MILLS

Medieval mills were almost all of the water-powered type. More or less every village had a mill, which could supply approximately fifty households. The principal of a water-mill is still familiar to us today; the water falls onto a vertical wheel from above, and this wheel turns a horizontal wheel inside the mill by means of a gear system. Generally, the gears are arranged so that each turn of the water wheel turns the horizontal wheel five times. More backward areas used horizontal water-wheels attached directly to a millstone, or else employed oxen, slaves, etc. to turn the millstone directly - this was obviously far less efficient than the geared system.

The windmill was a relatively recent innovation in the middle ages. The original types were far removed from the type we are familiar with today. The vanes were attached a box containing the milling wheel which was raised above the ground on a pole, so that it could be turned to face the wind as and when required. This arrangement meant that only a small mill-wheel could be fitted inside the box, making the windmill far less efficient than the water mill, and hence less popular.

By the early sixteenth century, mills were in wide use for purposes other than producing flour. Fulling-mills, tanning-mills, paper-mills, cloth-mills and saw-mills were all widely known, and could be found in any large city. Water power was also widely used to operate mining hoists and metallurgical processes, and even to operate machines for boring gun-barrels. In general, cities in the sixteenth century had four to five times as many mills as they had two centuries previously.

Windmills also became much more common in the Renaissance. The old post-mills had been improved by making the supporting pole hollow, so that a gear-shaft could run through it and operate a millstone on the ground. Obviously, this meant that the windmill could be much larger than the early types. The tower-mill was also introduced in the sixteenth century, where the entire mill is enclosed within a stone tower with a rotating top. This arrangement finally allowed windmills to reach the same size and efficiency as watermills.