Fig. 170.—Holyhead.
Fig. 170.—Holyhead.
The same form of mill is found also in Ireland,[986]and not improbably remained in occasional use until a comparatively late period. Fynes Moryson[987]mentions having seen in Cork “young maides, stark naked, grinding corne with certaine stones, to make cakes thereof;” and the form of the expression seems to point to something different from a hand-mill or quern, which at that time was in common use in England. The name of saddle-quern has been given to this form of grinding apparatus. In the Blackmore Museum is one from the pit-dwellings at Highfield,[988]near Salisbury, which are not improbably of post-Roman date; and in the British Museum is one found near Macclesfield.{252}
They are also known in Scotland. One of granite, found near Wick,[989]is in the National Museum at Edinburgh; as is also another, 20 inches by 12 inches, with a rubber 12 inches by 8 inches, found in a cave near Cullen, Banffshire.[990]
They likewise occur in Shetland.[991]Mr. J. W. Cursiter has a long narrow muller with a curved back, in which are five grooves to receive the fingers, so as to give it the appearance of being a fragment of an ammonite.
Saddle-querns of the same character occur also in France.[992]I have a small example from Chateaudun. One from Chassemy[993](Aisne) has been figured.
Some were likewise found in the Genista Cave at Gibraltar.[994]They are common in West Prussia and in the Island of Rügen, as well as in Scandinavia generally.
A German saddle-quern, from the ancient cemetery at Monsheim, has been engraved by Lindenschmit.[995]Others are mentioned by Klemm.[996]MM. Siret have also found them in their explorations in Spain.
It will have been observed, in the instances I have cited, that the movable muller or grinding-stone is not spherical, but elongated; but what is possibly the more ancient form approached more closely to a pestle and mortar in character, and consisted of a bed-stone with a slight concavity in it, and a more or less spherical stone for a pounder.
A grinding-stone of granite, with a cavity, apparently for bruising grain by a globular stone, was found in Cornwall,[997]and undressed slabs with concavities of the size and shape of an ordinary soup-plate, are of frequent occurrence in the Hebrides.[998]Others have been found in company with stone balls, in the ancient habitations in Anglesea.Fig. 171 shows a trough of stone, found at Ty Mawr,[999]Holyhead, by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, who kindly lent me the wood-cuts of Figs. 170 and 171. The cylindrical grinding-stone or muller was found within it, and has a central cavity on each face, to give the hand a better hold in grinding. A similar appliance was found at Pen-y-Bonc[1000]in the same island.A triturating trough from Cleveland[1001]has been figured.{253}They have been found in Cornwall[1002]and in Ireland.[1003]Others have been discovered in Brittany.Hand-mills of granite formed in much the same manner have been in use until lately in Brandenburg. The lower stones are described as from 2 feet to 4 feet long, and nearly as wide, with channels, after long use, as much as 6 inches deep; the mullers are either spherical or oval, and of such a size that they can be held in the hand.[1004]A large sandstone, with a small bowl-shaped concavity worked in it, was found near burnt bones, in a barrow at Elkstone,[1005]Staffordshire; and two others in barrows near Sheen.[1006]Another, with a cup-shaped concavity,21⁄2inches in diameter, occurred in a barrow near Pickering;[1007]and in other barrows were found sandstone balls roughly chipped all over, from 4 inches to 1 inch in diameter, in one instance associated with a bronze dagger. A ball of sandstone,21⁄2inches in diameter, was found with flint instruments accompanying a contracted skeleton in a barrow near Middleton.[1008]A round stone like a cannon-ball was also found in a barrow near Cromer,[1009]and three balls of stone, from21⁄4inches to13⁄4inches in diameter, were picked up in a camp at Weetwood,[1010]Northumberland.Fig. 171.—Ty Mawr.Mealing-stones, both flat and hollowed, were found in Schliemann’s[1011]excavations at Troy.In grinding and pounding a considerable amount of grit must have been worn off the stones and been mixed with the meal. The usual worn condition of the teeth in the skulls from ancient barrows may be connected with this attrition. Mr. Charters-White,[1012]by examination of{254}some teeth from a long barrow at Heytesbury, Wilts, was able to show the presence of grains of sand of different kinds in the dental tartar.
