No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Water power was the principal source of energy for British and Irish industry for the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in the textile industries. Even in the nineteenth century steam power in many Irish, Scottish, and Welsh industries was a supplement rather than a replacement for water-powered prime movers. In the early twenty-first century water power remains an important low-carbon power-generation option. Using British and Irish examples this chapter reviews the technological development of water power, from vertical and horizontal waterwheels, the replacement of wood with iron fabric in the transmission systems, and improvements in waterwheel design, to water turbines and the introduction of hydroelectric generation.

It has long been known that certain water-powered mill sites, owing to the suitability of their water supply, have continued in use since the later medieval period. But when, exactly, did medieval millwrights begin to make empirical observations on the effi cacy of a particular source of hydro-power and, indeed, on the very site of the mill itself? In the present paper, important new archaeological evidence from early medieval Ireland (c. AD 600-1100), is used to demonstrate that conscious decisions on the location of mills employing various types of freshwater and estuarine supplies were already being made by the early decades of the 7th century AD. Furthermore, not only were increasingly more challenging locations being adapted for use by early medieval Irish millwrights, but the availability of water-power had already become an important factor in the choice of site for larger monasteries.