In the municipality of Boticas there are approximately 240 water mills, built with the purpose of ensuring the intensive milling of all the rural house rye during the rainy season. This number is justified by an agro-pastoral and self-consumption economy traditionally based on rye monoculture, interspersed with sporadic productions of corn.
In the municipality of Boticas there are approximately 240 water mills.
The mills are mostly caster mills, small in size and accessible in technology. This fact, together with the private rights to common property and, in particular, water rights, favoured the finding of cooperative solutions such as the hour mills for collective use in exchange for payment, or the genuinely communal mills of the people.
There are a small number of water mills and caster mills that were commercially exploited by their owners, who retained a part of the grain, taken by private individuals for flouring, as payment (the maquia).
In the areas of Boticas, Beça, Carvalhelhos and Codessoso, which correspond to a lower altitude and more populated area, the mills appear in high numbers (67 mills) and dispersed along the water lines.
Location of Moinho Novo
