Water Mills

Very early on, people used water power to generate energy. And water mills were already known in Ancient China and Egypt, by the Greeks and the Romans.

Water mills can perform very different tasks: for example, as saw mills, grist mills, oil mills, grinding mills, hammer mills or paper mills.

The mill wheels themselves can be divided into undershot, overshot and breastshot waterwheels. The undershot mill wheel simply turns in the flowing water. It dips into the water at the bottom. Especially in smaller streams, however, the water power is often insufficient. Then the water is diverted to the mill wheel via a mill race and perhaps even dammed up beforehand. In the case of an overshot mill wheel, the water reaches the mill wheel from above, whereas in the case of a breastshot mill wheel, the water reaches the wheel from the middle.

However, if the mill owner dammed up the water in the upper reaches of a smaller river or stream, the mill wheel would stop in the lower reaches. This could lead to trouble and quarrels. Or if the construction of a new mill was planned, it could be that the operator of the mill further downstream feared problems and therefore objected.