The Rue Neuve Windmill

Up the hill in Coet Fao woods, you can still see the circular base of a windmill registered on the 1843 Napoleonic land registry as “Moulin à vent de la Rue Neuve”. Owned by the de Pluvié de Manehouarn family, holders of the Rue Neuve seigneury under the Ancien Régime, it was one of three mills on the Rue Neuve. The other two were located further down the hill along the Malachappe stream. Using the power of wind and water, they operated mechanisms for milling grain and sawing wood.

This combination of water and windmills was not uncommon during the Ancien Régime, as the Napoleonic land registry shows: they can be found in all the surrounding townlands. The Château de Kerdrého in Plouay also had a windmill associated with its water mill. Windmills were less numerous and were probably abandoned very early on. Most of them have now disappeared.