SC - trencher history guesses

[Decker, Terry D.]

> Bear said:
> > Mills in England were technically owned by the lord of a manor and the
> fees
> > accrued to the lord, except, there is a study that show there were
> almost
> > double the number of independent mills as there were manor mills.  These
> > mills were actually operating outside of the law, but apparently there
> was
> > so much milling business no one complained.  Almost everyplace in
> England
> > had the services of a mill.
> 
> Not quite true. There were complaints and riots over this. I seem to
> remember
> an abbey? castle courtyard? which is covered in peasant's hand mills or
> querns.
> It seems the lord of the location (and the mill owner) finally got tired
> of
> the 
> illegal competition from the hand querns and went around by force,
> gathered
> up the querns, and paved this area with them. I seem to remember a riot or
> other violence being caused by this, but don't remember the details. I
> also
> don't remember if the querns were broken up before being used as paving
> stones,
> although I imagine they were.
> -- 
> Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
> Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
> 
There is a great deal of difference between a hand quern and a mill.  The
mill is a commercial venture which must be sited to make a profit.  A
private would not have been sited to compete directly with a manor mill,
simply because the law would have been on the side of the lord of the manor
and the offending mill would have been burned down around the owner's head,
all quite legal and above board.  I have never seen a record of such a mill
being destroyed.  BTW, the establishment of these mills appears to largely
be a late 14th Century occurence, although some may have been built much
earlier.

In the incident you mention, the hand querns represented a direct loss of
revenue within the manor.  IIRC, this was late 11th Century or early 12th
Century and represented one of those Norman/Saxon things,  where the right
of fee was enforced by the destruction of the querns.  Seems to me it was an
abbey.

Bear

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