A grinding-stone of granite, with a cavity, apparently for bruising grain by a globular stone, was found in Cornwall,[997]and undressed slabs with concavities of the size and shape of an ordinary soup-plate, are of frequent occurrence in the Hebrides.[998]Others have been found in company with stone balls, in the ancient habitations in Anglesea.
Fig. 171 shows a trough of stone, found at Ty Mawr,[999]Holyhead, by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, who kindly lent me the wood-cuts of Figs. 170 and 171. The cylindrical grinding-stone or muller was found within it, and has a central cavity on each face, to give the hand a better hold in grinding. A similar appliance was found at Pen-y-Bonc[1000]in the same island.
A triturating trough from Cleveland[1001]has been figured.{253}
They have been found in Cornwall[1002]and in Ireland.[1003]
Others have been discovered in Brittany.
Hand-mills of granite formed in much the same manner have been in use until lately in Brandenburg. The lower stones are described as from 2 feet to 4 feet long, and nearly as wide, with channels, after long use, as much as 6 inches deep; the mullers are either spherical or oval, and of such a size that they can be held in the hand.[1004]
A large sandstone, with a small bowl-shaped concavity worked in it, was found near burnt bones, in a barrow at Elkstone,[1005]Staffordshire; and two others in barrows near Sheen.[1006]Another, with a cup-shaped concavity,21⁄2inches in diameter, occurred in a barrow near Pickering;[1007]and in other barrows were found sandstone balls roughly chipped all over, from 4 inches to 1 inch in diameter, in one instance associated with a bronze dagger. A ball of sandstone,21⁄2inches in diameter, was found with flint instruments accompanying a contracted skeleton in a barrow near Middleton.[1008]A round stone like a cannon-ball was also found in a barrow near Cromer,[1009]and three balls of stone, from21⁄4inches to13⁄4inches in diameter, were picked up in a camp at Weetwood,[1010]Northumberland.
Fig. 171.—Ty Mawr.
Fig. 171.—Ty Mawr.
Mealing-stones, both flat and hollowed, were found in Schliemann’s[1011]excavations at Troy.
In grinding and pounding a considerable amount of grit must have been worn off the stones and been mixed with the meal. The usual worn condition of the teeth in the skulls from ancient barrows may be connected with this attrition. Mr. Charters-White,[1012]by examination of{254}some teeth from a long barrow at Heytesbury, Wilts, was able to show the presence of grains of sand of different kinds in the dental tartar.
Fig. 172.—Holyhead.
Fig. 172.—Holyhead.
