Windmills standing in the midst of calm
MúzeumCafé 18.
In Hungary around 854 windmills ground wheat in 1863, 1873 and 1906 respectively. Of them forty still exist – twenty-one are partly renovated as protected buildings, the rest have either a new function or stand locked up and empty. The majority of the protected mills are situated in the Kiskunság and Nagykunság regions on the Great Plain or in Tés, Transdanubia. They can be found in situ or in open-air museums of ethnography, or perhaps are resettled in museum complexes, standing tall among neighbouring buildings as monumental masterpieces of folk architecture. Today it is difficult to imagine that in the 19th century so many windmills with their turning sail-arms were situated in the vicinity of towns and villages, especially on the Hungarian Great Plain. The first records concerning windmills in Hungary date to the 16th century, yet the construction of the modern type began in Holland in the 17th century. In addition to milling, these were used for operating water-lifting devices. As can be seen in the mill museums, the roof structure of the buildings – internally divided into several levels – could be turned together with the sail-arms. In the 18th century, when rivers began to be regulated and mills which stood on floodlands were relocated, an increasing number of people tried to figure out what kind of mill would be able to supply the flour needs of a growing population. That was when mills previously unknown in Hungary were investigated. Windmill designs not only came from Holland; in the 1820s a lecturer of the Georgikon agricultural institute made a study tour of western Europe at the request of the Festetics family and his design sent from England can be still seen in the National Széchényi Library. A master joiner built a windmill in Tés, county Veszprém, in 1924, which was something unusual for the time. In the end nationalisation put an end to the working windmills – in 1950-51 the authorities stopped those.