Monastic and prince-bishop oil mill

An Abdinghof monastery mill, whose water wheel was driven by the Riemeke brook, was already operating on the upper reaches of the Pader in the 12th century.[1] In 1432, this tenant mill is specified for the first time as „Olige Mollen“. The sequence of its tenants can be easily traced from the beginning of the 14th to the middle of the 17th century thanks to a dense tradition of names.[2] In August 1632, the Abdinghof oil mill was incinerated by the defenders of Paderborn during futile siege attempts by Hessian and Swedish troops.[3] In 1644, the monastery handed over the rebuilt oil mill together with adjacent lands to the Landdrosten von Westphalen for an annual rent of 50 Reichstaler. According to a more recent 18th century land description, the oil mill may have been converted into a „sage mill“ in the meantime.[4]

On the lower reaches of the Pader, the prince-bishops also had an oil mill built in Schloss Neuhaus in the 17th century. It is not yet clear where this Baroque facility was located – presumably it was on the Mühlenpader in the immediate vicinity of the princely grain mill.[5] In 1668 the „Olyemühle zum Newenhause“ (Neuhaus Oil Mill) was issued by the court chamber to the tenant Heinrich Veßell for 30 Taler a year for four years.[6] Around 60 years later it was „ruinous and dilapidated“ (1731).[7] In 1731 Hermann Bünnighausen, the tenant of the oil mill at the time, asked the chamber councillors to release him from the current contract because he considered grinding and pressing (with artificial light?) in the „derelict mill“ to be too dangerous.[8] Because of its fire-hazardous condition and exposed location, it was to be demolished according to the court’s plans and rebuilt outside the village. The necessary foundations had already been laid „near the fulling mill“. The building site freed up by the demolition was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. In August 1731, grain miller Henrich Rinschen, who had leased the Neuhaus rye mill at the Paderborn gate, expressed interest in acquiring the building plot. Since the old oil mill was located „near the grinding mill I run“, he welcomed the plans of the court chamber that a „wheat mill should be built there in the best interest of the prince“.[9] Rinschen therefore asked the court chamber to lease the new building of the projected wheat mill only to him. However, this did not happen. Over the next few months, Rinschen was apparently content with a few makeshift repairs to the old mill, which court architect Franz Christoph Nagel criticised in no uncertain terms as inadequate on 10 August 1732:

„[… ] that such [oil mill] is completely ruined at the one-turned wheel and chair work, for which reason the previous oil miller [Hermann Bünnighausen] as consciously then gave it up, because now the wood at the wheel work is soiled and so torn by the worm that it can no longer hold a spigot, also the oil press is so broken that the oil flows out, that it can no longer hold a spigot, and the oil press is so corroded that the oil flows out, so that it cannot be restarted otherwise than by a major repair and complete renewal“. [10]

It is not yet clear whether the „major repair” of the Neuhaus oil mill ordered by the court architect took place.