Watermill history

The river Elsa with its 63 km route has been in centuries past an area where political and economic forces encountered and confronted themselves, such as the Republic of Pisa, Republic of Siena and that of Florence. Historical studies show that the river has hosted since the Middle Ages many milling plants along its course of which many examples remain today.

 

The documents show us that at least two times when, in 1313 at the arrival of the imperial troops of Henry VII and in 1529 during the war for the restoration of the Medici, the mills of the Elsa valley were subjected to partial destruction due to military contingencies, with the goal to disable these important sources of food supply.

 

The earliest records known about the mill of Certaldo, date back to the sixteenth century. Around 1570 the mill became part of the farm "Il Pino" released by the Grand Duke Francesco I de 'Medici to the nobiliary order of the Knights of Santo Stefano di Pisa. The farm, extending for about seventy acres of property was part of the goods of the Florentine family Cavalcanti, which were confiscated by Francesco's father, Cosimo I de 'Medici, after the rise to power in 1537. The farm was equipped with three oil mills and two mills, one called of Certaldo and located in the river Elsa which had five millstones, and the other with two millstones on the territory of Santa Maria Novella. The millstone is the machinery that grinds the wheat berries. Historical sources are very precise in describing the millstones because it is based on their number that a specific tax was set.

 

The mills were for the state a major source of revenue, and therefore special attention was devoted to the maintenance of those parts subject to wear: first, the plant that supplied water to the millstone, namely the canal, the output side, the pipelines and the rotating part.

 

At the end of the nineteenth century the Certaldo mill underwent substantial changes, of which an amount of documents in the archive of Certaldo are kept. Changes not only aesthetic, through which it assumes the appearance we know today, especially in the ground floor, but also functional ones. In the twentieth century, the mill also became a factory that produced electricity and remained so until the '50s. See the page on hydropower for more details.