The Mills Of Medieval England

This book examines the evolution of mills - whether powered by water, wind, animals or humans - during an important era of English history. It focuses not only on the structures themselves, but also on the people who acted as entrepreneurs, workers, and customers for the industry. Together they created one of the most recognizable and enduring features of medieval society.

This is the first detailed study of the role of the Church in the commercialization of milling in medieval England. Focusing on the period from the late eleventh to the mid sixteenth centuries, it examines the estate management practices of more than thirty English religious houses founded by the Benedictines, Cistercians, Augustinians and other minor orders, with an emphasis on the role played by mills and milling in the establishment and development of a range of different sized episcopal and conventual foundations. Contrary to the views espoused by a number of prominent historians of technology since the 1930s, the book demonstrates that patterns of mill acquisition, innovation and exploitation were shaped not only by the size, wealth and distribution of a house’s estates, but also by environmental and demographic factors, changing cultural attitudes and legal conventions, prevailing and emergent technical traditions, the personal relations of a house with its patrons, tenants, servants and neighbours, and the entrepreneurial and administrative flair of bishops, abbots, priors and other ecclesiastical officials.

This book is the most comprehensive empirical study to date of the social and technical aspects of milling during the ancient and medieval periods. Drawing on the latest archaeological evidence and historical studies, the book examines the chronological development and technical details of handmills, beast mills, watermills and windmills from the first millennium BCE to c. 1500. It discusses the many and varied uses to which mills were turned in the civilisations of Rome, China, Islam and Europe, and the many types of mill that existed. The book also includes comparative regional studies of the social and economic significance of milling, and tackles several important historiographical issues, such as whether technological stagnation was a characteristic of late Antiquity, whether there was an "industrial revolution" in the European Middle Ages based on waterpower, and how contemporary studies in the social shaping of technology can shed light on the study of pre-modern technology.

This work is intended as a modern successor to L.F. Salzman's "English Industries in the Middle Ages" (1913). The approach to each industry is by material, discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. Only industries that resulted in the production of consumer goods and where substantial numbers of artefacts survive from the Middle Ages are dealt with (fishing and brewing are therefore omitted); the text is illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work.

The only survey of the urban, commercial and industrial history of the period between the Norman conquest and the Black Death.

"This account of mills and milling, from prehistory through Roman, Anglo-Saxon and later medieval times, to the post-medieval and modern centuries, is not just another book about windmills and watermills." "The few mills that do survive, sometimes restored, need to be set in a broader context. Watermills, which have always played the more dominant role, developed over a period of 2000 years and windmills first appeared in Britain 800 years ago: Domesday Book records 6000 watermills and by AD 1400 there were about 4000 windmills." "By interpreting the archaeological evidence and, for the later period, the documentary sources and above-ground remains, Martin Watts has pieced together a history of British molinology. Throughout he emphasises the development and use of artefacts and machines for grinding grain, their place in the historic landscape, and in the production of an essential food."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The only survey of the urban, commercial and industrial history of the period between the Norman conquest and the Black Death.