Waspi mill

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The wasp mill
Mill building with turbine house
House from 1784 and the attached barn

The Wespi-Mühle is a former flour mill in the Winterthur district of Wülflingen at the central Winterthur waterfall of the Töss . It is by the federal government as a whole ensemble in the List of cultural property of national significance in the canton of Zurich conducted, each building as a monument of national importance in the Canton under monument stands.

history

Around 1428 the mill is recorded as "Zum Steg an der Töss" when Duke Friedrich of Austria acquired it. In the 16th century the mill ban was introduced, which gave the mill a monopoly and protected it from competition. In 1552 the second generation of the Erb family is mentioned as the owner, from 1588 to 1598 an Alban Erb is known as the owner.

From 1650, when Hans Bodmer bought the mill, it was run by representatives of the Bodmer family for 200 years, which gave it the nickname “Bodmermühle”. Since then, the owners of the mill can be identified by means of the stone inscription panels that are attached to the mill building above the arches. Ulrich Schwarz became the owner around 1854; In 1883 the mill received its current name from the new owner Heinrich Wespi-Schollenberger. The mill, which most recently specialized in specialty flours, went bankrupt in 1997 and was taken over by the construction company Leemann + Bretscher L + B HGV AG.

The mill continued to operate until spring 2010. After that, no successor was found for the mill, which was run in the fourth generation by the Wespi and Hablützel families, and which could hardly be operated economically. Leemann + Bretscher had apartments built into the various buildings in the complex. The association “Pro Wespimühle”, founded in 2005, which wanted to maintain the traditional mill operation, disbanded in November 2017. A planned total renovation of the mill has so far failed due to the cantonal preservation of monuments.

Scope of the building ensemble

The building ensemble consists of a house with a mill, which was built before 1784, as well as two further houses built in 1780/82 (miller's house with mansard roof ) and 1784. There is also the mill building with turbine house, a barn that is attached to the residential building from 1784, and a silo from 1932. In addition to the completely preserved ensemble of buildings, the Wespi mill also has original, functioning machinery from around 1892.

Small hydropower plant Wespimühle
The water of the Töss is directed through the open headwater channel and via a short pressure pipe to the axial boiler turbine of the Töss power plant . The power transmission to the asynchronous generator takes place via ingenious shaft and angle gears, which consist of cast and wooden gears. The cleaning and milling operations were partly operated directly via drive belts. The 90 hp, axial Henschel-Joval / Girard boiler turbine, which replaced the earlier water wheels, was built by Rieter in 1893 and is one of the last operational of its kind. The asynchronous generator from 1930 comes from the Société d'Electricité Alioth .

In 2002 the Revita Foundation installed a new control system for turbine and network monitoring. Since then, the mill's small hydropower plant has been able to feed around 500 kWh of electricity per day into the public network of the Städtische Werke Winterthur (StWW) , which can supply around 40 single-family houses with green electricity.

Trivia

  • Jakob Christoph Heer's childhood sweetheart Ida "Friedli" Steinemann (1859–1876) lived in the miller's house in the Wespi mill . Heer described his relationship with her in the youth novel Joggeli , published in 1902 .

Web links

Commons : Wespi-Mühle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article «The Wespimühle - a unique industrial ensemble» by Sylvia and HP Bärtschi and Reinhard Stahel. Newspaper for European Monument Day 2008 «Winterthur Wülflingen. From farmers, millers and lords of the castle. ”, Pages 33 and 34, from September 13, 2008. Published by the Office for Urban Development of the City of Winterthur. stadt.winterthur.ch
  2. ↑ Landbote from March 31, 2018: The fight for the Wespimühle continues (PDF).
  3. ↑ Foundation Revita: Wespimühle.
  4. ↑ Revita: Project sheet Wespimühle (PDF).

Coordinates: 47 ° 30 '20.2 "  N , 8 ° 41' 3.2"  E ; CH1903:  693840  /  262,396