Watermill

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Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (12th century)
Interior of the Lyme Regis watermill, UK (14th century)

A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses

rolling mills, wire drawing
mills.

One major way to classify watermills is by wheel orientation (vertical or horizontal), one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, and the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism. The former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot, breastshot and pitchback (backshot or reverse shot) waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide; ship mills are water mills onboard (and constituting) a ship.

Watermills impact the river dynamics of the watercourses where they are installed. During the time watermills operate channels tend to sedimentate, particularly backwater.[1] Also in the backwater area, inundation events and sedimentation of adjacent floodplains increase. Over time however these effects are cancelled by river banks becoming higher.[1] Where mills have been removed, river incision increases and channels deepen.[1]

History

There are two basic types of watermills, one powered by a vertical-waterwheel via a gear mechanism, and the other equipped with a horizontal-waterwheel without such a mechanism. The former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot, breastshot and reverse shot waterwheel mills.

Western world

Classical antiquity

Model of a Roman water-powered grain-mill described by Vitruvius. The millstone (upper floor) is powered by an undershot waterwheel by the way of a gear mechanism (lower floor)

The

Greeks invented the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, and used, along with the Romans, undershot, overshot and breastshot waterwheel mills.[2]

The earliest evidence of a water-driven wheel appears in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer

Lewis assigns the date of the invention of the

Ptolemaic Alexandria around 240 BC.[6]

The Greek geographer

Asia Minor, before 71 BC.[7]

The Roman engineer

gearing mechanism.[8] He also seems to indicate the existence of water-powered kneading machines.[9]

The Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica tells of an advanced overshot wheel mill around 20 BC/10 AD.[10] He praised for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labour:[11]

Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls; even if the cockcrow heralds the dawn, sleep on. For

golden age
.

The Roman encyclopedist

fulling mill in 73/74 AD in Antioch, Roman Syria.[14]

The 2nd century AD

Aurelian walls
in the late 3rd century.

A breastshot wheel mill dating to the late 2nd century AD was excavated at Les Martres-de-Veyre, France.[17]

Scheme of the Roman Hierapolis sawmill, the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism.[18]

The 3rd century AD

Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia, demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire.[20]

Roman turbine mill at Chemtou, Tunisia. The tangential water inflow of the millrace made the horizontal wheel in the shaft turn like a true turbine, the earliest known.[21]

The earliest

Roman North Africa, dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century AD.[21] A possible water-powered furnace has been identified at Marseille, France.[22]

Mills were commonly used for grinding grain into flour (attested by Pliny the Elder), but industrial uses as fulling and sawing marble were also applied.[23]

The Romans used both fixed and floating water wheels and introduced water power to other provinces of the Roman Empire. So-called 'Greek Mills' used water wheels with a horizontal wheel (and vertical shaft). A "Roman Mill" features a vertical wheel (on a horizontal shaft). Greek style mills are the older and simpler of the two designs, but only operate well with high water velocities and with small diameter millstones. Roman style mills are more complicated as they require gears to transmit the power from a shaft with a horizontal axis to one with a vertical axis.

Although to date only a few dozen Roman mills are archaeologically traced, the widespread use of aqueducts in the period suggests that many remain to be discovered. Recent excavations in Roman London, for example, have uncovered what appears to be a tide mill together with a possible sequence of mills worked by an aqueduct running along the side of the River Fleet.[24]

In 537 AD,

East Roman general Belisarius, when the besieging Goths cut off the water supply for those mills.[25]
These floating mills had a wheel that was attached to a boat moored in a fast flowing river.

  • Undershot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[8]
    Undershot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[8]
  • Overshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[10]
    Overshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[10]
  • Breastshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 3rd century AD[17]
    Breastshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 3rd century AD[17]

Middle Ages

Medieval watermill
German ship mills on the Rhine, around 1411

The surviving evidence for watermills sharply increases with the emergence of documentary genres such as

England alone.[29] Later research estimates a less conservative number of 6,082 that should be considered a minimum as the northern reaches of England were never properly recorded.[30] In 1300, this number had risen to between 10,000 and 15,000.[31] By the early 7th century, watermills were also well established in Ireland. A century later they began to spread across the former Roman Rhine and Danube frontier into the other parts of Germany.[32] Ship mills and tide mills, both of which yet unattested for the ancient period,[33]
were introduced in the 6th century.

