The Hall of Waltheof/Chapter XIII
QUERNS or hand-mills are occasionally discovered in this neighbourhood, and Mr. Thomas Winder has given an exact account of one which was found on the Howden Moors near Bradfield in 1887. Mr. Winder's description was printed in Hardwicke's Science Gossip,[1] and I am indebted to Messrs. Chatto and Windus the publishers of that periodical and to Dr. Taylor the editor for leave to reproduce it. Mr. Winder says:
"When gathering 'day-stone' on the moors, adjoining the river Derwent, at Coldside, Howden, near Sheffield, the workmen found an almost perfect specimen of the upper stone of a quern, or hand-mill, which narrowly escaped being broken up for road metalling. Fortunately, it was seen by Mr. Henry Weetman, F.Z.S., of Howden House, and is now safely deposited in the Museum at Sheffield. [It was presented to the museum by M. J. Ellison, Esq., of Sheffield.]
"Coldside is situate at the foot of the 'Castle Rocks,' on the talus of the escarpment formed by the outcrop of the Kinder Scout Millstone Grit. The quern is made of stone probably obtained from the above-named bed; and is of so coarse a texture as to approach very nearly to a conglomerate; some of the included quartz pebbles (the 'suet lumps' of local masons) being half an inch long.
"I enclose a section drawn to scale—two inches to a foot—taken in such a position as to show the inverted conical 'feeding-hole,' and the two holes, situate on opposite edges of the stone, into which sticks, or possibly pieces of horn, were inserted to be used as handles in working the mill.
"The stone is very neatly worked, and does not show any chisel marks; the upper surface and edges are stained black, from exposure amongst the heather. The under or grinding surface is unstained and polished, as if from long service. The whole stone appears as if it had been unequally worked, or had ground down on one side rather faster than on the other.
"The plan of the stone is almost a circle; right-angle measurements being one foot one-and-seven-twelfths inches by one foot one-and-one-third inches. The feeding hole is five inches diameter at the top, and narrows to one inch at a point three inches down, continuing at that dimension throughout. The handle holes are three-and-one-third inches deep and taper inwardly from one-and-a-half inches to one-quarter inch ; the lower edge of one of these is only half an inch from the under surface of the stone, that of the opposite hole two-and-a-half inches. The under surface of the stone is not flat, but is beautifully worked out, so as to give the least resistance when in use compatible with sufficient grinding surface; this will be better seen by a reference to the section.
"Similar finds are not unknown on these and the neighbouring moors, which are sprinkled over with camps, entrenchments, barrows, and at least one length of Roman Road. Two or three flint arrow heads have been picked up at the spring-heads in the immediate neighbourhood; and at the last conversazione of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society, the Rev. Mr. Gatty showed a very fine collection of flints from the Bradfield moors, which are three or four miles to the east of Coldside. A bronze spearhead, encrusted with gravel, was found a few years ago under the Derwent Edge Rocks.[2] I have been unable to ascertain its present whereabouts."
The quern, which is represented in the drawing below, is still in the Weston Park Museum. Mr. Winder has pointed out to me that the rock or millstone grit of which the quern was made is still, or rather was until the recent introduction of rollers, used for millstones. And he also tells me that a quern was broken and built into a wall some years ago in the same district. I have an old document relating to the making of millstones on Millstone Edge more than two centuries ago, and the discovery of querns on these South Yorkshire moors appears to show that they too were manufactured on the moors.
Amongst the Norsemen, says Vigfusson, "bondswomen used to turn the handmills, and the turning of the quern was, as it still is in Iceland, where every farm has its handmill, accompanied by singing a song."[3] In the famous palace of Alcinous described in the Odyssey[4] there are fifty handmaids, some of whom "grind the yellow corn on the millstone, and others weave webs and turn the yarn as they sit, restless as the leaves of the tall poplar tree." In the Old Testament we read of "the maid-servant that is behind the mill,"[5]and in the New Testament we are told that at the Lord's coming judgment "two women shall be grinding at the mill; one shall be taken, and the other left."[6] The handmills of the Romans were often turned by slaves.
The rough texture of the stone figured in the drawing would present many cutting surfaces as it gradually wore away. To grind wheat into flour it was placed upon a conical under stone, so that as the wheat flowed through the aperture at the top it fell upon the rough surface of the cone and was ground into flour by the turning of the upper stone.
The quern, says Wright, "appears to have remained in constant use since the time of the Romans, and has fallen into disuse only very recently in some parts of the country."[7] The quern stone described in this chapter is probably of great age. No doubt the wind-mill and the water-mill supplanted the quern at an early date, and windmills are mentioned in English documents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Walking through the village street of Crookes one day I was directed to go through "Mule-hus Lane," an old lane which branches off from the street towards the west, and is parallel to the lane in which the burial urn described in the first chapter was found. I made enquiry from several of the old inhabitants of the village who agreed in calling it "Mule-us Lane." They also agreed in saying that it meant "mill-house lane." I think they were right. On the six-inch Ordnance Map it appears as "Mule House Lane," the pronunciation of the word meaning "mill" being correctly represented. There is no connection between this local name and the offspring of the horse and ass. Mulle is Old English for mill, and windmulle for windmill. In this case the mill may have been a windmill, Crookes being on the summit of a hill, and without water power.