A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 2. (Békéscsaba, 1973)

Erdélyi Zoltánné–Sisa Béla: A szarvasi szárazmalom műemléki helyreállítása

Restoration of the horse-driven mill at Szarvas as an ancient monument MRS. Z. ERDÉLYI and BÉLA SISA The only horse-driven mill in Hungary to have remained in its complete entirety in equipment and structure is in the town of Szarvas. The mill was kept going until 1962, but after the illness and the death of the then owner, Sándor Tomka, in 1963, the personal and material conditions for its operation no longer existed. Its further existence was ensured when it was bought, together with the related out-buildings, by the Directorate of the Békés County Museums in 1968. The horse-driven mill was built in 1836 for the family of Count Bolza, the local landowner. The date of the construction is carved into the beam of the millstone support in the mill-house. In the same place there was originally a coat-of-arms, presumably that of the Bolza family, but this was removed in the course of a later reconstruction. Tradition has it that the builders of the mill were Czech master-craftsmen, but this does not appear probable, and apart from the one verbal account no other data point to this. There were mill-building master-craftsmen in both Szarvas and the other market-towns of the Hungarian Plain. Mill-building was a flourishing trade, even in that time. The millers, grouped in guild-associations, were then still carving master carpenters too. In the first half of the 19th century the number of horse-driven mills increased continuously. In Szarvas the windmills did not succeed in ousting them. Of the 48 mills operating in the town and on the farms in the period 1847—1857, 44 were horse-driven mills, 3 were windmills and 1 was a steam-mill. Horse-driven mills in the county of Békés are mentioned in a written account dating from 1449. Inventories from the following centuries, and particularly the 18th

—19th centuries, list many horse-driven mills throughout the country, but mainly in the towns of the Great Hungarian Plain. In the war of liberation against the Turks, Szarvas was destroyed and stood neglected and uninhabited for decades. It was obtained by J. György Harruckerrn in 1720, and its re-settlement was begun. In 1723 it had already received the franchises of a market-town. Among the first requests of the settlers was the construction of a communal horse-driven mill, and permission for this was granted. In the agricultural chronicle of the market-town of Szarvas, Sámuel Tessedik gave an account of the position of the horse-driven mills. He would gladly have seen water-mills in their place, for the horses employed deteriorated. In the middle of the 19th century the town mills of the former landowners were found with few exceptions in private hands. Of the 48 mills recorded between 1847 and 1857, 45 were privately owned. This well reflects the social and economic changes of that age. The booming agricultural market-production, the good quality of Hungarian wheat and flour, и 161