Młyny wodne w krajobrazie Pojezierza Chełmińskiego

Watermills were established in places where three types of landscape could be found: the cultural landscape (connected with cultivation or urbanisation), the natural landscape (forest or marshy meadow) and where the original landscape had been preserved (forest). The shaping of the landscape under the influence of the action of watermills most often involved its modification through the introduction of anthropogenic components - they did not disturb its natural rhythm. The location of watermills outside existing settlement centres meant the initiation of the process of anthropogenisation of the landscape. In such cases, a cultural landscape of mill settlements was formed in the area of the original landscape. It was formed both within settlements situated in river valleys and outside them. In the initial phase the extent of these anthropogenic geocomplexes was demarcated by a linear border, in accordance with the assumptions of the localisation of the settlement. Later, when their spatial development took place, it was replaced by a border zone with a complex structure. Its significant feature was an instable balance between the fairly stable system of the natural geocomplex and the unstabilised anthropogenic system.