Lilla Stampan (also known as Kälvesta kvarn or Lunda kvarn) is a post mill in Spånga, western Stockholm.
History
editIn central Stockholm
editLilla Stampan was built at the end of the 17th or in the early 18th century; the oldest reference to a mill on the original location of Lilla Stampan is a 1702 map. A weather vane from the mill inscribed with "1729" gives that year as a lower bound for the age of the mill. The weather vane also bears the initials "E.L.S.M.", possibly referring to "Erik Lindström, mjölnare" ("Erik Lindström, miller") who may have been the owner of the mill in the 1730s. Fragments of both inscriptions also exist on the main post of the mill. Lilla Stampan is somewhat newer (?) than its "sister mill" Stora Stampan, which was built in the 1670s.[1]
The original location of Lilla Stampan was at what is now Vegagatan in Vasastaden, in an area[a] on Brunkebergsåsen, a high esker well suited for windmills.[2] The area was until the mid-19th century relatively rural, and its inhabitants used windmills for grinding grain (corn mills), sawing wood (sawmills), or as stamp mills (?): crushing seeds for oil (oil mills) or pounding plants (including flax and hemp) in order to make sails or ropes.[b][3] These windmills could either be older and simpler post mills or more modern smock mills,[4] and included among others two windmills of the Stora Barnhuset orphanage (an older post mill and a newer smock mill) in today's park of Tegnérlunden, and Lilla and Stora Tissan (a post mill and a smock mill, respectively) near what is now Adolf Fredrik's Music School. Closer to the Old Observatory were some others, all of them post mills: Spelbomskan, the pair of Stora Adam and Lilla Eva, and Stora and Lilla Stampan.[c][5][6] Despite its name, Lilla Stampan was a corn mill and not a stamp mill (?); the name is a possible reference to Nils Stamp who owned the land in the 16th century.[7]
Lilla Stampan is known from multiple 18th- and 19th-century sources, as authorities wanted to regulate the position and amount of windmills in the city due to their status as fire hazards: the combination of friction and flour in the grinding mechanism created good conditions for fires and the windmill sails facilitated its spread. The windmill is included in several maps of Stockholm, such as the first 1702 map and Petrus Tillaeus 's map from 1733.[9] The fastighetsregister (real estate register?) of the Stockholm City Archives shows that the mill changed ownership many times through the centuries, passing through the ownership of not only millers, but also businesspeople, factory owners, a head teacher, and Supreme Court Justice Magnus Torén.[10]
In the mid-19th century, the mill was owned by miller J.F. Carlsson, who appears in several documents providing information about the mill. He bought fire insurance in 1858 where Lilla Stampan is described as a mill with a single pair of millstones. A 1860 civil register (?) lists Carlsson with two male servants and one maid. The largest amount of information about the mill is given in a fire insurance from 1870, describing Lilla Stampan as a vertically boarded windmill with a length of 6 m (20 ft), a width of 4.5 m (15 ft) and 9 m (30 ft) tall. The mill was equipped with a pair of millstones measuring 207 cm (6 ft 9 in) in diameter and sails with a span of 23 m (75 ft). The mill was winded by a tailpole equipped with a staircase and had a wooden shed at the windmill trestle. text?[11]
text? Playwright and novelist August Strindberg, author of many classics of Swedish literature, spent part of his childhood (1857–1860) in the farmstead of Loviseberg near the windmills of Stora Adam, Lilla Eva, and Stora and Lilla Stampan. While living at Loviseberg, Strindberg played with children of the local millers and milkmen; in his autobiography The Son of a Servant he notes that "[t]heir chief playground was the hill on which the mill stood, and the wings of the windmill were their playthings."[12] Windmills would later figure in his last play, The Great Highway. Its second "station", set at two windmills named "Adam" and "Eva" on either side of a road, features two millers who are quarrelling over access to the wind, each wanting the other's mill to be moved. Despite their names, the roadside placement of the windmills in the play indicates that they was based on Stora and Lilla Stampan, rather than Stora Adam and Lilla Eva which were located further away.[13]
