The Lower Mill in Bystrzyca. The crisis of traditional milling in the time of industrialization

Abstract

In 2019 a research team from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław excavated relics of a watermill, probably built in the second half of the 18th c., in the village of Bystrzyca (German Wiesenthal) near the town of Wleń in Pogórze Kaczawskie (German Bober-Katzbach-Vorgebirge), part of the Western Sudetes. A schematic picture of the mill was included in a map prepared by L.W. Regler in 1764–1770. The mill, called Młyn Dolny (the Lower Mill), was powered by the stream Wierzbnik (German Würfelbach), which has its source in the Kaczawskie (Katzbach) Mountains and flows into the River Bóbr (Bober) 2.5 km to the west from the location of the mill. The mill stopped working before 1896 and served as a dwelling house for a short time; on the 7th of December 1910, several years after its abandonment, it was completely destroyed by a fire (probably resulting from arson). In the present article its history serves as an illustration of a wide and universal economic and cultural pheno menon evidenced in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th c., namely the crisis of traditional milling based on natural energy sources — hydropower and wind power. The research was based on sources and methods drawn from several disciplines, mainly archaeology, history and geography, combined within the framework of historical archaeology. The sources analysed included local written accounts and cartographic materials alongside archaeological finds. Just before the industrial revolution, i.e. in the last quarter of the 18th c., Silesia, being part of Prussia then, had 5152 mills (with 66% of watermills and 34% of windmills), located mostly in the country (estimates from 1787). Only 344 mills (6.7%) were situated in towns. Due to landform features, it was windmills that dominated in the lowlands of northern Silesia, and watermills, situated on rapid rivers and streams, in the highland region close to the Sudetes. Quite frequently, there were several mills in a single village; for instance in Bystrzyca there were two watermills and a windmill, with further mills located nearby in Wleń, Gościradz and Rząśnik. The owners and leaseholders of those small workshops had to face a new global-scale phenomenon, which started in the USA in 1785 — the emergence of large mechanized mills. Those new enterprises differed from traditional mills with regard to the structure (they were not family businesses but large industrial plants manned by hired workers), production scale (in the second half of the 19th c. the milling capacity of an industrial mill was over 200 times bigger than that of a traditional mill), energy sources (steam engines, and from the last quarter of the 19th c also electrical engines), locations (the production moved to urban and suburban areas) and clientele (mostly the inhabitants of industrial urban centres, whose numbers grew rapidly due to the migration from the country to towns). The first industrial mill in Silesia was built in 1816 in Wałbrzych (German Waldenburg), which was then the main industrial centre in the whole of Silesia, with a variety of industries represented (coal mining, numerous quarries, the largest centre of china production in Prussia, glass industry, textile production, etc.). The number of watermills and windmills in Silesia decreased significantly throughout the 19th c. In 1818, i.e. not long after the opening of the steam mill in Wałbrzych, 5929 mills were registered, whereas in 1907 there were only 3033, which was an almost 50% drop. The richest of small millers tried to fight off competition by modernizing their enterprises; one of the ways was to invest in new, more cost-efficient millstones from the quartzite quarry in Férte-sous--Jouarre in France, which were supplied to many countries of continental Europe, as well as to Great Britain and the USA. At least one set of those characteristic segmental “French” millstones produced of specially bonded trapezium-shaped blocks of quartzite was imported in the 19th c. to the mill in Bystrzyca to replace its millstones made of local sandstone. The old millstones were re-used as building material when the mill was restructured. In retrospect, the investment in the exchange of millstones can be viewed as an attempt to save a family business; unfortunately, an unsuccessful one. Most of the small mills in Silesia were liquidated or transformed, having lost its original function before the onset of the 20th c., as the Lower Mill in Bystrzyca. Few mills survived World War I, combining production with some other trade, e.g. tourist services. Their decline marked the end of traditional milling, which had functioned in Silesia since the Middle Ages.