Hi Dave Sheppard--also nice to hear from you, and also thanks for the remarks for the good of the order--I appreciate it very much----
You know there are so many aspects to know and appreciate about everything historical, I just noticed a local newspaper article that covers some of the major restorations at UCV--part of the article concerns the replacement off the brick floor in the oven of the bakery there--
it is in the Cornwall standard freeholder I believe--it takes me back a few years ago when as supervisor of restoration there (it seems like yesterday), our division did a complete rebuild of the oven, including the round dome top, the oven holds approx. 100 loaves of bread at one time, and bakes with radiant heat from the interior brick lining--man does a fresh baked loaf taste great especially when it is created using fresh ground whole wheat flour from the 36" flour grinding stone at the mill on site--just to expand this out a little--the mill has 3 runs of grinding stones, clustered around the main vertical drive shaft rising from the 45 hp water turbine--
only one pair of stones are used for flour grinding, the other two are used as follows: (1) for animal feed, and (1) pair as spares
Following the wheat as it arrives at the mill, it is elevated to the 3rd floor, and passes through a machine that removes weed seeds and any other foreign material this machine is located on the 2nd floor--gravity is moving the wheat along--after this machine it passes along to the first or main floor and is directed into centre of the spinning upper stone of the grinding pair (the only one that moves), the bed stone is always stationary and its surface is perfectly level.
Just a bit of technical information here, both stones have many specially formed furrows in their matching surfaces, that carry the ground wheat outwards, these surfaces run so close that they produce flour, but don't touch--very important--this aspect is controlled by the miller who is well versed in how this is attained
I am not a miller but having said that I found out that creating the mill takes a real collaboration of many trades people that include masons, timber framers, millwrights, and in our case a steam engineer to operate the steam engine--I must not forget the lowly carpenter