Moulin de la Chaussée, Historical watermill in Saint-Maurice, France

Moulin de la Chaussée is a former watermill in Saint-Maurice, its pale beige stone facade rising straight from the Gravelle branch of the Marne. The building has four square floors in bays, with a timber-framed four-storey panel under a pointed roof added against the west wall during the late-20th-century restoration. An arched stone base straddles the water, sheltering a large dark wooden waterwheel with horizontal slats and a vertical shaft.

The mill was built around 1650 and operated continuously for centuries as a vital facility for grain processing in the Val-de-Marne region. Its long operational history demonstrates how essential water-powered mills were to the local agricultural economy.

The name comes from the paved causeway that linked the Saint-Mandé path, today avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, to the parish church. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries it was called Moulin de la Charité after the Brothers of Charity, who bought it in 1768. It was also known as Moulin François, after the miller family that ran it until 1972.

The mill stands on the Gravelle arm of the Marne, between the Quai de la République and the autoroute de l'Est, about 100 metres upstream of the point where that arm passes under the motorway. The preserved waterwheel no longer turns, and the building is not open as a museum; it is best seen from the public banks and paths along the water. The regional council has been seeking to sell or lease it since late 2024, so access inside may change.

The preserved paddle wheel no longer turns. In 1898 the hanging wheel was replaced by a fixed paddle wheel coupled to a steam engine that drove three grinding devices through a converter mechanism. The timber-framed four-storey panel on the west wall dates from the late-20th-century restoration, not from the mill's working life.