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The ancient water mills

The wealth of water, woods and vegetation from the highest altitudes of this has always attracted the ancient populations who have built a myriad of villages in the Monti della Laga. Evidently the good fertility of the land and the tranquility of these areas, placed safe and at a certain distance from the main road axes, attracted the attention of the ancient Italic peoples.
Depending on their location, the villages were specialized in the various professions:

  • The woodcutters near the woods;
  • The farmers near the clearings and the more fertile and lower arable land;
  • The stonecutters near the deposits and therefore the stone quarries; Shepherds near the best pastures;
  • The artisans, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, farriers etc .. at the junction points of the access paths to the other hamlets;
  • The millers along the watercourses, in the most suitable points for the derivation of feed channels of water mills.
The villages with the mills were normally the most prosperous as these activities directly concerned the aspects of food which, in times of poverty, truly represented the vital resources of the mountain and non-mountain populations. Water mills, in particular, exploited the first ingenious mechanisms of man for the use of renewable energy from nature.
In the hydraulic mill, a derivation from a river course fed a canal called formal that conveyed the water, accumulating it in a tank, located close to the factory, from which, by means of a lock, it was precipitated on a shovel, through a funnel-shaped tube, making it rotate and, consequently, putting into operation one or more wheel mechanisms (millstones or palm groves) in molar stone which, rubbing one on the other, minced the cereals which, in turn, floured, they fell into the caissons.

Old documents of the time showed several mills in the territory of Rocca Santa Maria. Today, unfortunately, very little remains of such structures:

  • Mill located on the Tordino river , below the Colle hamlet;
  • Mill located on the Tordino river under the Fiume hamlet;
  • Mill also located on the Tordino river under the hamlet of Fiume, just 400 meters away. Further downstream from the previous one;
  • Mill located below the town of Castiglione, on the course of the homonymous stream, a tributary of the Tordino river;
  • Mill in the hamlet of Fioli on the Rovettino stream, a tributary of the Tordino;
  • Mill in the hamlet of Acquaratola on the Acquaratola stream, a tributary of the Vezzola river;
  • Mill in the hamlet of Macchia S.Cecilia, located on the course of the Vezzola stream, further downstream, which flows into the Vezzola river.

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