There are two other forms of grinding apparatus still in use—the pestle and mortar, and the rotatory mill—both of which date back to an early period, and concerning which it will be well to say a few words in this place. The ordinary form of pestle—a frustum of a very elongated cone with the ends rounded, is so well known that it appears needless to engrave a specimen on the same scale as the other objects. In Fig. 172 is shown one of a more than usually club-shaped form, 11 inches long, found in Holyhead Island.[1013]
Fig. 173.—Pulborough.This cut originally appeared in illustration of an interesting paper by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., on some relics found in and near ancient circular dwellings in Holyhead Island, in which paper some of the other discoveries about to be mentioned are also cited. A pestle like a small club,91⁄4inches long, was found in a gravel-pit near Audley End,[1014]with a Roman cinerary urn. Another, of grey granite, more cylindrical in form, and flatter at one end,111⁄2inches long and 2 inches in diameter, was found at Pulborough,[1015]Sussex, and is engraved in Fig. 173. A limestone pestle of the same character, 12 inches long and21⁄2inches in diameter, found at Cliff Hill, is in the museum at Leicester. A fine pestle of granite or gneiss(125⁄8inches) from Epping Forest[1016]has been figured, as has been a shorter one from a barrow at Collingbourn Ducis,[1017]Wilts. Another of greenstone, probably a naturally-formed pebble,101⁄4inches long and21⁄2inches in diameter, rounded at both ends, was found with three porphyry celts in a cairn at Daviot,[1018]near Inverness. It is now in the National Museum at{255}Edinburgh. Another of greenstone, 16 inches long, was found near Carlisle[1019]; and the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., had one of the same material 10 inches long, tapering from 2 inches in diameter to11⁄4inches, found in Hilgay Fen, Norfolk. A similar pestle-like stone, 6 inches long, found in Styria, is engraved by Professor Unger.[1020]Another of the same length was among the objects found in the Casa da Moura,[1021]Portugal. Many pestles, more or less well finished in form, have been discovered by the late Dr. Hunt, Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Petrie, Mr. Long, and others in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and in different parts of Scotland.Those who wish to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the different circumstances of these discoveries, and with the various forms of rough implements brought to light, will have to consult the original memoirs[1022]which have been written concerning them. Both in cists or graves, and in the remains of ancient circular habitations, have numerous hammer-stones and pestles been found, associated with various other articles manufactured from stone and bone. Some of these are extremely rude, and appear hardly deserving of the names of spear-heads, knives, chisels, battle-axes, &c., which have been bestowed upon them. There can, however, be no doubt of their being of human manufacture, whatever purpose they may have served. A few well-formed and polished stone celts were found in company with the objects of this class in the “Underground House of Skaill,” Orkney, which, however, was not, strictly speaking, subterranean. In the building, and in the midden around it, were very great numbers of oval sandstone pounding-stones and of large sandstone flakes, probably knives of a rude kind, a pebble with a groove round it like a ship’s block, and a few celts. In Shetland these rude stone implements have been found with human skeletons interred in cists, sometimes with polished weapons.[1023]A very curious implement, somewhatT-shaped,with pointed extremities, and grooves round the transverse part, was found in the broch of Quoyness,[1024]Sanday, Orkney, and has been figured.Many of the pestle-like stones are merely chipped into a somewhat cylindrical form, but others have been picked or ground all over, so as to give them a circular or oval section. The ends in many instances are more or less splintered, as if by hammering some hard substance rather than by pounding, and the exact purpose to which they were applied it is extremely difficult to divine.Four of them are shown, on a small scale, in Figs. 174 to 177.Fig. 174.—Shetland.201⁄2in.Fig. 175.—Shetland.19 in.Fig. 176.—Shetland.Fig. 177.—Shetland.Fig. 178.