see below, p. 26, n. 1; BCS 792 (Sawyer 495: con-temporary); BCS 984, Gelling, Berkshire 111, 645; BCS 1030 (Sawyer 586: s. xii); and Codex Diplomatics Aevi Saxonici, ed. Kemble, J. M. (London, 1839–1848)Google Scholar, no. 775 (Sawyer 1001: c. 1150).

page 24 note 2 BCS 880 (Sawyer 546: s. x2 or earlier!); Bennett, and Elton, , Corn Milling 11, 218Google Scholar; Reynolds, J.Windmills and Watermills, 2nd ed. (London, 1974), p. 19.Google Scholar

page 24 note 3 Smith, , Elements 1 (EPNS 25), 63.Google Scholar

page 24 note 4 See Ibid. 11, 147 ff., esp. the interpretation under 1(i); and cf. below.

page 24 note 5 Ibid. 1, 167; Gover, , Mawer, and Stenton, , Surrey, pp. 129 and 132.Google Scholar

page 24 note 6 NED, s. vv.

page 25 note 1 In the absence of a full report of the Old Windsor excavations, see the summary, MA 2 (1958), 185–5.Google Scholar

page 25 note 2 NED, s.v. trough; Scottish National Dictionary VI, 273 (s.v. mill), ‘(62) mill trow(se), -trough, the wooden conduit carrying water to a mill-wheel’, recorded 1824 in Galloway; Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (Brit. Acad., London, 1975), s. vv. alva and algea: the first place in the former is significantly ‘in bordis emptis ad alvos [sic] faciendos et rotas molendini … reparandas’ from the 1209 Winchester Pipe Roll, but the interpretation ‘part of a water-mill (apparently smaller than the penstock)’ is misleading and unjustified. Note also that the (four-teenth-century) ‘Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth’ glosses le auge with a trow: ed. Wright, T., A Volume of Vocabularies (1857), p. 155Google Scholar. According to NED, s.v. penstock, the secondary meaning of this word, ‘the channel or trough in which a penstock [= sluice or flood-gate] is placed’, is (U.S.) first recorded in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. But the obviously well-informed account of a watermill in Croker, T. H. et al. , The Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences 11 (London, 1765)Google Scholar, s.v. mill [col. 3] and fig. 87, uses ‘penstock’ of a vertical chute through which the water descends into the trough or lander.

page 25 note 3 Bosworth-Toller, Supplement, s.v. mylen-gear; Smith, Elements 1, s.v. *gear.

page 26 note 1 BCS 1163 (English translation, ArcJ 119 (1962), 175)Google Scholar, where the phrase ‘him setige sume mylne adilgade’ occurs. For the topographical problem of this part of the city cf. Biddle, , Tenth-Century Studies, ed. Parsons, , pp. 127–8Google Scholar, and the area marked ‘Nunnaminster’ and indications of mills and watercourses on the map, Ibid. p. 129.

page 26 note 2 Gelling, , Berkshire 111, 645–6Google Scholar; cf. Ibid. p. 641 and map A(b)iv, although the mill could not then have been on the island site of the modern Padworth Mill; Keays-Young, J., ‘The Eadmund–Ælfric Charter, 944 a.d.’, RES 6 (1930), esp. 278–9Google Scholar and the map on 274; for corrections to other parts of the boundary see Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A. and Stenton, F. M., The Place-Names of Northamptonshire, EPNS 10 (Cambridge, 1933), 10Google Scholar, n. 1.

page 26 note 3 A fourteenth-century illustration of eel-traps, mill-weir and ‘overshot’ mill in the Luttrell Psalter is conveniently reproduced, Reynolds, , Windmills and Watermills, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 Chart is on the Kentish Stour, south-west of Wye, although the river passes the latter more nearly. There were two mills at Chart in 1086, when the manor belonged to the mensa of the Canterbury monks, but no less than four (worth 23s 8d) at Wye, which had recently been given to Battle Abbey; see Domesday Book for Kent, in Victoria County History: Kent 111 (1932), 217Google Scholar and 242.

page 27 note 2 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 3.Google Scholar

page 27 note 3 See BCS 240 (‘Ego Offa rex sedens in regali palatio in Tamouuorthige’) and 293 (‘in vicu regio æt Tomeworðige’), and for the former Sawyer 121. I have discussed the authenticity and non-authenticity of early English references to palatia and the documentary and literary terminology for ‘royal residences, royal estates’ in a contribution to the Compiègne–Paris Conference (1973) on ‘Royal Residences in Western Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages’, the proceedings of which are unfortunately still unpublished.

page 27 note 4 Bloch, , Land and Work, p. 142.Google Scholar

page 27 note 5 Curwen, , ‘Early Water-Mills’, esp. pp. 134–42Google Scholar and 144–5; Reynolds, , Windmills and Watermills, pp. 11Google Scholar and 57.

page 28 note 1 Curwen, , ‘Early Water-Mills’, pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 Cf. Lennard, , Rural England, p. 286.Google Scholar

page 28 note 3 Gelling, , Berkshire 111, 646Google Scholar; cf. Ibid. p. 641.

page 28 note 4 Domesday Book for Berkshire in Victoria County History: Berkshire 1 (1906), 339Google Scholar. It is presumably the Marcham Mill referred to by that name from the early twelfth century: Gelling, , Berkshire 11, 415Google Scholar, and 111, 742.

page 29 note 1 For -thorp names see now Cameron, K., Medieval Scandinavia 3 (1970), 35–49Google Scholar, repr. Place-Name Evidence for the Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Scandinavian Settlements: Eight Studies, EPNS (1975), pp. 139–56.Google Scholar

page 29 note 2 BCS 491, Gelling, , Berkshire 111Google Scholar, 680; and BCS 796 (Sawyer 503) and Mrs Gelling's map C.

page 29 note 3 Gelling, , Berkshire 111Google Scholar, 675, and 11, 383.