The oldest mentions about the mill can be found in the written documents from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. At that time, Jan Čerešník, who owned three half-acre grounds, was the miller here. His forerunner was Jura Rišlak in the last quarter of the 17th century.
Unfortunately, we have not sufficient documents from the 18th century, which can give us more detailed information. We know, however, that the millers of the Čerešník family were still running the mill. They paid an annual rent in cash and moreover, they were obliged to do the carpenter’s and millwright’s works at the manorial mills and farmyards. Seven or nine occupiers resided in the mill in the course of the 19th century – the miller’s family and his single or married brothers and sisters. The miller possessed some cattle, sheep, pigs and kept bees. According to the number of livestock, his economic situation was quite stable but we can hardly expect the miller’s trade to play an important role in it. In the cadastral area of Nová Lhota about 7 – 15 mills were working from the 17th to the 19th century, which could not ensure enough work for all of them.
Today, however, it would be vain effort to look for an original mill in the region. The milling chamber, according to the maintained documentation, was in a state of neglect as early as in the 1960s; the dwelling was demolished in the 1970s. In its place, the Čerešník family built a modern house, which has been occupied until now. The dilapidated sawmill is the only witness of the past times.
The house consists of three sections – a room (jizba), a hall and a chamber. The cowshed, which can be entered from the yard, is adjoined to the room. The house entrance faces the south and it is roofed with a flat porch with square feetless pillars. Small square windows are vaulted. The building was constructed of stone (chamber and partition wall between the room and the cowshed) and bricks. The hip roof is thatched.
The wall plates, to which the trusses are anchored, do not lie on the attic parapet but on the beams joined diagonally. Originally, the pugging stuff was on the floors; today the floors are covered with boards in the room while the hall floor is tiled with stones and the chamber floor with bricks.
Jizba with an area of 26m2 is the main habitable room. Dominating this room is the large fireplace combining more types: First, it is the bricked cubic oven with a mouth leading into the room and a bricked parapet. This parapet documents that a firepit must have been at the oven in the past. Beside the oven, there is a tiled-stove with a kitchen-stove. This solution is unusual for the ethnographic area of Horňácko, because the kitchen-stove used to stand in the open-hearth kitchen. In addition, there is a small illuminating fi repit, called krbeček, in the wall on the left side of the entrance door. The complicated heating system is connected with the fireplace in the openhearth kitchen that is situated in the rear corner of the hall. Here was a panel for cooking over the open fire, with a fume hood. The hall is unusually small (8m2). The door in the rear wall led to the mill race. The adjacent chamber is quite large with two small windows. Its floor, originally rammed soil, is tiled with bricks and situated some steps below the hall level. The interior, its furnishing and household utensils depict the second half of the 19th century. Dominating the room is the large fireplace used for heating up the room and for cooking. In addition, small children used to sleep on it. The parents´ bed stands in the rear corner, while the table and benches are opposite the fireplace. The furnishing is simple – a painted older chest for clothes between the windows, a newer linen cupboard – a combination of traditional chest and chest of drawers. This piece of furniture used to stand at the front wall, playing often a role of a family altar with figures of saints, crosses and candleholders. Because one cooked in the room too, the cupboard – so-called “shelves” – for dishes and cutlery could not be missing.
The chamber (21,5 m2) was intended to store the foods and different objects needful in the household. At the first glance, you will be captured by a large grain chest whose structure is very interesting – its walls are pieced tighter of split slabs set into the grooves of corner posts. The chamber could be used as a bedroom for old daughters or domestic servants – it provided privacy for them but as a dark unheated room was not very comfortable in winter. In this case, a bed and a stand or a chest for clothes used to be here. In winter or in bad weather, some small-scale works could be done here. Every miller had to know the work with wood – the milling machines were made of wood until the late-19th century and the miller had to repair or replace the defect parts not to endanger the mill operation.
