Before the introduction of electric motors, and for as long as the river’s flow remained fairly steady throughout the year (until the 1950s and 1960s, when much of the water flow was diverted to Olivella to power a hydroelectric station), the entire course of the Melfa was characterised by the presence of dozens of mills which harnessed the power of water. .
Le “mole” , which were used for milling wheat and maize, therefore required a supply channel that started from the Melfa and which reached the mill itself. Nearby, the water was collected in a reservoir (known in the local dialect as a “lago”), created by digging into the ground. This was sometimes lined with masonry and then waterproofed with clay. From the reservoir, the water was channelled down onto a paddle wheel situated at a lower level; as this wheel turned, via reduction gears, it set the heavy stone millstones inside the mill in motion.
Well, the final stretch of the Melfa in the area of Casalvieri (about 2 km), before it winds its way downstream into the rugged gorges beyond the Plauto district, is characterised by the presence of no fewer than four mills, some of which date back to the Middle Ages.
The oldest appears to be the Limata Mill which, in the writer’s view, arose from the transformation of the small Church of Santa Maria della Limata (of which no trace remains but which is attested as early as the beginning of the 11th century), when, in the early 1400s, it became, together with the neighbouring Monastery of St Angelo in Pesco Mascolino, Grancia (farm) belonging to the Benedictine Monastery of St Nazario, which is also situated a short distance away. The presence of so many mills, dating back to ancient times, in this short stretch of the Melfa, gave its name to one of the districts that was once the most populous and prosperous in Casalvieri, Casal delle Mole, characterised by flat, irrigated land and, indeed, by the many “mole”.