—Shetland.21 in.Some are more club-like[1025]in character, as in Fig. 178, and are even occasionally wrought to a handle at one end, as was the case{256}with one found in the heart of a burnt stone tumulus at Bressay[1026](Fig. 179), so as to give them much of the appearance of the short batlet or batting-staff used in the primitive mode of washing linen, such as is still so commonly practised in many parts of the Continent. Nearly similar rough instruments have been found at Baldoon,[1027]Wigtownshire. Is it possible that these stone bats can have served a similar purpose? In the Northern counties[1028]a large smooth-faced stone, set in a sloping position by the side of a stream, on which washerwomen{257}beat their linen, is still called a battling-stone,[1029]and the club is called a batter, batlet, battledore, or battling-staff. Such clubs may also have been used in the preparation of hemp and flax.Fig. 179.—Shetland.A stone club, from St. Isabel,[1030]Bahia, Brazil, is described as133⁄8inches long,21⁄2inches wide, and11⁄4inch thick. It may, however, be a celt, like the supposed clubs from Lancashire[1031]and Cumberland.There can be no doubt of several of the pestles, though probably not all, belonging to the same period as stone implements of other forms. The mortars in which they were used, were probably merely depressions in blocks of stone, or even of wood. Some rude mortars have, as already mentioned, been found in Holyhead Island, and Anglesea, but it is uncertain to what age they belong. A portion of a mortar of granite, with a channelled lip, found with fragments of urns and calcined bones in a grave at Kerris Vaen, Cornwall, is engraved in theArchæologia Cambrensis.[1032]Very similar stone pestles to those from Orkney were in use among the North American Indians[1033]for pounding maize, and some are engraved by Squier and Davis.[1034]They also employed[1035]a small form of mortar for pounding quartz, felspar, or shell, with which to temper the clay for pottery. Stone mortars and pestles were in use among the Toltecs and Aztecs in making tortillas, and are found in South Carolina,[1036]and elsewhere in the United States. Among the ancient Pennacooks[1037]of the Merrimac valley, the heavy stone pestle was suspended from the elastic bough of a tree, which relieved the operator in her work; and among the Tahitians[1038]the pestle of stone, used for pounding the bread fruit on a wooden block, is provided with a crutch-like handle.Some large circular discs of stone, apparently used for grinding, and others with deep cup-shaped depressions in them, found on Dartmoor, and probably connected with some ancient metallurgical operations on the spot, have been engraved and described in theTransactions of the Devonshire Association.[1039]{258}The hand-mill formed with an upper rotatory stone is a mere modification of the pestle and mortar, and dates back to a very early period, though it has continued in use in some parts of the British Isles even unto our own day. The name quern, by which such mills are usually known, occurs in closely similar forms, in all the Teutonic dialects. In Anglo-Saxon it appears under the form Cweorn or Cwyrn, and in modern Danish as Qværn. An excellent example of this instrument, which had been, up to 1850, in use in the cabin of a Kilkenny peasant, was presented by the Rev. J. Graves to the Archæological Institute, and is described and engraved in their Journal.[1040]The upper stone is of granite, the lower of millstone grit. The lower stone is recessed to receive the upper, and has a central depression, in which a small block of oak is fixed, from which projects a small pin—also of oak—to carry the upper stone. This is about 2 feet in diameter, and is perforated at its centre with a hopper-like hole, across the bottom of which a small bar of oak is secured, having a recess in it to receive the pin, but only of such a depth as to keep the upper stone at a slight distance from the lower. Through the upper stone, and near its verge, a vertical hole is drilled to receive a peg, which forms the handle for turning it. When in use it is worked, as in ancient times among the Jews, by two women seated opposite each other, who alternately seize and propel the handle, so as to drive the stone at considerable speed. The corn, highly dried, is fed by handfuls into the hopper in the runner or upper stone, and the meal passes out by a notch in the rim of the nether stone. Pennant,[1041]in his “Tour in Scotland,” describes querns as still in use in the Hebrides in 1772. They were said to cost about fourteen shillings, and to grind a bushel of corn in four hours, with two pair of hands. He gives a representation of a quern at work, with a long stick, hanging from the branch of a tree, inserted in the hole in the runner, so as to form the handle. A somewhat similar method of driving the hand-mill indoors, taken from a German MS. of the fourteenth century, has been reproduced from a work by Drs. Von Hefner and Wolf in theArchæological Journal.