With the arrival of industrialisation and urbanisation in the 19th century, Stockholm saw a rapid expansion largely guided by Albert Lindhagen's city plan from 1866, where the rural landscape surrounding Stockholm had been replaced with buildings and streets in a grid pattern. Many of the city's windmills were in the way of this development and were torn down; in some cases the newly invented dynamite was used to blast away the very ground the mills had stood on. Accelerating the decline of windmills was the introduction of steam mills, such as Eldkvarn on Kungsholmen at the present-day location of the City Hall. This fast pace of urbanisation can be seen in Heinrich Neuhaus 's pictorial map of Stockholm from the early 1870s, showing Lilla Stampan as still standing, but behind buildings.[14][15]
Lilla Stampan continued to operate in Norrmalm until the 1880s, as evidenced by an 1882 watercolour by Albert Theodor Gellerstedt .[16] "Karlsson" – presumably J.F. Carlsson or his son – then sold it to J.A. Thorslund, tenant of Lunda estate in Spånga socken, west of Stockholm.[17] When exactly the windmill was moved is not certain, but a stoneworker (?) reported how he had hauled the sails from Stockholm to Spånga around 1884. From 1885, Lilla Stampan was no longer shown on maps of Stockholm.[16]
In Spånga
editLilla Stampan was first moved to the Lunda estate. In 1889, however, Thorslund's lease in Lunda ended and he instead leased a plot in nearby Kälvesta, where the windmill was moved. After the move to Kälvesta, the windmill changed hands several times – in 1890 it was sold to miller E.A. Nordström, only to be sold again to miller C.E. Eriksson in 1893 who operated it until five years later, when the entire estate of Kälvesta was bought by farmer K. Ferngren; as he was not a miller, the windmill was operated by the Petterson family. The windmill continued to operate until 1902, when a storm caused the windshaft to snap in two and one of the sails was destroyed as it hit the ground. The last miller of Lilla Stampan was Frans Gustaf Pettersson. In 1903, the area was purchased by AB Hem på landet who began developing the area with detached housing in the spirit of the contemporaneous Egnahem movement which sought to give smallholders (?), workers, and civil servants their own homes ("egna hem").[18]
In late 1924, newspapers in Stockholm identified three windmills outside the city centre as "the old Barnhuset mill"[d]: a post mill in Rinkeby (then also part of Spånga), a smock mill in Rolsta (near Märsta north of Stockholm), and lastly the windmill in Kälvesta. Proposals for the repatriation of the mill(s) to the city centre soon followed. The confusion regarding the identity of the mills prompted the Nordic Museum to begin an investigation, later led by Samfundet S:t Erik, where it quickly became clear that none of the three mills were one of the Barnhuset mills – they had all been moved to their current locations before the Barnhuset mills disappeared.[20] The investigation was summarised by Bertil Waldén in the 1926 yearbook of Samfundet S:t Erik, where the identities of the three mills were made clear: the Rinkeby mill was Stora Stampan, the mill in Rolsta was Stora Tissan, and the Kälvesta mill was Lilla Stampan.[21] The two actual Barnhuset mills had been demolished around 1890 with the construction of the Tegnérlunden park.[22] In his text, Waldén briefly covered the recent history of Lilla Stampan and wrote about its derelict state:
Själva kvarnhuset förminskades något vid det första återuppförandet, såväl verket som vingarna äro emellertid de ursprungliga. Härför talar icke minst det nästan ruinerade tillstånd, i vilket kvarnen numera befinner sig: endast en vinge återstår, virket är genomruttet, stenarna sönderspruckna och verket tämligen förstört. Utan tvivel kommer den gamla Stockholmskvarnen att i en snar framtid skatta åt förgängelsen.[23][e]
Thus, Waldén deemed the windmill unsuitable for moving back to the city centre, and recommended the more intact Stora Stampan for this role instead.[23] The mill in Rolsta burnt down in 1960, leaving Stora and Lilla Stampan as the only remaining windmills from central Stockholm.[f][25] Stora Stampan still stands in Rinkeby (though administrative changes means it is now in Sundbyberg Municipality) and was last renovated in 2019–2020 when it was refitted with new sails.[26]
