Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
to manage this scarce resource in a variety of ways or to attempt to increase the
supply by conducting additional water to the city from further away. The latter was
the well-known solution to the water problem in Rome and the city of Rome could
not have grown to such dimensions in the Imperial Period without the aqueducts
overcoming the local mismatch of supply and demand.
10
However, this solution of
transferring water over longer distances was not suitable in the light of the highly
fragmented political structure of European medieval society. Cities frequently had
to face being besieged by enemies; being cut off from their hinterland a dependency
on aqueducts would have rendered cities highly vulnerable due to lack of water.
Thus we can identify a preference for using locally controllable water resources.
And rather than opt for centralized unitary systems, medieval cities looked for a
multiplicity of resources and water supply systems to decrease their dependency
and enhance their resilience.
11
In the medieval city water served a multitude of purposes
12
: Besides the use of
drinking by humans and animals, water was used in processes of making food and
drink, of producing goods, particularly textiles etc. Water also constituted a
potential source for mechanical energy, driving mills which were the main types of
machines. Mills were not only used for grinding
our, of course a very important
use to keep urban population well fed, but also for all kinds of industrial processes,
particularly in textile production (fulling) and metal-processing (hammer-mills).
The current of rivers was used to power mills, located on the shores or sometimes
also
in the middle of the stream. In hilly cities with an abundance
of smaller rivers and creeks these were frequently re-directed and divided up into
smaller channels to enable as many users as possible to make use of the kinetic
energy. And in trading cities on rather
—
as ship mills
—
at ground canals made water transport
available for as large a portion of urban houses as feasible. The Flemish city of
Bruges, one of the major nodes of long-distance trade in the late middle ages, had
established a complicated system of water provision and transport serving a mul-
titude of functions, such as providing water power for a variety of crafts as well as
feeding a large number of public fountains on streets and squares.
13
A speci
c
feature was the cloth hall which was built across a little canal so that the valuable
cloth could be unloaded and handled under the arcades of that building protected
from the weather. A critical issue for Bruges was the access to and from the sea: the
Zwijn, the river linking Bruges with the sea, was increasingly silting up, which
made it more and more dif
cult for sea-going vessels to reach Bruges or its out-port
Sluis. In consequence the city, one of the leading European entrepots and gate-
way-cities in the 14th century suffered long-lasting decline.
14
10
Stahl (
2008
).
11
Grewe (
1991
).
12
Cf. Guillerme (
1988
) and Schott (
2014
), esp. Chap. 5.4.
13
De Witte (
2004
).
14
Girouard (
1987
) and Blockmans (
1992
).