[1042]A sketch of a hand-mill in use at the present day, at Abbeville, is given in C. Roach Smith’s “Collectanea Antiqua.”[1043]Even in the neighbourhood of water-mills, when the charge for grinding was at all high, we find these hand-mills in use in mediæval times. Such use, by the townsmen of St. Albans, was, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a fruitful source of litigation between them and the abbots, who claimed the monopoly of grinding for their tenants.[1044]Thirteen of these, however, maintained their right of using hand-mills, as having been enjoyed of old, and some claims were raised to the privilege of grinding oat-meal only, by means of a hand-mill.It seems probable that these mediæval hand-mills were of large size, and with a comparatively flat upper stone, like the modern Irish form, which is sometimes 3 feet 6 inches in diameter. One, 3 feet in diameter, found near Hollingbourne,[1045]Kent, was probably of no great antiquity.{259}The same may be said of a six-sided quern, with an iron pivot, found in Edinburgh.[1046]A quern, found at West Coker,[1047]Somerset, with a fleur-de-lis over the passage by which the meal escaped, has been assigned to the thirteenth century. The lower stone of a quern accompanied an apparently Saxon interment at Winster,[1048]Derbyshire. It was of the beehive[1049]shape, and made of millstone grit. Similar querns, with iron pins, have been found at Breedon,[1050]Leicestershire, as well as others with the upper stone more conical. One of this class was also found near Rugby.[1051]They frequently accompany Roman[1052]remains, but these are generally of smaller size, and of a more hemispherical form, the favourite material being the Lower Tertiary conglomerate, or Hertfordshire pudding-stone. Those of Andernach lava, from the Rhine, are usually flat.A complete quern was found at Ehenside Tarn,[1053]Cumberland. The upper half of another was in a post-Roman circular dwelling, near Birtley,[1054]Northumberland.Querns of various forms are of frequent occurrence in Wales, especially in Anglesea. An upper stone from Lampeter,[1055]Cardiganshire, has a semicircular projection at the margin round the hole for the handle. In some districts[1056]they have been in use until quite recent times.[1057]In Scotland, querns are of frequent occurrence in the ancient brochs and hill forts. In one of the former, at Kettleburn,[1058]Caithness, a stone in preparation for a quern was found; in another, in Aberdeenshire, an upper stone, 18 inches in diameter, was discovered. Another stone of the same size, surrounded by four border stones to prevent the scattering of the grain in grinding, was discovered in a subterranean chamber in a hill fort at Dunsinane,[1059]Perth. A curious pot-quern, the lower stone decorated with a carved human face, was found in East Lothian, and is engraved by Wilson.[1060]Some interesting notices of Scottish querns have been given by Sir Arthur Mitchell.[1061]The upper stone, ornamented with raised lines, shown in Fig. 180, from a cut kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was found in trenching a moss in the parish of Balmaclellan, New Galloway, with some curious bronze objects of “late-Celtic” workmanship.[1062]An upper stone (18 inches), ornamented in a nearly similar way, was found near Stranraer,[1063]Wigtownshire, and another, with a tribrach instead of a cross, at Roy Bridge,[1064]Inverness-shire.{260}Some ornamentally carved upper stones of querns, one of them with spiral and leaf-shaped patterns upon it, much like those on the bronze ornaments of the “late-Celtic” Period, have been discovered in Anglesea.[1065]Fig. 180.—Balmaclellan.Querns of green sandstone are stated, by Sir R. Colt Hoare,[1066]to be numerous in British villages and pit-dwellings in Wiltshire, as indeed they are in other counties,[1067]though formed of various kinds of grit. They rarely occur in barrows, though burnt granite querns have been found with burnt bones in cromlechs in Jersey.[1068]Some observations on querns by the Rev. Dr. A. Hume, are published in theArchæologia Cambrensis.[1069]As these utensils belong, for the most part, to Roman and post-Roman times, I have thought it needless to enter into any more minute description of their forms, or of the circumstances under which they have been found.
Fig. 173.—Pulborough.
Fig. 173.—Pulborough.
