Turn, Turn little mill!
Émile Zola, in his novel The Ground said of the Beauce windmills that they were like “a lighthouse in the ocean of wheat”.
On the eve of the French Revolution, there were 1789 mills in Beauce, today there are only about fifteen left.
Witnesses of a rich heritage, the mills once belonged to the lords or depended on the abbeys.
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Mill of Ymonville ![]()
Mill of Ymonville
Pivot mill or tower mill
The pivot mill appeared in Beauce in the 11th century. Often built away from the village, it pivots around an axis called a drone. The miller oriented the mill, the wings facing the wind, facing a tail, a long wooden beam.
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Mill of Ouarville ![]()
Mill of Moutiers-en-Beauce
The tower-mill appeared later, often to replace the pivot-mill destroyed by a storm or a fire. A large stone tower topped with a conical roof, the cap to which the wings are attached and which turns to orient the wings.
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Mill of Artenay ![]()
Mill of Frouville-Pensier ©Jean-Paul Dupond
The language of wings
The wings of the mills were used as a means of communication.
The wings stopped in quarter or “in cross of Saint Andrew” meant that the mill was at rest, or announced the end of a military conflict.
Tilted to the left, the wings warned of a military danger and tilted to the right, they announced that this one was averted.
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Wings in “cross of Saint André » – Mill of Sancheville