Tide mills

In recent years, a number of new archaeological finds has consecutively pushed back the date of the earliest tide mills, all of which were discovered on the Irish coast: A 6th century vertical-wheeled tide mill was located at Killoteran near Waterford.[34] A twin flume horizontal-wheeled tide mill dating to c. 630 was excavated on Little Island.[35][36] Alongside it, another tide mill was found which was powered by a vertical undershot wheel.[35][36] The Nendrum Monastery mill from 787 was situated on an island in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Its millstones are 830mm in diameter and the horizontal wheel is estimated to have developed 7/8HP at its peak. Remains of an earlier mill dated at 619 were also found at the site.[37][38]

Survey of industrial mills

In a 2005 survey the scholar Adam Lucas identified the following first appearances of various industrial mill types in Western Europe. Noticeable is the preeminent role of France in the introduction of new innovative uses of waterpower. However, he has drawn attention to the dearth of studies of the subject in several other countries.

First Appearance of Various Industrial Mills in Medieval Europe, AD 770-1443 [39]
Type of mill Date Country
Malt mill 770 France
Fulling mill
1080 France
Tanning mill c. 1134 France
Forge mill ca. 1200 England, France
Tool-sharpening mill 1203 France
Hemp mill 1209 France
Bellows 1269, 1283 Slovakia, France
Paper mill[40] 1282 Spain
Sawmill c. 1300 France
Ore-crushing mill 1317 Germany
Blast furnace 1384 France
Cutting and slitting mill 1443 France

Ancient East Asia

A Northern Song era (960–1127) water-powered mill for dehusking grain with a horizontal wheel

The waterwheel was found in China from 30 AD onwards, when it was used to power

Korean Peninsula.[49] It also became known in Tibet by at least 641 AD.[49]

Ancient India

According to Greek historical tradition, India received water-mills from the Roman Empire in the early 4th century AD when a certain Metrodoros introduced "water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then".[50]

Arabic world

An Afghan water mill photographed during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880). The rectangular water mill has a thatched roof and traditional design with a small horizontal mill-house built of stone or perhaps mud bricks

Engineers under the

Caliphates adopted watermill technology from former provinces of the Byzantine Empire, having been applied for centuries in those provinces prior to the Muslim conquests, including modern-day Syria, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Spain (see List of ancient watermills).[51]

The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled watermills were both in widespread use by the 9th century.[

hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, and tide mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial watermills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.[52] Muslim and Middle Eastern Christian engineers also used crankshafts and water turbines, gears in watermills and water-raising machines, and dams as a source of water, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.[53] Fulling mills, and steel mills may have spread from Al-Andalus to Christian Spain in the 12th century. Industrial watermills were also employed in large factory complexes built in al-Andalus between the 11th and 13th centuries.[54]

The engineers of the Islamic world used several solutions to achieve the maximum output from a watermill. One solution was to mount them to

moored in midstream. This technique was employed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in 10th-century Iraq, where large ship mills made of teak and iron could produce 10 tons of flour from corn every day for the granary in Baghdad.[55]

Persia

More than 300 watermills were at work in Iran till 1960.[56] Now only a few are still working. One of the famous ones is the water mill of Askzar and the water mill of the Yazd city, still producing flour.

Operation

Veszprem County, Hungary
Watermills on the Pliva in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Weald and Downland Open Air Museum

Typically, water is diverted from a river or impoundment or mill pond to a turbine or water wheel, along a channel or pipe (variously known as a flume, head race, mill race, leat, leet,[57] lade (Scots) or penstock). The force of the water's movement drives the blades of a wheel or turbine, which in turn rotates an axle that drives the mill's other machinery. Water leaving the wheel or turbine is drained through a tail race, but this channel may also be the head race of yet another wheel, turbine or mill. The passage of water is controlled by sluice gates that allow maintenance and some measure of flood control; large mill complexes may have dozens of sluices controlling complicated interconnected races that feed multiple buildings and industrial processes.

Watermills can be divided into two kinds, one with a horizontal water wheel on a vertical axle, and the other with a vertical wheel on a horizontal axle. The oldest of these were horizontal mills in which the force of the water, striking a simple paddle wheel set horizontally in line with the flow turned a

runner stone balanced on the rynd
which is atop a shaft leading directly up from the wheel. The bedstone does not turn. The problem with this type of mill arose from the lack of gearing; the speed of the water directly set the maximum speed of the runner stone which, in turn, set the rate of milling.

Most watermills in Britain and the United States of America had a vertical waterwheel, one of four kinds: undershot, breast-shot, overshot and pitchback wheels. This vertical produced rotary motion around a horizontal axis, which could be used (with cams) to lift hammers in a

fulling mill
and so on.

  • Undershot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[8]
    Undershot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[8]
  • Overshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[10]
    Overshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 1st century BC[10]
  • Pitchback water wheel, often used to increase the power generated by a breastshot wheel[58]
    Pitchback water wheel, often used to increase the power generated by a breastshot wheel[58]
  • Breastshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 3rd century AD[17]
    Breastshot water wheel, applied for watermilling since the 3rd century AD[17]

Milling corn

Mulino Meraviglia in San Vittore Olona, Italy, along Olona river

However, in corn mills rotation about a vertical axis was required to drive its stones. The horizontal rotation was converted into the vertical rotation by means of gearing, which also enabled the runner stones to turn faster than the waterwheel. The usual arrangement in British and American

sluice gate
and thus the flow of the water past the main wheel allowed the miller to compensate for seasonal variations in the water supply. Finer speed adjustment was made during the milling process by tentering, that is, adjusting the gap between the stones according to the water flow, the type of grain being milled, and the grade of flour required.