This cut originally appeared in illustration of an interesting paper by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., on some relics found in and near ancient circular dwellings in Holyhead Island, in which paper some of the other discoveries about to be mentioned are also cited. A pestle like a small club,91⁄4inches long, was found in a gravel-pit near Audley End,[1014]with a Roman cinerary urn. Another, of grey granite, more cylindrical in form, and flatter at one end,111⁄2inches long and 2 inches in diameter, was found at Pulborough,[1015]Sussex, and is engraved in Fig. 173. A limestone pestle of the same character, 12 inches long and21⁄2inches in diameter, found at Cliff Hill, is in the museum at Leicester. A fine pestle of granite or gneiss(125⁄8inches) from Epping Forest[1016]has been figured, as has been a shorter one from a barrow at Collingbourn Ducis,[1017]Wilts. Another of greenstone, probably a naturally-formed pebble,101⁄4inches long and21⁄2inches in diameter, rounded at both ends, was found with three porphyry celts in a cairn at Daviot,[1018]near Inverness. It is now in the National Museum at{255}Edinburgh. Another of greenstone, 16 inches long, was found near Carlisle[1019]; and the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., had one of the same material 10 inches long, tapering from 2 inches in diameter to11⁄4inches, found in Hilgay Fen, Norfolk. A similar pestle-like stone, 6 inches long, found in Styria, is engraved by Professor Unger.[1020]Another of the same length was among the objects found in the Casa da Moura,[1021]Portugal. Many pestles, more or less well finished in form, have been discovered by the late Dr. Hunt, Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Petrie, Mr. Long, and others in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and in different parts of Scotland.
Those who wish to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the different circumstances of these discoveries, and with the various forms of rough implements brought to light, will have to consult the original memoirs[1022]which have been written concerning them. Both in cists or graves, and in the remains of ancient circular habitations, have numerous hammer-stones and pestles been found, associated with various other articles manufactured from stone and bone. Some of these are extremely rude, and appear hardly deserving of the names of spear-heads, knives, chisels, battle-axes, &c., which have been bestowed upon them. There can, however, be no doubt of their being of human manufacture, whatever purpose they may have served. A few well-formed and polished stone celts were found in company with the objects of this class in the “Underground House of Skaill,” Orkney, which, however, was not, strictly speaking, subterranean. In the building, and in the midden around it, were very great numbers of oval sandstone pounding-stones and of large sandstone flakes, probably knives of a rude kind, a pebble with a groove round it like a ship’s block, and a few celts. In Shetland these rude stone implements have been found with human skeletons interred in cists, sometimes with polished weapons.[1023]A very curious implement, somewhatT-shaped,with pointed extremities, and grooves round the transverse part, was found in the broch of Quoyness,[1024]Sanday, Orkney, and has been figured.
Many of the pestle-like stones are merely chipped into a somewhat cylindrical form, but others have been picked or ground all over, so as to give them a circular or oval section. The ends in many instances are more or less splintered, as if by hammering some hard substance rather than by pounding, and the exact purpose to which they were applied it is extremely difficult to divine.
Four of them are shown, on a small scale, in Figs. 174 to 177.
Fig. 174.—Shetland.201⁄2in.
Fig. 174.—Shetland.201⁄2in.
Fig. 175.—Shetland.19 in.
Fig. 175.—Shetland.19 in.
Fig. 176.—Shetland.
Fig. 176.—Shetland.
Fig. 177.—Shetland.
Fig. 177.—Shetland.
Fig. 178.—Shetland.21 in.
Fig. 178.—Shetland.21 in.
Some are more club-like[1025]in character, as in Fig. 178, and are even occasionally wrought to a handle at one end, as was the case{256}with one found in the heart of a burnt stone tumulus at Bressay[1026](Fig. 179), so as to give them much of the appearance of the short batlet or batting-staff used in the primitive mode of washing linen, such as is still so commonly practised in many parts of the Continent. Nearly similar rough instruments have been found at Baldoon,[1027]Wigtownshire. Is it possible that these stone bats can have served a similar purpose? In the Northern counties[1028]a large smooth-faced stone, set in a sloping position by the side of a stream, on which washerwomen{257}beat their linen, is still called a battling-stone,[1029]and the club is called a batter, batlet, battledore, or battling-staff. Such clubs may also have been used in the preparation of hemp and flax.
