Feeding an army in the depths of a Russian winter requires some handy ideas. Handmills like this one were carried by thousands of Swedish soldiers during the Great Northern Wars of the 18th Century. They were used by the Caroleans, the highly professional soldiers of the Swedish Empire. Grain both lasts longer than flour, and…
Category: Muscle Matters
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Nice rice
Mill don’t just grind flour. This is a donkey-powered rice mill in China. It makes use of an Edge Runner Stone rather than using a pair of flat millstones. To work it, the rice would be placed on the stationary lower stone. The donkey then drags the top vertical stone around the edge of this lower stone,…
The life-giving camel
Mills come in all shapes and sizes: sometimes they even come with a camel. This postcard shows a camel-driven Saqiya or Sakia. They were once a common sight across the Middle East and Asia, and in some areas are still in use today. They were animal-driven machines, with which water could be raised from one…
She’s a jolly miller
“With flour-dust sprinkled in her greying hair and a beaming smile [she] runs, all alone, the centuries-old watermill of Thunder Bridge.” This jolly Gem is a newspaper cutting from the Daily Mail, from the 21st October 1938. It reports on the life and work of a certain Mrs H. Dickinson, who, having taken over the…
Curious quern
This Quern is thousands of years old and is one of the earliest ancestors of modern milling. This ancient Gem is what is known as a beehive quern. It is probably the oldest item in the Archive’s collections, dating back to the Iron Age (around the second century BC). It gained its name, the beehive…
Flour power
“Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women.” “Some of the work in a flour mill requires a good deal of muscular strength, and in peace days such work was considered unsuitable for women. However, when the…