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A Mill Pivot from Silchester

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

W. H. Manning
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Extract

The evidence for geared mills in Roman Britain is sufficiently slight for the addition of a further item to be worthy of record.

Among the hoard of ironwork discovered in a well at Silchester in 1890 and described by Sir John Evans was an iron bar, 36.1 in. long, tentatively identified as an unfinished carriage axle. Though this explanation was clearly unsatisfactory, no better one was forthcoming and the use of the bar remained a mystery. Whilst it is clearly an axle or spindle of some kind its weight and asymmetry show it was not intended for a carriage and, contrary to Evans's statement, it is a finished object showing signs of wear in places. A recent re-examination has suggested that it was the pivot of a large geared mill (fig. 1a), transmitting the power from a toothed wheel, through the central hole in the stationary lower millstone, to the upper stone. The well-known example from Great Chesterford, Cambs., offers a fairly close parallel and that from the German limes fort at Zugmantel possibly an even better one. The absence of the terminal rind from the Silchester spindle is explained by the fact that it was keyed to the axle by means of the rectangular end on the bar and could thus be easily removed when the spindle was taken as scrap. The end of this keying has been battered over to give greater security in fixing.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 38 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1964

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References

page 38 note 1 Cf. I. A. Richmond, Roman Britain, p. 171, for the other examples.

page 38 note 2 Archaeologia, 54, p. 141 and fig. 2. In His Grace the Duke of Wellington's collection at Reading Museum.

page 38 note 3 For a detailed account of this type of mill cf. L. A. Moritz, Grain Mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity, pp. 122 ff. In the reconstructed drawing, fig. b, the rind is based on that from Great Chesterford and the cog from Zugmantel.

page 38 note 4 Arch. Journ. xiii, p. 9, pl. 3, fig. 28. In the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge.

page 38 note 5 Saalburg-Jahrbuch, iii, 1912, p. 89, fig. 43.Google Scholar

page 38 note 6 This type of cog was still normal in France in the eighteenth century and is frequently shown in Diderot's Encyclopédie.

page 38 note 7 De Architectura, bk. x, c. v 2.

page 38 note 8 Moritz, of. cit., pp. 122 ff.

page 40 note 1 G. C. Boon, Roman Silchester, p. 187.

page 40 note 2 I am indebted to His Grace the Duke of Wellington, F.S.A., for permission to publish this item from the Silchester Collection, and to the Director of Reading Museum for his encouragement and co-operation.