Hardtmühle

The farm was part of the Herrenstrunden commandery's holdings. Gobelin von Gierath and his wife Udela had received the mill site and three-quarters of a Morgen of arable land from the order as a hereditary lease. On 24 June 1340, they committed to building a mill there for grain of all kinds. A document from 1532 mentions a burnishing mill (Pleißmühle) where armor was polished. From 1597, the tenant Johann Reinhard von Malmentier ran an oil and gunpowder mill here; since the powder mill is no longer mentioned after 1668, it was most likely a pure oil mill by then.

After the commandery was dissolved during secularization in 1806, the mill passed into state ownership. A fire reduced it to ashes in 1811. The domain administration sold the building plot to the highest bidder on condition that a new mill be built. From 1814, it belonged to Heinrich Moll of Mülheim, who built another oil mill, equipped with two oil presses.

In 1854, Moll gave the mill to his six children, who had it auctioned off after their parents died in 1863. Co-heir Eduard Moll bought it and in 1873 sold it, together with fittings, residential buildings and land, to the file manufacturer Eduard Karl Kind of Strunden. Kind first had black meal made from coal there, which proved unprofitable.

In 1875, Kind leased the mill to Karl Paffrath, a Cologne citizen, who used it as a plaster and alabaster mill. Kind, however, reserved the right to run a grinding shop during the night hours, from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. Until after the Second World War, the Paffrath family produced plaster for making figures of saints, for example at the Benedictine monastery of Maria Laach. Later they switched to high-quality plasters for dental technology and bandages. The plant continued to operate as a plaster mill until the 1980s.

After plaster production ended, the mill was converted to generate electricity. When the Strunde carries enough water, power is still produced there today.