ABSTRACT
The greatest volume of material relating to mechanization is to be found in the numerous series of estate accounts, detailing inter alia the working of manorial mills and thus constituting our prime source of evidence for their construction, working and profitability. The variety of factors, therefore, compelling and constraining the application of waterpower and wind power, but also muscle-power as well, to the production of flour must be central to our appreciation of the circumstances of medieval mechanization. The fact that mechanization at last began to be a serious proposition in a modest range of industries only during the later fifteenth century, as the medieval world was experiencing fundamental social change, simply serves to emphasize its limited role within the economy of the Middle Ages. Large, state-run vertical-wheeled mills became less common, without disappearing, but in rural contexts the continuity of the horizontal wheel’s technology was strong.
