Lambertsmühle

Description

The Lambertsmühle in Burscheid is operated as a local history museum and lies nestled in the wooded Wiembach valley of the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in North Rhine-Westphalia; it is the only surviving watermill in the region.

As part of the historical manorial seat Haus Landscheid, the mill served, probably already in the 12th century with the beginnings of settlement in the Bergisches Land, as the seigneurial mill (Bannmühle) where dependent farmers had to grind their grain and pay dues. The name likely derives from a Lambert born around 1570 who obtained the right of residence in the mill. Until 1751 it was mentioned under the designation "Hunds-Mühle" and later changed hands several times. After a fire in February 1766 the building was promptly rebuilt in its present form. An integrated bread bakery was closed in 1942; milling with traditional technology continued until December 1956. Growing competition from industrial large-scale mills and feed producers led to a loss of orders, repairs to the waterwheel became uneconomical, and the old milling rights lapsed. The married couple who most recently operated the mill transferred the complex on the condition that a local history museum be established there. A support association, founded in 1995, took on the restoration, installed historical craft equipment such as a roughly 200-year-old loom and made the mill machinery operational again; since 2002 the mill has been run for demonstration purposes.

The museum documents the mill estate and explains the process from grain to bread; it also presents earlier mills in Burscheid and the surrounding localities in text and images. The multi-storey half-timbered house with a gabled roof housed the grain store; on the gable side facing the mill pond sits the overshot waterwheel. Original surviving living rooms with Cologne ceilings complete the ensemble, which, in addition to the mill building with an overshot wheel (diameter 5.60 m), milling machinery, grain and flour lofts and a stone oven, includes stable buildings from 1880 (today an events space), a coach house (Remise), a barn with machinery, a fully functional smithy, various workshops, a loom chamber, a kitchen, a wedding room, a vaulted cellar, the table and chair storage "St. Lambertus" built in 2014, an ecologically designed cottage garden and agricultural implements such as an apple press and a threshing machine.

Technically, it is a grain mill with an overshot waterwheel; water is taken from the Wiembach about 200 metres upstream, collected in the mill pond and conveyed to the mill via a headrace with two sluices before returning via the tailrace. One of the original three milling units was restored by a Dutch millbuilding firm; the remaining basalt millstones are on display. The waterwheel and internal gearing are predominantly made of wood; the milled product leaves the run as wholemeal grist, suitable for baking. Since 1983 the Lambertsmühle has been recorded as a listed historic building (No. 22) in Burscheid.