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It cannot be a water mill, as there is no stream nearby. Windmills are not common round there – at least, I've never seen one.
It is significant, perhaps, that the road leading out of Hontanas towards the Camino Santiago Francés is named as Camino del Cubo. 'Cubo' means 'mill-pond' (among other things) which ties in with 'Molino del Cubo' on the Hontanas website. So, although the 'tower' is some distance from a stream, the molino must have been on one of the streams.Horse mill - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I am not a historian. I have taken thousands of photos on my caminos. I like to caption them with information about the subject of the photo. I sometimes get the information I need from something displayed next to the subject, sometimes I get information from the internet. Unfortunately, it seems that, if I look at two results from a Google search, the information is different, like with the Casa de Tejada. Then I turn to the forum. I also turn to the forum if I cannot find any information on the internet. This was a case where I couldn't find any information about the 'tower' on the internet. But I wasn't looking in the right place. The information is there, on the Hontanas website, but I might not have found it, even then. Because of the photos, I suppose you could say I'm really interested in the history of places on the internet.Question: @Bert45 you are often asking questions about specific places and sites. Are you a historian or just really interested in history of the places on the Camino.
Mills are not all powered by wind or water. Humans and animals can be used.Hmm. A village called San Miguel? I'd expect more ruins. A mill? I'm ruling nothing out. I wish (just a bit) that I'd walked the 'real' camino from Hontanas to Castrojeriz, rather than taking the easy route along the smooth, level, tarmac road. [Don't condemn me! I walked the real, i.e. signposted, camino in 2003, but I was using film in those days, and probably felt I could not spare a frame for that structure.] I could have had a closer look at the tower. Is it a tower, even? It seems too small in width (both ways) to have a staircase within it. It cannot be a water mill, as there is no stream nearby. Windmills are not common round there – at least, I've never seen one.
You can see the ruins of the mill from the Camino (I don't recall that we noticed it. We certainly did not see the millstones). It is next to the stream called Garbanzuelo. You can see the location in Google Earth. It is to the left of (south of) the Camino de Santiago, about 500 metres before you reach the church ruins. Apparently, the millpond has disappeared but its dam can still be seen.It is significant, perhaps, that the road leading out of Hontanas towards the Camino Santiago Francés is named as Camino del Cubo. 'Cubo' means 'mill-pond' (among other things) which ties in with 'Molino del Cubo' on the Hontanas website. So, although the 'tower' is some distance from a stream, the molino must have been on one of the streams.
I can't see that the church ruins are part of what is left of a buttress when you look at it from all angles, for example @jungleboy's great photo or the photo below. It looks like the facade, i.e. the front end, of these (to me) typical Spanish churches where the bells are not enclosed in a tower but are on top of a wall that is higher than the other three walls. There is probably a Spanish word for it. This would also fit with the traditional east-west orientation of medieval churches. @Bert45, you took your photo in the morning?a buttress
I took the photo at 11:20. One of the reasons that I undertook another camino earlier this year was to see the things I had read about or seen on the internet for myself. There were a few things I was still unable to see, of course, churches were locked, etc. But this discussion has highlighted a couple of things (the 'tower' and the mill) that I might need to make another camino to see for myself, even though I had resolved not to do another camino.I can't see that the church ruins are part of what is left of a buttress when you look at it from all angles, for example @jungleboy's great photo or the photo below. It looks like the facade, i.e. the front end, of these (to me) typical Spanish churches where the bells are not enclosed in a tower but are on top of a wall that is higher than the other three walls. There is probably a Spanish word for it. This would also fit with the traditional east-west orientation of medieval churches. @Bert45, you took your photo in the morning?
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PS: Found it. The bell-gables or espadañas are a feature of Romanesque architecture in Spain. They replaced the bell tower beginning the 12th century due to the Cistercian reformation that called for more simplified and less ostentatious churches, but also for economical and practical reasons as the Reconquista accelerated and wider territory needed to be re-christianized building more churches and espadañas were cheaper and simpler to build. Today, they are a common sighting in small village churches throughout Spain and Portugal. (Wikipedia).
The reason for my question / assumption that you took the photo in the morning: the direction of the shadow of the “tower” in your photo and the common east-west orientation of Christian churches in the Middle Ages.I took the photo at 11:20
I remain unconvinced about it being a defensible watch tower, and so should you and everybody else following this thread. You did not provide a link to this spreadsheet of "The University of Burgos" but I found one relevant spreadsheet on their site. It does list the ruins as "Castillo" (it is the classification taken from a specific database) but it also lists the ruins as "Iglesia" (classification in another apparently more accurate database). Here is the link and a translation of the most relevant entry:The University of Burgos lists this site by the above name (coordinates check out) in an inventory (spreadsheet) and classify its type as "Castillo" (I searched for "Torreón de Hontanas" including quotation marks)
Thank you @Kathor1 for the picture and explanation. We posted at the same time and not having studied the thread's pictures and posts closely enough I thought we were discussing a corner with the remnants of two walls that appeared to be a tower only from a certain angle. Your picture showed a third wall and I assume there is a fourth one still out of sight.Below is a close up of your photo.
Am I the only one who see the tiles? The part of the wall where there was a continuation at the top of the photo as well as at the bottom of the photo? Where there is no continuation of the wall but where the wall ends smoothly? Where, at the top, there is the beginning of a round arch? The thin decorative ledge beneath it? That is a typical medieval bell gable ...
Kathor1 did at post #13.No one has mentioned the ruins in the valley at 42.31052062398464, -4.062017907462965 (paste this into google maps)
Alas ! Not everybody is a talented web designer, and once the webpages are released to the online world, somebody has to maintain them and keep them up to date and correct errors and mistakes - this does not always happen, as we know only too well. And not everybody has a knack for finding stuff that may have fallen off the proverbial online waggon, so to speak.I've looked for the website of Hontanas. Found this: https://www.hontanas.es/inicio . Clicked on 'Galería de Imágines.' Two photos! Both of the church. Hardly what I'd call a 'Gallery'.
Both of those small holes, or openings, are at the same level as the axle on which the bell rotates. Is this a coincidence? Perhaps the hole allows access to the axle? For its installation or repair?Now what's intriguing about the gable of the ruined church near Hontanas is this opening where you could think that it is a lookout if you did not know any better.
Is that a feature or a fluke? Something we will never find out?
There is a church in Catalonia with a bell gable and a similar opening, see the two photos below - it the same gable, once seen from the front and once seen from the back and the opening is clearly visible. There may be more ... we may have passed these small churches and we never noticed this nor did we take a picture.
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