Comparatively easier to use than a saddle quern, it was also more efficient. Grain is fed into a central hole or eye through the upper stone and ground between the faces of the two stones. Watts MWAT-005) The rotary quern comprises two circular stones, one of which is rotated above the other by means of a projecting handle. Neolithic saddle quern from Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure, Wiltshire (Photo M. Dating evidence suggests that it was first used in southern England, gradually spreading north and west to reach Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall by the first century BC.
The saddle quern was the main means of grinding grain in Britain for some 3,500 years but in the Middle Iron Age, c.400BC, a new form of milling tool, the rotary quern was introduced. They vary greatly in form from neat saddle-shaped stones, which give the tool its name, to chunky bowl shapes and large trough-shaped lower stones. Saddle querns have been found on some early Neolithic sites, such as the causewayed enclosures at Windmill Hill near Avebury in Wiltshire and Etton in Cambridgeshire. Grinding grain on a saddle quern, after an Egyptian statuette. ‘The maid-servant that is behind the mill’. All male enclaves such as armies and monasteries had their own querns and men also used querns to grind other materials such as ochre and, in due course, tobacco. The saddle quern is the mill referred to by Moses in the Old Testament and upon which Samson was made to grind in the prison house ( Exodus 11.5, Judges 16.21).įrom ancient Mesopotamian texts, throughout the Bible to the writings of historians such as William Harrison (see later), documentary and ethnographic evidence indicates that grinding foodstuffs on a quern is generally considered to be the work of women, slaves and prisoners. It was hard work, the user needing to exert enough pressure with the rubber to break open and reduce the grain to meal. The saddle quern was generally worked on the ground, with the operator, usually a woman, kneeling behind it. Saddle querns were sometimes used in conjunction with mortars, in which grain was first pounded to remove the husks, but the flatter grinding surface of the lower stone was much more effective than the mortar for grinding grain sufficiently finely to obtain the maximum release of nutrients. This led to the development and increasing use of the oldest specific milling tool, the saddle quern.Ī saddle quern comprises a flat or dished slab of stone and a hand-held upper stone which is rubbed to and fro across it. The beginnings of cereal cultivation led to, or were caused by, the adoption of grain-based subsistence strategies and a growing reliance on cereal-based products. In Britain querns from the Prehistoric and Roman greensand quarries at Lodsworth in West Sussex have been found as far afield as Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire and, from the Roman period onwards, lava querns were imported from Mayen and Neidermendig in the Eifel Mountains of Germany. Where no locally suitable stone was available, they were obtained from further afield. Most querns are made from stone, hence ‘quernstone’, but other materials have also been used, such as sun-dried mud coated with bitumen or wood studded with pieces of iron. The first milling stones were hand-operated and are generally known as querns, a word derived from the Old English word cweorn. From earliest times this has been achieved by breaking open the grain between two stones.
From Quern to Computer a history of flour milling by Martin and Sue Watts covers a wide range of topics and this series of emails will summarise each one separately.Ĭereal grains form the staple food of many societies but such grains cannot easily be digested by humans until their hard outer cellulose shells have been broken up or removed.