The Mills and Batanes of El Grajal
Hydraulic engineering in the course of the Manzanares river
The Mills and Batanes of El Grajal
The set of mills and mills of El Grajal is located in the municipality of Colmenar Viejo, within the Regional Park of Cuenca Alta del Manzanares, in the area defined as an Integral Natural Reserve.
Access to the area can be done by the road from Colmenar Viejo to Hoyo de Manzanares (M-618), until you reach the bridge over the Manzanares, from where you must continue on foot south along the Santillana Hydraulic channel until you find the remains of the old access road to the mill.
From the El Grajal dam to the end of the visible section of the Santillana canal, a series of industrial facilities are preserved, located on the left bank of the river, which used water as a driving force to grind cereals and to bake and batter cloths
The hydraulic set is made up of a fulling mill, three mills and two industrial mills that were used at the same time as mills and fulling mills. According to documentary sources they were already exploited in 1605, although the oldest reference, so far, dates from 1546, due to a conflict with the mill of the Council of Colmenar Viejo.
There are several floods that archaeologically have been documented in this area of the Manzanares River. The first of them, in 1543, completely destroyed the Molino del Concejo dam, for which it was necessary to repair it; Another important flood was that of September 1680, which washed away most of these mills and fulling mills, in addition to causing heavy damage to the different bridges that spanned the Manzanares. In fact, the following year all the machinery of the fuller, the batteries and their mallets with their gear systems were dismantled and taken to the new mill installed downstream, being joined by the second undercut.
The XIX century is going to suppose an important crisis for the textile sector, and therefore for the fulling mills. New energy sources such as steam and electricity were already being used, which will be the end for both mills and fulling mills, due to the regulation of Manzanares himself to obtain hydroelectric energy thanks to the project of the Marquis of Santillana, in 1900 .
A cartouche with the inscription “DE 1849” together with the numismatic finding of four maravedís of Isabel II with an issue date between 1836 and 1855, have served to date one of the reforms carried out in the mill room: its flooring made of stones from grind already amortized
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Archaeological performance
The first archaeological intervention was carried out between the months of March and May 1999 when it was contemplated within the Colmenar Viejo City Council project, in accordance with the PRISMA Investment Plan, for the recovery of the municipality's Archaeological Heritage, centered on the industrial complex of the mills and fulling mills of El Grajal.
The work focused on two specific actions. The most outstanding one consisted of rebuilding the destroyed bench in the MB-13 mill and fuller room, following the documentation originated after its discovery during the 1999 archaeological campaign. The second task was to monitor the cleaning work of the final area of the section 2 of the gutter, as well as the consolidation and recovery of its structures with a repairing of the masonry of the most damaged walls, using a lime and sand mortar and local stone.