Fig. 179.—Shetland.
Fig. 179.—Shetland.
A stone club, from St. Isabel,[1030]Bahia, Brazil, is described as133⁄8inches long,21⁄2inches wide, and11⁄4inch thick. It may, however, be a celt, like the supposed clubs from Lancashire[1031]and Cumberland.
There can be no doubt of several of the pestles, though probably not all, belonging to the same period as stone implements of other forms. The mortars in which they were used, were probably merely depressions in blocks of stone, or even of wood. Some rude mortars have, as already mentioned, been found in Holyhead Island, and Anglesea, but it is uncertain to what age they belong. A portion of a mortar of granite, with a channelled lip, found with fragments of urns and calcined bones in a grave at Kerris Vaen, Cornwall, is engraved in theArchæologia Cambrensis.[1032]
Very similar stone pestles to those from Orkney were in use among the North American Indians[1033]for pounding maize, and some are engraved by Squier and Davis.[1034]
They also employed[1035]a small form of mortar for pounding quartz, felspar, or shell, with which to temper the clay for pottery. Stone mortars and pestles were in use among the Toltecs and Aztecs in making tortillas, and are found in South Carolina,[1036]and elsewhere in the United States. Among the ancient Pennacooks[1037]of the Merrimac valley, the heavy stone pestle was suspended from the elastic bough of a tree, which relieved the operator in her work; and among the Tahitians[1038]the pestle of stone, used for pounding the bread fruit on a wooden block, is provided with a crutch-like handle.
Some large circular discs of stone, apparently used for grinding, and others with deep cup-shaped depressions in them, found on Dartmoor, and probably connected with some ancient metallurgical operations on the spot, have been engraved and described in theTransactions of the Devonshire Association.[1039]{258}
The hand-mill formed with an upper rotatory stone is a mere modification of the pestle and mortar, and dates back to a very early period, though it has continued in use in some parts of the British Isles even unto our own day. The name quern, by which such mills are usually known, occurs in closely similar forms, in all the Teutonic dialects. In Anglo-Saxon it appears under the form Cweorn or Cwyrn, and in modern Danish as Qværn. An excellent example of this instrument, which had been, up to 1850, in use in the cabin of a Kilkenny peasant, was presented by the Rev. J. Graves to the Archæological Institute, and is described and engraved in their Journal.[1040]The upper stone is of granite, the lower of millstone grit. The lower stone is recessed to receive the upper, and has a central depression, in which a small block of oak is fixed, from which projects a small pin—also of oak—to carry the upper stone. This is about 2 feet in diameter, and is perforated at its centre with a hopper-like hole, across the bottom of which a small bar of oak is secured, having a recess in it to receive the pin, but only of such a depth as to keep the upper stone at a slight distance from the lower. Through the upper stone, and near its verge, a vertical hole is drilled to receive a peg, which forms the handle for turning it. When in use it is worked, as in ancient times among the Jews, by two women seated opposite each other, who alternately seize and propel the handle, so as to drive the stone at considerable speed. The corn, highly dried, is fed by handfuls into the hopper in the runner or upper stone, and the meal passes out by a notch in the rim of the nether stone. Pennant,[1041]in his “Tour in Scotland,” describes querns as still in use in the Hebrides in 1772. They were said to cost about fourteen shillings, and to grind a bushel of corn in four hours, with two pair of hands. He gives a representation of a quern at work, with a long stick, hanging from the branch of a tree, inserted in the hole in the runner, so as to form the handle. A somewhat similar method of driving the hand-mill indoors, taken from a German MS. of the fourteenth century, has been reproduced from a work by Drs. Von Hefner and Wolf in theArchæological Journal.[1042]
A sketch of a hand-mill in use at the present day, at Abbeville, is given in C. Roach Smith’s “Collectanea Antiqua.”[1043]
Even in the neighbourhood of water-mills, when the charge for grinding was at all high, we find these hand-mills in use in mediæval times. Such use, by the townsmen of St. Albans, was, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a fruitful source of litigation between them and the abbots, who claimed the monopoly of grinding for their tenants.[1044]Thirteen of these, however, maintained their right of using hand-mills, as having been enjoyed of old, and some claims were raised to the privilege of grinding oat-meal only, by means of a hand-mill.
