Quern-stone

[4] One class of upper quern-stones has from two to three sockets for the rod used to turn them and this is thought to reflect the need to reduce wear and tear by having alternative points of contact when in active use.

[5] Quern-stones have been used by numerous civilizations throughout the world to grind materials, the most important of which was usually grain to make flour for bread-making.

The use of grinding stones for vegetal food processing, and possibly the production of flour, was widespread across Europe from at least 30,000 years ago.

[8] Due to their form, dimensions, and the nature of the treatment of the surfaces, they reproduce precisely the most ancient implements used for grinding cereal grain into flour.

Saddle querns were known in China during the Neolithic Age but rotary stone mills did not appear until the Warring States Period.

[10] As well as grain, ethnographic evidence and Mesopotamian texts show that a wide range of foodstuffs and inorganic materials were processed using stone querns or mortars, including nuts, seeds, fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices, meat, bark, pigments, temper and clay.

Many snuff-querns had a small hole or cut made near the edge of the upper-stone, into which a pointed end of a lamb's horn was placed in order to turn the stone; an alternative to using a handle.

[14] Quern stones may have been used as improvised weapons, as mentioned in the Bible: "But a certain woman threw an upper-millstone on Abimelech's head, and crushed his skull."

Quernmore Crag near Lancaster in England is named after the quarrying of millstone grit used to make quern stones in these parts.

In this type, the upper stone is hemispherical, or bun-shaped, with a central conical hopper to hold the grain that falls down a hole to the grinding surface.

They are thought to have originated in Spain 2,500 years ago[22][23] and appear to have arrived in maritime Scotland from about 200 BC with people who built the defensive homes known as brochs.

The corn being dried, two women sit down on the ground, having the quern between them; the one feeds it, while the other turns it round, relieving each other occasionally, and singing some Celtic songs all the time.

[20]Under 200 mm (8 in) in diameter and varying from roughly dressed to carefully worked, often with vertical handle sockets, a new class of querns has been identified having been overlooked in the past as weights, etc.

In all respects they are like full sized quern stones and they show the typical wear signs that indicate that they were used for grinding small amounts of seeds, minerals or herbs.

The larger rotary mills were usually worked by a donkey or horse via an extension arm of wood attached to the upper stone.

Early leases of mills gave to the miller the legal right to destroy quern-stones which were being used in defiance of thirlage agreements.

[29] Among many recorded adjudications, the 1274 case of the abbot of St Albans Abbey, Cirencester, who owned as lord of the manor the exclusive milling rights for the whole town, is notable: he instructed his bailiffs to search townspeople's homes and seize any quern-stones they found.

[30] Exercising the prerogative fell into gradual disuse and the last instance was in Wakefield, Yorkshire, when in 1850 the town bought out the owner of Soke Mill for £20,000 (equivalent to £2,700,000 in 2023).

The designs invest in the appearance of the handstone when it is in circular motion, and the ability of the quern-stones to change seeds into flour may invoke a feeling of transformative magic that attracted both reverence and status to these household objects.

[32] Three beehive querns found in Ireland have inscribed ornament of La Tène type,[19] as do examples from England and Wales.

Various legends give miraculous power to mill-stones and several have been found which have been re-used in the construction of burial cists or as tomb stones.

[34] In Clonmacnoise, near Athlone in County Offaly in Ireland, a quern stone was found which had been made into a tombstone, having been ornamented and the name Sechnasach, who died in 928 AD, inscribed onto it.