Driving down from the Golan heights near Gonen, on 24 October 2021, I passed the remains of a ruined top-fed stone mill for the umpteenth time. But this day, with autumn in the air, the conditions to try and access it across fields and barbed wire were just right. With sunset an hour away, the temperature a cool and dry 23 Celsius, and with the thick papyrus growth largely decimated by the long summer to dust, access looked as though it would get no better. And so, having checked for minefield signs and double checked on my map, I trawled across a field, under a barbed wire fence, and clambered up the hillside.
There is nothing remarkable or unique about this mill, as far as I can tell. It is simply beautiful and mysterious as any ruin. It is of unknown age, but most likely Ottoman. According to the write-up of a brief survey carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the water used to power this 'horizontal' flour mill was drawn from the 'En Gonen cluster of springs, south of the Nahal Gonen channel (Wadi el-Qaṣab). The water from the upper springs of 'Ein Maamun also reach Nahal Gonen and is plentiful year round. However no water seems to reach near to the mill today. What you can see (from the top of the structure) is an earthen canal which conveyed the water to the mill building. The feeder channel is constructed with walls about 50 cm high and carried the water out along a horizontal east-west axis from the hillside onto the stone mill structure, known as a tower. The tower is 4.65 metres wide at its base and 2.30 metres wide at the top, constructed of roughly hewn stones and mortar. The channel and the penstocks are plastered to be waterproof. Where this channel leaves the hillside there are recesses in the masonry for fitting a barrier which would "turn off" the mill by diverting the water away from the feeder channel to a sluice to bypass the mill. At the end of the feeder channel are two penstocks, again with recesses in the masonry allowing for one of the penstocks to be blocked.
Clockwise from top left: the feeder channel with the fittings, half way along the channel, for the board which diverts the water flow to by-pass the mill; the tops of the penstocks; detail of the divert sluice; and detail of the top of one of the penstocks
The pre-industrial water mills of Israel are all horizontal mills which invariably have two different devices to set the mill in motion and to stop it. One is a board that diverts the water from the water wheel, and the other that consists of a rod that raises and lowers a pivoted board that is placed below the water wheel. When the rod raises this board it also raises both the spindle that turns the upper millstone and the upper millstone itself thus controlling the milling process. If the rod is raised far enough the grinding ceases. In most cases the water is diverted from the stream to a channel which follows the contour and the mill is placed at a point where the channel reaches a point high enough above the stream to provide the drop needed to operate a mill. The water flows down through a wide vertical tube, 4-12 m high, that is placed in a tower and is known as a “Tower Penstock” or an “Aruba Penstock” (Aruba is Hebrew for chimney). This is exactly the case here, as already described, although the penstocks are 7.65 metres tall and 60 cm in diameter; they are protected by the remains of iron gratings at the top, to prevent large debris descending to the milling room. Although not in evidence at Tahan, because there is little water and few rivers in Israel, very often there are two or even three mills, one above the other, the same water operating them all, generating maximum power from small quantities of water.
The milling room is directly under the penstock structure in the mill tower, measuring about 5.50 × 9.90 metres. The room is entered from the north by way of an arched opening built of nicely-dressed stones of non-local limestone, whereas the rest of the building is largely of basalt. The milling room had a roof that probably covered it partially and there is a built step in the tower to support it. Fragments of limestone and basalt millstones were found among the ruins. The water-wheel vaults are 5.25 metres long and 2.60 metres wide at the base.
Another room is located north of the mill tower. It is built between the slope to the east, the wall of the mill structure to the south and the mill room building to the west. The structure is built of fieldstones and there are no signs of roofing. An original opening that connected the room to the milling room was blocked at some point and the exit from the milling room was moved to the northern wall.
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