In 1931, Lilla Stampan was bought by Helgo Wiberg, a postal assistant who had purchased an adjacent plot for his home. Wiberg took a great interest in the windmill, performing some minor restoration work on . A retaining wall to his house bears the inscriptions "1729", "1931", and "H.W." ("Helgo Wiberg"), framed with iron taken from the windmill tailpole.[27]
Spånga, originally an independent municipality, was incorporated into the City of Stockholm in 1949. After prompting from the City Museum, the City Council purchased Lilla Stampan from Wiberg in 1951. text According to Dagens Nyheter, while the machinery was intact, both the staircase and the roof needed repairing and the windows had been shot by the local youth, shattering the glass panes.[28] Any repair did, however, not occur and in 1961 the windmill was described in an Expressen article as in a heavy state of disrepair: the windmill still lacked sails, the panelling was falling apart, the windows had been "sloppily" boarded over, and the paint had flaked away. According to an engineer on the city's Real Estate Administration the city had "forgotten about" the windmill.[29]
Since the Expressen article, the windmill seems to have undergone restoration work: the panelling has been replaced, the roof repaired and tarred, the windows boarded over, doors replaced, and the windshaft has been cut and the corresponding opening boarded over.[30] In 2017, the Real Estate Administration developed plans to sell the windmill and surrounding land, stating that there was "no strategic reason to keep the property"[g] and that the mill is "difficult to lease as it lacks electricity, water, and sewerage".[h][31] This caused controversy among locals and politicians; the Beauty Council suggested protecting the mill or repatriating it to the city centre.[32] As of 2017[update], the development plans have been postponed and Lilla Stampan is still standing.[31]
Description
editLilla Stampan is situated on a small hill at Skestavägen 45, in the district of Solhem in Spånga-Tensta borough in Västerort. It is located some 12 km (7.5 mi) northwest of Stockholm Central Station, about 1 km (0.62 mi) away from Spånga railway station on the Mälaren Line. Despite its alternative names "Kälvesta kvarn" and "Lunda kvarn", Lilla Stampan is neither in Kälvesta nor Lunda districts.[33]
As a post mill, the main structure of Lilla Stampan is the body, a timber-framed structure with red-painted panelled walls housing the machinery (e.g. sails and millstones). The body is supported on an oak post, around which it rotates to bring the sails into the wind. Below the body, the post connects to the trestle – a supporting and stabilising substructure consisting of the post, horizontal (crosstrees), and diagonal (quarterbars) beams – which in turn stands on the ground. In Lilla Stampan, the trestle, too, is covered with panelling. text On the opposite side of the sails is the tailpole, which was used to wind the mill; directly above it is the front door to the windmill.[34]
Lilla Stampan has two storeys, primarily separated by the crowntree, a large oak beam which stands on the post and in turn supports the body. Most of the machinery is on the second floor. When the windmill still had sails, they were attached to the wooden windshaft leading into the second floor, which in turn is attached to the (also wooden) brake wheel. The brake wheel drove the stone nut (?), a cast iron cogwheel which, through a vertical shaft, drove the upper millstone (runner stone), the rotation of which against the lower stone (bedstone) ground the grain between the stones into flour.[i] The rotation of the windshaft also drove a sack hoist, used to lift (?) sacks of grain from the ground to the second floor. A circular brake around the brake wheel (hence the name), manoeuvred by a lever on the first floor, was used to stop the windmill. text? Parts of the interior were changed during the move to Spånga; for example, the stone nut (?) was originally in wood, and many timbers still have cuts (?) which are remnants from old joints that were removed with the move.[35][36]
-
Second storey of Lilla Stampan; windshaft (top centre), brake wheel (background), and stone nut (bottom centre) are visible
Notes
edit- ^ Approximately bounded by today's streets of Odengatan, Sveavägen, Kammakargatan , and Dalagatan .
