Watermills on Zala River

The final blow to the deteriorating meadows that gradually grew characterless was dealt by the disgraceful regulation of the river Zala (rather meaning its canalisation) in the beginning of the 1960s (Izsák 2016).

Kummer and Mrs. M. Marx, the latter working with Göcseji Muzeum, Zalaegerszeg decided in 2004 to start gathering documents and data systematically on the watermills along the river Zala.

The mills indicated by red characters exist today mainly in documents and in the mind's eye only.

The couple-of-hundred-meter-long section of the river above the mills that can be swollen by (wooden) sluice gates is called the head race.

On this river section, the lowered sluice gate barred and „swelled” or „held” water behind it as one of the preparatory steps of grinding.

There also used to be a larger bridge on the head race suited for the transportation of grains and flour, but it had usually been ruined by the 1950s and 1960s.

During swelling, if the water level in the head race reached the upper edge of the lowered sluice gate, the water cascaded over it, and showered onto a concrete surface producing characteristic sounds, and then rushed into the wide and (3-to-8-meter) deep mill pit.

At the lower end of the mill pit that narrowed again, usually a crescent-shaped gravel islet formed.

The water often meandered along an extended tract, flowing ever slower, and getting ever deeper, to become the head race of the following mill.

During floods, everything got messed up: in the stead of the river Zala and its meadow, a spectacular, uninterrupted expanse of water appeared that a few days later receded.

The structure equipped with its own little roof and window often raised on top of the mill building is the ventage of the powder-house, but it could also be used to accommodate the protruding end of the elevator.

One of the potential reasons is that in the old days, springlets surviving up to the present emerged at the bottom of the then several-meter-deep water.