International Molinology

Journal of The International Molinological Society

No. 65, December 2002 / summary - résumé
IM65-titel.jpg (15271 Byte)

Editorial
by Michael Harverson

    Many TIMS members are probably grateful to an older friend or acquaintance who inspired them in their early days of pursuing molinology and as time has gone on, each of us has made good friends in TIMS who have added to the pleasure of our hobby and  joint activities. Such a figure, especially for our French members, was Claude Rivals, who is sorely missed by a host of  academics, ex-students and mill-enthusiasts. An appreciation of this founder member of our society, together with his last piece of research and the challenge it poses to a model-making friend, follow on our opening pages.

    Sadly, those responsible for providing the cover of this issue and that of  IM64 have also both died this year; notices about them appear elsewhere in our pages. Another recent loss has been that of an American mill-owner whom many of us met on the Symposium in 2000 at his atmospheric and memorable watermill, recalled in an obituary later in this issue.

    These four lovers of mills leave behind them not only strong and positive memories, but also the fruits of their research: Claude Rivals’ books, John  Muller’s articles, Peter Dolman’s untiring work on behalf of the mills of Suffolk, Stewart Kean for his preservation of an active milling tradition at Bowmansville watermill. The milling library of John Muller and the huge collection put together  by Peter Dolman have been passed to the newly instituted Mills Archive Trust in the UK, whose aims and current activities are described in this issue. It is to be hoped that the working papers of Claude Rivals, who was also a keen photographer of mills,  will also be conserved and made accessible to those who study French mills. There has been much talk in British mill circles during the last twelve months about what we might call ‘the skip factor’: the danger that a lifetime’s research material, if undesignated in that person’s will, might be thrown out and into a skip (heading for the refuse dump) by family or authorities with no understanding of its value for future molinologists. A properly constituted Mills Archive now represents an alternative approach, safeguarding such often unique material for posterity.

    The original papers in IM65 are concerned with lesser-known types of mills: boat mills, horse-powered (butter) churn mills, rice mills, water-pumping wheels capable of responding to tidal power and the earliest recorded horizontal-wheeled watermill in Australia.

    The welcome number of communications here include information about mills in two other countries seldom featured in these pages: Bulgaria and New Zealand; about two magnificent windmills that have survived for a century in California; about a modern horizontal windmill driving what amounts to a  waterwheel in Yorkshire (UK); and the activities of both Swiss and Greek Mills Societies.

    Half a dozen good books, newly published, have been brought to our attention and are reviewed here. Noteworthy is the volume containing the American Symposium Transactions, received by participants within two years of the occasion, an enviable record. The other books are either English or French and add to our stock of knowledge of millstones, archaeology, roller mills and the history, typology and technology of wind- and watermills in several discrete areas. Molinology is being well served by authors who write up their research and make it available to fellow enthusiasts.

    Under “TIMS News” a report of the Council Meeting, compiled from the minutes, will inform members about various current issues of importance for our society; also a set of symposium guidelines, designed to clarify procedures for preparing for and running this central activity of our society, every four years. Loose inserts provide a statement of the TIMS accounts for 2001 and a registration form for the strenuous excursion to the Baltic States next August, being organised by our experienced Swedish member, Varis Bokalders, which should bring in ‘from the cold’ – of sixty years of isolation and of the consequent lack of knowledge and appreciation elsewhere - the surviving mill heritage of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

    A further word here about TIMS Symposia: a Portuguese team is hard at work planning the 2004 Symposium. Who will follow their example for 2008? At the next general meeting, due to take place at Amadora in the autumn of 2004, we will need to select the venue for 2008, preferably in response to a carefully considered offer made by a group of members from one country represented in TIMS. After over thirty years, there is a splendid roll call of TIMS Symposia. Those who have organised them have rendered a great service to our society and have willingly undertaken a great responsibility on our behalf. In several cases, the event and its attendant publicity have led to an expansion in commitment to the preservation and study of their national mills. I should be delighted to hear from any members who are interested in hosting the TIMS Symposium in 2008.

    One further insert with IM65 that requires explanation is concerned with the format of certain of our future publications. The irregular (though roughly annual) appearance of our BM volumes involves the society in considerable expense. We have the chance to economise by producing one or both of our publications projected for 2003/4/5 in a CD-ROM format. This would be appropriate to the subject matter: a gazetteer of American wind engine patents and the Dictionary of Molinology, both of which are essentially reference tools (rather than designed for reading, page after page). Both are also lengthy and therefore expensive to publish in the usual paper format. The TIMS Council appreciates that many members may not have access to computers at home. Therefore we are now asking you to respond to a questionnaire that will provide us with the information to take decisions on this matter. Your individual response matters! Please let us know your views. French and German translations have been included.

    Equally importantly on this same sheet, there is a message for the attention  of all those who do not find it easy to read  the articles and communications in IM in English. We want to target all those who feel they would benefit from receiving the French Sommaire and the German Zusammenfassung, both those who use those languages as their native ones and those who have a better working knowledge of them than of English. In this way we can hope that most members will understand a fair amount of the contents of IM. The preparation of a polyglot Dictionary of Molinology is already proving a major headache; to produce, on an entirely voluntary basis, IM twice a year, with every article both in English and the author’s native  language is sadly beyond our capabilities. However, thanks to the hard work of Berthold Moog and Yves Coutant, we can at least furnish you with the meat of the journal in German and French!

