Summary
Stephanos Nomikos
Preindustrial Cereal Grinding Mills on Mount Athos (Watermills & Windmills) (First attempts to locate and record them)
Saint Athanasios of Athos arrived on the Mount in 957 and established Megisti Lavra, the biggest monastery in the area. His innovations, among which were the function of watermills and kneading in an animal mill, provoked reaction on the part of the older monks. These are the first written records concerning mills on Mount Athos we can provide. However, mills existed there before, since one river was already named “Mylopotamos” (= Millriver).
Cereal Production-Mills: The needs the monasteries had to face concerning cereal were covered by production in their lands outside the Mount; in many of these lands watermills and windmills were erected. All the big monastic installations within the Mount had their own mills, many of which are saved or their ruins can be seen. Some were in function until the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. In archives and libraries a lot of documents can be found referring to mills even of monasteries that do not exist anymore and their mills have disappeared. A characteristic example is the text of John Covel, an Englishman, who visited the Mount in 1677; he writes that on his way from the monastery of Megisti Lavra towards the monastery of Iviron, he came across small rivers (they are 6), which set a lot of small mills into motion. Today not one of them has been saved. Since the 18th century the Ottoman Government imposed tax to dwellings, including mills, and so the mills were registered. As a result, we learn from a 1764 taxation table that 18 monasteries had 35 mills; yet, there is no evidence whether they were watermills or windmills.
Watermills: The high rate of rainfall created a lot of rivers and torrents which favoured the development of water-driven power as a basic driving power for the function of watermills, oilmills, sawmills, and others. The quality as well as the large number of substructure works for bringing the water to the installations, shows that experienced technicians were present. Each monastery or skete needed a large quantity of grist to cater for both monks and workers. Therefore, they constructed one or more watermills by a nearby river. The older
The millstones came, as a rule, from the island of Milos. On the whole, the remains of more than 45 mills can be seen and we know of the existence of at least 18 more, which have not been saved. There is also a large number of excellent engravings, belonging to the 18th and 19th centuries, by monk artists or visitors, which depict the watermills of the monasteries on the Mount.
Windmills: Contrary to whatever has happened to the watermills, there is very little reference to windmills in the archives. We do not know when they first appeared; the remains of only 5 have been located; these mills stopped functioning around 1900. ones had a small horizontal wheel and only by the end of their functioning did the big, vertical wheels appear.