In many mills (including the earliest) the great spur wheel turned only one stone, but there might be several mills under one roof. The earliest illustration of a single waterwheel driving more than one set of stones was drawn by Henry Beighton in 1723 and published in 1744 by J. T. Desaguliers.[60]

Dalgarven Mill, Ayrshire, United Kingdom
Shipmill on the Mura, Slovenia

Overshot and pitchback mills

The overshot wheel was a later innovation in waterwheels and was around two and a half times more efficient than the undershot.[59] The undershot wheel, in which the main water wheel is simply set into the flow of the mill race, suffers from an inherent inefficiency stemming from the fact that the wheel itself, entering the water behind the main thrust of the flow driving the wheel, followed by the lift of the wheel out of the water ahead of the main thrust, actually impedes its own operation. The overshot wheel solves this problem by bringing the water flow to the top of the wheel. The water fills buckets built into the wheel, rather than the simple paddle wheel design of undershot wheels. As the buckets fill, the weight of the water starts to turn the wheel. The water spills out of the bucket on the down side into a spillway leading back to river. Since the wheel itself is set above the spillway, the water never impedes the speed of the wheel. The impulse of the water on the wheel is also harnessed in addition to the weight of the water once in the buckets. Overshot wheels require the construction of a dam on the river above the mill and a more elaborate millpond, sluice gate, mill race and spillway or tailrace.[61]

An inherent problem in the overshot mill is that it reverses the rotation of the wheel. If a miller wishes to convert a breastshot mill to an overshot wheel all the machinery in the mill has to be rebuilt to take account of the change in rotation. An alternative solution was the pitchback or backshot wheel. A launder was placed at the end of the flume on the headrace, this turned the direction of the water without much loss of energy, and the direction of rotation was maintained. Daniels Mill near Bewdley, Worcestershire is an example of a flour mill that originally used a breastshot wheel, but was converted to use a pitchback wheel. Today it operates as a breastshot mill.[58]

Dalgarven Mill, United Kingdom

Larger water wheels (usually

machinery through the motion of flowing water
.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the invention of the Pelton wheel encouraged some mill owners to replace over- and undershot wheels with Pelton wheel turbines driven through penstocks.

Tide mills

A different type of watermill is the tide mill. This mill might be of any kind, undershot, overshot or horizontal but it does not employ a river for its power source. Instead a mole or causeway is built across the mouth of a small bay. At low tide, gates in the mole are opened allowing the bay to fill with the incoming tide. At high tide the gates are closed, trapping the water inside. At a certain point a sluice gate in the mole can be opened allowing the draining water to drive a mill wheel or wheels. This is particularly effective in places where the tidal differential is very great, such as the Bay of Fundy in Canada where the tides can rise fifty feet, or the now derelict village of Tide Mills, East Sussex.[citation needed] The last two examples in the United Kingdom which are restored to working conditions can be visited at Eling, Hampshire and at Woodbridge, Suffolk.

Run of the river schemes do not divert water at all and usually involve

undershot wheels the mills are mostly on the banks of sizeable rivers or fast flowing streams. Other watermills were set beneath large bridges where the flow of water between the stanchions was faster. At one point London bridge had so many water wheels beneath it that bargemen complained that passage through the bridge was impaired.[citation needed
]

Current status

Watermill in Kuusamo (Finland)
Watermill in Jahodná (Slovakia)

In 1870 watermills still produced 2/3 of the power available for British grain milling.[62] By the early 20th century, availability of cheap electrical energy made the watermill obsolete in developed countries although some smaller rural mills continued to operate commercially later throughout the century.

A few historic mills such as the Water Mill, Newlin Mill and Yates Mill in the US and The Darley Mill Centre in the UK still operate for demonstration purposes. Small-scale commercial production is carried out in the UK at Daniels Mill, Little Salkeld Mill and Redbournbury Mill. This was boosted to overcome flour shortages during the Covid pandemic.[63]

Some old mills are being upgraded with modern hydropower technology, such as those worked on by the South Somerset Hydropower Group in the UK.

