The milling or grinding of cereal grains, particularly corn, into flour is as old as agriculture itself. The oldest form of milling device known is a quern which consisted of two stone discs, the lower fixed and the upper rotated by hand using a short wooden handle.
This handmill could be used not only for grinding corn, but also herbs and spices.
Querns are thought to have been invented in Ancient Greece about 2500 BC and were probably introduced into the british Isles in the 1st century AD as part of the possessions of Celtic refugees fleeing the Roman invasion fo Gaul.
The stones were usually fashioned from a sandstone known as millstone grit. In some querns, the lower stone is slighty convex and the upper is correspondingly concave and thus the lower stone fits somewhat into the upper.
Essential for the preparation of the family's food, querns were doubtless valued heirlooms passed down from generation to generation.
During medieval times, querns were frequently confiscated by the lord of the manor to force the population to grind their corn at his mill (see: Medieval Monopoly on Grinding Corn)
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