Kuželov is a village with just about four hundred inhabitants but it is worth visiting. On a hill above the village you can see and visit an original windmill of a Dutch type, the only windmill of this type in the whole Moravia nowadays.
The windmill was built in 1842 at the expense of the village. 300 horse loads of stones were used for the building and I wonder, how many kilograms that could be? I haven’t found any conversion formula…
– width of 8,6 metres at the base, height of about 10 metres, diameter of the wind wheel 15,6 metres –
In 1904 the windmill was bought by Mr Kašík who took out a loan for the purchase. His earnings from the mill operation were small and only in good years they were just enough for the living of his family. In comparison with watermills, output of such a windmill was five times lower so millers in watermills used to be much wealthier than millers in windmills. There were not many water flows in the area but there was abundance of stable, regular and strong enough wind so the windmill was useful and served to many people for almost a hundred years.
– flour sifters in the basement –
The roof is pivoted so that the blades could always be positioned against wind and the milling was continuous. That is why there are two doors in the basement because it might happen that one door would be blocked by turning blades.
The miller and his family were staying in the basement of the mill until 1906 when his son who went to America sent them some money and they could afford to build a housing building next to the mill. When the son returned home in 1920, a shed and barn were added. It must have been difficult to live just inside the mill, with all the noise and flour dust, so living in the house meant a major change.
– a housing and agricultural building next to the mill –
The blades turn counter-clockwise when you face them and we were told about two positions expressing what was going on. The “plus” position, meaning that the mill is in operation and people can come to have their grain milled, and the “x” position which you can see here, meaning that the windmill is temporarily out of operation.
In WWII, milling in windmills was forbidden and the mill was put out of operation permanently. When the war finished, the miller tried to start the milling again but in just a year he gave it up and the mill started to fall into disrepair. Fortunately in 1973 the mill was bought by a Technical Museum in Brno that had it carefully repaired and restored and made it fully operational again.
– an old weaving loom in the exhibition of the local lifestyle –
Nowadays it serves as a museum, along with the house where you can see an exposition of working tools and agricultural implements as well as some furniture and household items showing how people lived there.
– a spinning wheel in the exhibition of the local lifestyle –
In 2010 the windmill became a national cultural monument.
An interesting piece of history, isn’t it?