Treadwheel

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A treadwheel (also called a treadmill) is a power device usually moved by people. It can look like a water wheel and can be worked by someone walking on paddles around its edge (a treadmill) or by a person or animal inside it (a treadwheel). Today, treadwheels aren’t used for power or punishment, and “treadmill” usually means a running or walking exercise machine.

What they did
Treadwheels were used to raise water, power cranes, or grind grain. In ancient Greece and Rome they were common and sometimes used with a reverse water wheel for dewatering. In the Middle Ages they helped lift stones for building Gothic cathedrals.

Examples and remnants
There is a reference to a treadwheel in 1225, and one treadwheel crane from the early 14th century survives at Chesterfield, Derbyshire, now in a museum. It was placed at the top of a church tower and stayed there until 1947. Treadwheels were widely used in the Renaissance, notably by Brunelleschi in constructing the Florence Cathedral.

Punishment in prisons
Penal treadmills were used in UK prisons during the early Victorian era as a form of punishment. Reports from The Times in 1827 (reprinted in 1838) noted that prisoners walked the equivalent of several thousand vertical feet per day, from about 6,600 feet at Lewes to as much as 17,000 feet in ten hours at Warwick gaol in summer.

The practice ended
In 1902 the British government banned the use of the treadwheel as a punishment.