Stop 3: Koc´s watermill

The remains of more than 450 years old Kroc´s watermill, which served not only to grind , but passing coachmen provide hospitality and tandem movement. There is history of the defunct ford and the adjacent pond.

For centuries, overcoming the coachmen and local carriers at this point a shallow stream ford, lined with pebbles. Pedestrians served stone bridge half a meter wide and almost four meters long. It consisted of a single stone. In the thirties was a footbridge built onto wooden bridge. Due to climatic conditions, but it used to be unstable, so for sure people enjoyed equally ford. During the construction of this bridge in 1985, ford was removed, and the stream bed is dug.

About 80 meters up water by the creek, you will found an ancient still solid wall, the only tangible remnant of the local watermill. It resists to water and freeze for over 450 years. The watermill was built around 1552. Its owner, except grinding miller Koc provide transit coachmen hospitality and tandem movement while defeat climb in the direction of Starý Smolivec. Water of mill pond adjoins up to the bend of the road below the hill and drove round the mill. To the miller, proud followers of the chalice, become fateful the Monday, the 5th October 1620. He was hanged by imperial soldiers who came that day came, and burned the mill. It haven´t been probably restored. Since 1676 is listed as defunct. It is remarkable, that even in the early twentieth century was by the remains of the mill under a huge chestnut tree marked alleged miller's grave by the sheet. Today was discovered a stone that could be a millers tombstone.

Pound adjoins to the bend of the round under hill. Even during the Second World War evoked local pond still wetland with reeds and cigars. During the drainage works, in the middle of the eighties, bulldozer removed raised dam and the wetland covered. The forest Stráž (in place of hunting sitting position) remains dry stream, which brought water to the defunct pond. Indirectly, it remains surface of water in the pound, which was used for drive of the mill.

Smolivec stream is actually the upper course of the river Lomnice. Similar name has the mill lying under Mladý Smolivc. Sources creek rise just five kilometers from here, on the western foot of the hill Třemšín the department Na Dlouhých about Moricka and the east slope of the hill with Chynínský beeches.Since long time ago crystal clear water stream has been home to crayfish, mussel river, burbot, river lamprey and nimble trout. They even spontaneously filled the aristocratic pond Pstruhovák, situated less than a one kilometre away. In that time, the stream flowed through the pound by all its current. Alluvial sands in the riverbed and banks Lomnica served proven since ancient Celts of the late Middle Ages to panning for gold. Just in the area to Blatná is recorded twenty-nine former placer – “sejp”. Along with mounds of gold panning in the Otava river and Skalice comperes Pošepný this area (75 square kilometers) and the estimates extracted metal (300 to 1000 tons) to a later time in the California gold rush.