It seems probable that these mediæval hand-mills were of large size, and with a comparatively flat upper stone, like the modern Irish form, which is sometimes 3 feet 6 inches in diameter. One, 3 feet in diameter, found near Hollingbourne,[1045]Kent, was probably of no great antiquity.{259}The same may be said of a six-sided quern, with an iron pivot, found in Edinburgh.[1046]A quern, found at West Coker,[1047]Somerset, with a fleur-de-lis over the passage by which the meal escaped, has been assigned to the thirteenth century. The lower stone of a quern accompanied an apparently Saxon interment at Winster,[1048]Derbyshire. It was of the beehive[1049]shape, and made of millstone grit. Similar querns, with iron pins, have been found at Breedon,[1050]Leicestershire, as well as others with the upper stone more conical. One of this class was also found near Rugby.[1051]They frequently accompany Roman[1052]remains, but these are generally of smaller size, and of a more hemispherical form, the favourite material being the Lower Tertiary conglomerate, or Hertfordshire pudding-stone. Those of Andernach lava, from the Rhine, are usually flat.
A complete quern was found at Ehenside Tarn,[1053]Cumberland. The upper half of another was in a post-Roman circular dwelling, near Birtley,[1054]Northumberland.
Querns of various forms are of frequent occurrence in Wales, especially in Anglesea. An upper stone from Lampeter,[1055]Cardiganshire, has a semicircular projection at the margin round the hole for the handle. In some districts[1056]they have been in use until quite recent times.[1057]
In Scotland, querns are of frequent occurrence in the ancient brochs and hill forts. In one of the former, at Kettleburn,[1058]Caithness, a stone in preparation for a quern was found; in another, in Aberdeenshire, an upper stone, 18 inches in diameter, was discovered. Another stone of the same size, surrounded by four border stones to prevent the scattering of the grain in grinding, was discovered in a subterranean chamber in a hill fort at Dunsinane,[1059]Perth. A curious pot-quern, the lower stone decorated with a carved human face, was found in East Lothian, and is engraved by Wilson.[1060]
Some interesting notices of Scottish querns have been given by Sir Arthur Mitchell.[1061]
The upper stone, ornamented with raised lines, shown in Fig. 180, from a cut kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was found in trenching a moss in the parish of Balmaclellan, New Galloway, with some curious bronze objects of “late-Celtic” workmanship.[1062]
An upper stone (18 inches), ornamented in a nearly similar way, was found near Stranraer,[1063]Wigtownshire, and another, with a tribrach instead of a cross, at Roy Bridge,[1064]Inverness-shire.{260}
Some ornamentally carved upper stones of querns, one of them with spiral and leaf-shaped patterns upon it, much like those on the bronze ornaments of the “late-Celtic” Period, have been discovered in Anglesea.[1065]
Fig. 180.—Balmaclellan.
Fig. 180.—Balmaclellan.
Querns of green sandstone are stated, by Sir R. Colt Hoare,[1066]to be numerous in British villages and pit-dwellings in Wiltshire, as indeed they are in other counties,[1067]though formed of various kinds of grit. They rarely occur in barrows, though burnt granite querns have been found with burnt bones in cromlechs in Jersey.[1068]
Some observations on querns by the Rev. Dr. A. Hume, are published in theArchæologia Cambrensis.[1069]As these utensils belong, for the most part, to Roman and post-Roman times, I have thought it needless to enter into any more minute description of their forms, or of the circumstances under which they have been found.