23rd May 2012, 10:33 PM
Kel Wrote:I've often wondered how you might go about breaking a quern stone accidentally. They're pretty solid bits of kit. I'm not sure a "weak point" in a 2ft diameter, 5 inch thick (sorry I can't break the Imperial habits of my parents' lifetime) chunk of millstone grit would be susceptible to damage by one person winding a handle on it, even on the uneven suface provided by whatever's being ground.
The many many many (I think there were over a hundred, quern production site) that turned up at Folkestone during the Town Unearthed excavation were mostly broken during the making: lots of partial unfinished stones, most seemed to have been broken during the drilling of the socket. But the green sand was relatively fragile, a complete quern stone would likely break if dropped onto a rough surface. It might happen during moving?