- ^ Other, less common usage areas included the production of paint, cork, or gunpowder.
- ^ Stora is Swedish for "big" or "large", while lilla is Swedish for "small".
- ^ Swedish: "den gamla Barnhuskvarnen"[19]
- ^ Swedish: "Själva kvarnhuset förminskades något vid det första återuppförandet, såväl verket som vingarna äro emellertid de ursprungliga. Härför talar icke minst det nästan ruinerade tillstånd, i vilket kvarnen numera befinner sig: endast en vinge återstår, virket är genomruttet, stenarna sönderspruckna och verket tämligen förstört. Utan tvivel kommer den gamla Stockholmskvarnen att i en snar framtid skatta åt förgängelsen."
- ^ Näsets kvarn in Lidingö might have its origins in Södermalm, but this is unconfirmed.[24]
- ^ Swedish: "inte finns någon strategisk anledning att behålla fastigheten"
- ^ Swedish: "svår att hyra ut då den saknar el, vatten och avlopp"
- ^ The exact details may be different in other windmills.
References
edit- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 20.
- ^ Waldén 1926, pp. 101, 106.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, pp. 125, 128.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, pp. 124–125.
- ^ Waldén 1926, pp. 101–106.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, pp. 129–135.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 14.
- ^ Waldén 1926, p. 109.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 10–11, 20.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 20–21.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 22.
- ^ Strindberg 1913.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, p. 131.
- ^ Lindhagen 1987, pp. 12–14.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 15–17, 23.
- ^ a b Waldén 1926, p. 111.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 23–25.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, p. 162.
- ^ Waldén 1926, p. 107.
- ^ Fogelström 1995, pp. 162–163.
- ^ Waldén 1926, p. 104.
- ^ a b Waldén 1926, p. 114.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 19.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 15.
- ^ Some source here
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 25, 27, 38.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 26.
- ^ "Stockholms stad köpte gammal kvarn för 85 000 – har bara glömt bort den". Expressen (in Swedish). 5 November 1961. p. 12.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, p. 27.
- ^ a b White, Sofia (16 August 2017). "Kvarnen i Spånga räddad – den här gången i alla fall..." Mitt i (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 6 April 2021. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
- ^ White, Sofia (13 April 2017). "Striden om Solhemskvarnens framtid fortsätter – flytt ett alternativ". Mitt i (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 6 April 2021. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
- ^ Stadskartan (Map). City of Stockholm. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 32–34.
- ^ Ulvsgärd 2017, pp. 39–46.
- ^ Some English-language source on windmill terminology.
Bibliography
edit- Fogelström, Per Anders (1995). Ur det försvunna: stockholmska spår och tecken (in Swedish). Stockholm: Bonnier. ISBN 91-0-056123-1. SELIBR 7149429.
- Lindhagen, Suzanne, ed. (1987). Sydvästra Vasastaden: byggnadsinventering (PDF) (in Swedish). Stockholm: Stockholm City Museum. ISBN 91-85238-56-2. SELIBR 7746802.
- Strindberg, August (1913). "IV. Intercourse with the lower classes". The Son of a Servant. Translated by Field, Claud. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. SELIBR 3095057.
- Ulvsgärd, Sebastian (2017). Torgils 15: Väderkvarnen Lilla Stampan: Solhem, Stockholm: bebyggelsehistorisk inventering (in Swedish). Stockholm: Stockholm City Museum. ISBN 978-91-87287-98-5. SELIBR 3hkqcqn11538q3l9.
- Waldén, Bertil (1926). "Tre väderkvarnar från det gamla Stockholm". Samfundet S:t Eriks årsbok 1926 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. SELIBR 482270.
Category:Buildings and structures in Stockholm Category:Flour mills Category:Post mills