    Finally, I should like to pay tribute to the work over the last six years of our Dutch TIMS member Albert Bongers, in handling the lay-out and scanning of our publications, also the negotiations with the printer and the arrangements for despatch. Without his conscientious, skilled and entirely voluntary  help, there would have been no International Molinology 54-65 to unite us in our study and enjoyment of our hobby. The fact that the 6 copyright libraries in the UK request copies for their shelves indicates that our journal is taken seriously in academic circles; to a large extent this is due to the format and quality of presentation  maintained by Albert. Thank you! Enjoy your retirement from this particular responsibility!

 

Tribute to Claude Rivals (1932 - 2002)

IM65-RIVALS 01.jpg (14738 Byte)

Claude Rivals was one of the founding members Of TIMS, participating in all the Symposia form 1965 to 1997. We remember him as someone with an ever lively an open mind.

Claude rivals passed away on 27th April 2002.

 

A Boat Mill on the Tarn
An anusual document from the 1820s kept in the Department Archives at Montauban.
by Claude Rivals, March 2002

     Claude made a whole story on the basis of just five written documents and a few drawings. The subject: "Problems Connected with the Siting of Boat Mills".
(5 pages and drawings)

Original Papers

Rice Hulling an Milling in Old Japan
by Michiko Moteki an H.G. Muller

   This paper deals with the subject of "Threshing", "Hulling" and "Milling" of Rice.

IM65-RICE-01.jpg (12246 Byte)

Stripping rice.

Upper: stripping by hand,

lower: Stripping tool "Senba" (thousands of teeth).

(5 pages and many pictures and drawings)

A "Horizontal Watermill" in Western Australia
by Keith Preston, M.I.E. Aust

    INTRODUCTION:  The first water mill to be constructed in the Swan River colony (later to become Perth in Western Australia) was designed and constructed under the supervision of Henry Reveley who had been appointed to the position of civil engineer by Governor Stirling. Reveley was born in about 1789, the son of Willey Reveley, a practising architect. Following the death of his father in 1799, Reveley was educated in Italy and is believed to have worked as an architect and mechanical engineer until his return to England in1822. Reveley prepared a design for the replacement London Bridge later in that year in competition with established engineers including John Rennie and Thomas Telford. Although Reveley’s design was not adopted, he apparently established a professional relationship with Rennie as he was to later recommend Reveley for the post of civil engineer at Cape Town where he arrived in November 1826. 

    Following his dismissal from the post in November 1827 for minor unsubstantiated misdemeanours, Reveley remained in Cape Town until recruited by Stirling in April 1829 while calling at the port on the inaugural voyage to the Swan River. Reveley, then aged forty, joined the first party of settlers to arrive in June 1829 and share in the hardship of cultivating the land and establishing the necessary infrastructure to ensure survival of the infant colony. Initial grinding of wheat was by means of steel hand mills and later by means of a horse powered mill erected at Fremantle by William Shenton and operational in about July 1830. This had been rebuilt as a primitive wooden-bodied windmill by July 1832 but there remained an urgent requirement for a reliable, well constructed mill to grind the first significant wheat crops produced locally.

(6 pages and pictures)

Waterworks of London Bridge
by J. Kenneth Major

IM65-LONDON 01.jpg (16959 Byte) The waterwheel by George Sorocold, built into the arches of London Bridge. The is the illustration from which Henry Beighton took his picture in The Philosophical Transactions of 1731.

(3 pages, 3 pictures)


Horse-driven (butter) churn mills in Groningen and Fryslan
by Yolt IJzerman

     A report of the TIMS-Nederland en Vlaanderen excursion on June 1st, 2002.

(5 pages, 1 map and many picutres)   

Communications

  1. The Mills Archive - A UK or an International Resource?
    Luke Bonwick & Ron Cooksen
    Mills Archive Trust
    13 Littlestead Close
    Reading RG4 6UA, UK

  2. "San Francisco Windmills"

  3. Wind Engines in Wales

  4. The Relationship between Millstone Speed and Sail or Waterwheel Speed (part 2)
    by Michael Yates

  5. Bishop Pompallier, Father Petit and the Tidal Mill at
    Purakau, Hokianga Harbour, Northern New Zealand
    by Simon Best, David Rudd, Dan McCurdy, Harry Allen and Rod Wallace
    University of Auckland

  6. Stewart Kean - an appriciation
    It is with shock and regret that I have to report the death of Stewart Kean on 6th June 2002, after a brief illness. He was 68. Those TIMS members who attended the 10th Symposium at Stratford Hall, Virginia will not forget the experience and hospitality we all received during the mill tour at Bowmansville Roller Mill in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Stewart opened his mill specially for us on that memorable day and had all three water wheels working.   One driving a pair of millstones grinding wheat, the second the roller plant and the third cutting logs in the saw mill.

    I first met Stewart in 1977, in Tarrytown, New York and it was there I learned of his interest in mills and in particular his own mill in Pennsylvania. Over the next twenty years I was to be involved in a painstaking repair of mill and machinery until it culminated in what we witnessed in September 2000. It was never an easy mill to repair because it had been badly neglected for many years but was an exceptional example of an early mill site.  Without the foresight and generosity of Stewart Kean, none of this would have been possible and we would never have seen such a beautiful and complete water mill working.

    Stewart Kean was a very generous man, who not only opened his mill for us to see it working, but was also instrumental in TIMS-America obtaining financial grants for the 2000 Symposium. He was so pleased to hear that the participants were going to visit his mill that he paid from his own pocket for a special 'Pennsylvania' dinner for us all and our guests. Stewart was a member of TIMS and TIMS-America. He will be greatly missed.
       Derek Ogden.

  7. 2002 Council Meeting Report

  8. Guidlines for a future TIMS Symposium

  9. Other subjects and book reviews.

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