Le Vieux Moulin à Vernonnet (Vernon)

normandie2005, on October 30, 2007, said:

Le Vieux Moulin

Sur le pont médiéval, détruit en 1861, et dont il reste quelques vestiges, s'élevaient 5 moulins à roue pendante. Dans un cadre de verdure, cet unique survivant continue d'attirer peintres et touristes séduits par son charme et à la recherche du Vernon de jadis

The Old Mill

In the middle Ages, there were already five mills on the bridge to grind the corn grown in the nearby Vexin Plateau. There only remains one such mill, dating from the 16th century, set up in a picturesque place in the middle of the a river branch.

The undershot waterwheel, powered by the river's flow, could be lowered or raised depending on the water level

In the past , in periods of famine or even scarcity, the abundance of corn and flour in this place would cause incidents because the inhabitants could not bear 'their' flour being sent away when they themselves were going hungry.

Here is an example:

In October 1789, the price of bread had considerably risen (due to a poor harvest and social and political unrest) so that famine riots burst out everywhere in France. Parisian rioters marched to Versailles to bring the royal family back to Paris, shouting their nicknames: the Baker, the Baker's wife and the Baker boy, which shows the importance of bread in the population's considerations at the time. In Vernon, other rioters seized the miller, dragged him across the bridge, threw him into the river. After he had been rescued, he was hustled into the city centre where they tried to hang him from a street lamp, shouting "A la lanterne!"(String him up!) He was saved at the last minute by the Mayor who cut the rope with a sword. A few days later, a local newspaper relating the incident wrote about "the old bastille full of corn", strangely but typically mixing together the capture of Bastille Castle in Paris - and its political meaning - and the stocks of corn and flour stored in Tourelles Castle.

Bis ins XVIII Jahrhundert befanden sich auf der alten Brücke zahlreiche Mühlen. Eine dieser Mühlen (XVI XVII Jahrhundert ) besteht noch heute auf der Seite von Vernonnet.

http://www.vernon-visite.org/