THE ANCIENT RICE MILL OF ST. JOHN

The Ancient Mill of St. John is located near the municipality of Fontanetto Po, and is a unique testimony in the Vercelli area of a rice mill powered by water. Its production activities ended in the late 1980s, as it was unable to withstand competition from state-of-the-art industrial plants. It was built in 1465, at the same time as the Roggia Camera canal by which it is fed, at the behest of Marquis Guglielmo del Monferrato. At the time, the Mill was called ‘da Po’ for its proximity to the great river. Rebuilt in 1617 following the destruction suffered by the surrounding area during the wars between the French, the Spanish and the Marquises of Monferrato, it was then called Mulino Nuovo, the new mill.

Like many other mills in the rice growing plain, the Mill of St. John lost its function linked to the milling of cereals over the centuries, while its connection to rice processing grew. In 1699 the land register lists it as a “pista”, i.e. a millstone for mechanically driven rice “husking”’, with hydraulic power obtained by means of a paddle wheel moved by water. In the 19th century, the structure was extended with a second building connected to the first by a footbridge. The millstone was replaced by machinery operated by the driving energy of water, which was no longer transmitted by the wheel but by the then innovative turbine that powers the plant to date.