Make flour the way it was done for 1000s of years to make the family's bread using our granite hand-mill. Make your own daily bread or use to demonstrate how flour was made using human power. The traditional two-piece mill (a pair of quern-stones) has a stationary base and a rotating top into which cereals are dropped. Turning the handle anti-clockwise cuts and grinds the cereal into flour which drops out into the gulley around in the bottom section. This would have been used every day, typically by women in English households until overtaken by wind and watermills.
Following the Norman Conquest, as the feudal manorial lords built more wind and watermills on their land, during the 13th century, the lords used their legal powers ("soke") and issued proclamations obliging their tenants to use their mills rather than their hand-mills and for a fee called a multure (from the old French molture to grind) typically paid in grain or flour. Called "Suit of the Mill", failure to comply could result in a stiff fine, but the cost of using the lord's mill was also costly. Hand-mills were often confiscated or broken by the lords. There is a famous story dating to 1331 of a bitter dispute in St Albans where the abbot lost patience after a long struggle to get his tenants to comply with the proclamation and decided to have all the querns confiscated and used to make a pathway in the abbey.
The hand-mill weighs 23kg comprising two parts (querns) and a wooden handle. It measures 35cm diameter and 22cm high and is supplied with our instruction and care leaflet.
Don't forget - this is a mill replicating the way flour was milled on a small-scale in the home hundreds of years ago. If you want to make lots of fine flour you may be better choosing a Komo or Mock mill: this mill works but is not quick and takes effort - just as it would have the medieval housewife and so is ideal to demonstrate the changes in milling technology.
