Kovács Zsuzsa: Göcsej Village Museum. Exhibition Guide (Zalaegerszeg, 2008)

EXHIBITION GUIDE 2. THE HENCZ MILL In the backwater area of River Zala there stands the only building in the museum which was preserved 'in situ'. The museum village showing the 19th folk-architecture was built around it: a mill, which was named after its last owner György Hencz who kept it going until 1952. The history of the mill goes back to the 18th century. The building structure reflects the stages of alterations, on its side one can see the borders of the old wooden building and the brick walls added to it later on. In the beginning of the 20th century the mill was extended not only with walls but with machines too, for György Hencz wanted to modernize the grinding process. The improved building made it possible for the miller to do all the working processes from the cleaning to the grinding of various qualities of flour with the help of modern technology. If we go up the stairs and walk into the new part of the mill we can see rectangular sieves based on the 20th century technology; with them flour could be classified by sifting. This process could not be done before because there were no sieves in the mill. In the old part, the rollers were put near the window and right beside the staircase stood the old millstone and the lever to lift it when it needed repairing or changing. Starting to use rollers was the other big innovation in the development of the mill because with iron rollers having different ribbings they could grind very fine flour. The water wheel was changed too; before the reconstruction the mill had two so-called 'under-hitting' wheels, i.e. the water turned the wheels from underneath. György Hencz made one wheel redundant and replaced it with gears to move some inside parts of the mill. When the millstream flowed, the 'under-hitting' wheel began to roll and the whole construction started working. While the mill was in operation the miller was watching carefully to see if the wheel kept to the same speed all the time. If the machines worked with too much or too little speed that would result not only in their going wrong but also in fatal accidents. Most of the time the miller did the repairs because there was no time to waste and wait for the craftsmen (joiner, carpenter, cartwright) if something went wrong. Thus millers were not only good at their profession but also had a good reputation of being excellent handymen.