Keith and I saw this apparent millstone on our
recent trip to Ireland at a place called Ballydehob
(yes, really!) in County Cork. There are several
strange things about it: most strikingly the
bolt-encrusted iron backing, with a huge oval shaped
‘repair’ and weird protruding points round the
perimeter. (They didn’t appear to be bolts.) The
‘stone’ could be coarse gritstone, or concrete, and
it has absolutely no signs of wear or dressing. The
latter may not be strange – in Ireland oats are fed
through ‘shelling’ stones to separate their husks,
and they do not have dressing; we saw several such
sets.
On the other hand it does appear to have rough
insets for a rhynd. One final puzzle is that the
metal backing plate protrudes beyond what would be
the milling surface.