In some developing countries, watermills are still widely used for processing grain. For example, there are thought to be 25,000 operating in Nepal, and 200,000 in India.[64] Many of these are still of the traditional style, but some have been upgraded by replacing wooden parts with better-designed metal ones to improve the efficiency. For example, the Centre for Rural Technology in Nepal upgraded 2,400 mills between 2003 and 2007.[65]

Applications

Watermill in Caldas Novas, Brazil
Former watermill in Kohila, Estonia

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    S2CID 133795380
    .
  2. ^ Oleson 1984, pp. 325ff.; Oleson 2000, pp. 217–302; Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, pp. 10−15; Wikander 2000, pp. 371−400
  3. ^ Oleson 2000, p. 233
  4. ^ M. J. T. Lewis, Millstone and Hammer: the origins of water power (University of Hull Press 1997)
  5. ^ Oleson 2000, pp. 234, 270
  6. ^ Wikander 2000, pp. 396f.; Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, p. 11; Wilson 2002, pp. 7f.
  7. ^ Wikander 1985, p. 160; Wikander 2000, p. 396
  8. ^ a b c Wikander 2000, pp. 373f.; Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, p. 12
  9. ^ Wikander 2000, p. 402
  10. ^ a b c Wikander 2000, p. 375; Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, p. 13
  11. ^ Lewis, p. vii.
  12. ^ The translation of this word is crucial to the interpretation of the passage. Traditionally, it has been translated as 'spoke' (e.g. Reynolds, p. 17), but Lewis (p. 66) points out that, while its primary meaning is 'ray' (as a sunbeam), its only concrete meaning is 'cog'. Since a horizontal-wheeled corn mill does not need gearing (and hence has no cogs), the mill must have been vertical-wheeled.
  13. ^ Wikander 1985, p. 158; Wikander 2000, p. 403; Wilson 2002, p. 16
  14. ^ Wikander 2000, p. 406
  15. ^ Kevin Greene, "Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: M.I. Finley Re-Considered", The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Feb., 2000), pp. 29-59 (39)
  16. ^ "La meunerie de Barbegal". Archived from the original on 2007-01-17. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
  17. ^ a b c Wikander 2000, p. 375
  18. ^ a b Ritti, Grewe & Kessener 2007, p. 161
  19. ^ Ritti, Grewe & Kessener 2007, pp. 149–153
  20. ^ Wilson 2002, p. 16
  21. ^ a b Wilson 1995, pp. 507f.; Wikander 2000, p. 377; Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, p. 13
  22. ^ Wikander 2000, p. 407
  23. ^ Lewis, passim.
  24. ^ Rob Spain: A possible Roman Tide Mill
  25. ^ Wikander 2000, p. 383
  26. ^ Wikander 2000, pp. 372f.
  27. ^ Wilson 2002, p. 3
  28. ^ Wikander 1985, p. 170, fn. 45
  29. ^ Gimpel 1977, pp. 11–12
  30. ^ Langdon 2004, pp. 9–10
  31. ^ Langdon 2004, pp. 11
  32. ^ Wikander 2000, p. 400
  33. ^ Wikander 2000, pp. 379 & 383f.
  34. ^ Murphy 2005
  35. ^ a b Wikander 1985, pp. 155–157
  36. ^ a b Rynne 2000, pp. 10, fig. 1.2, 17, 49
  37. ^ McErlean & Crothers 2007
  38. ^ "Recently discovered Tide Mill from 787 AD at Nendrum Monastic Site". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2008-04-10.
  39. ^ Adam Robert Lucas, 'Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe', Technology and Culture, Vol. 46, (Jan. 2005), pp. 1-30 (17).
  40. ^ Burns 1996, pp. 417f.
  41. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, pp. 390–392
  42. ^ de Crespigny 2007, p. 184
  43. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 370.
  44. ^ de Crespigny 2007, p. 1050
  45. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 88–89.
  46. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 396–400.
  47. ^ a b c d e Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 400.
  48. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 400–401.
  49. ^ a b Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 401.
  50. Cedrenus
    (Historiarum compendium), a certain Metrodoros who went to India in c. AD 325 "constructed water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then".

  51. ^ Wikander 1985, pp. 158−162
  52. S2CID 109564224
    .
  53. .
  54. ^ Hill; see also Mechanical Engineering Archived 2007-12-25 at the Wayback Machine)
  55. ^ Conference of Qanat in Iran - water clock in Persia 1383, in Persian
  56. ^ Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (1952) states: leet, n. A leat; a flume. [Obs.].
  57. ^ .
  58. ^ a b Gauldie.
  59. ^ A Course of Experimental Philosophy II (1744; 1763 edition), 449-53.
  60. ^ Dictionary definition of "tailrace".
  61. .
  62. ^ Partridge, Joanna (7 June 2020). "Back to the grind: historic mills boosted by flour shortage during Covid-19 lockdown". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  63. ^ "Water Mill Battery Charger (Nepal Ghatta Project)". Archived from the original on 7 March 2005.
  64. ^ Ashden Awards case study on upgrading of watermills by CRT/Nepal Archived 2008-04-30 at the Wayback Machine

References

External links