Excavations at the Saxon Monastic Sites of Wearmouth and Jarrow,co. Durham: an Interim Report

THE IMPORTANCE of the archaeological evidence for the horizontal-wheeled mill in Ireland has tended to obscure and inhibit research into the introduction of its counterpart, the vertical- wheeled mill. The latter is normally associated with the coming of the Cistercians and the Anglo-Normans to Ireland, although no-one has ever attempted to explain why this was so. The validity of these claims is re-examined below in the light of recent archaeological evidence from Ireland, where it can now be demonstrated that both horizontal- and vertical-wheeled mills were in use as early as the 7th century A.D.¹