ROBERT Ferguson's father was a miller and his grandfather was a miller. The Fergusons who worked the Dalgarven Mill on the outskirts of Kilwinning ground grain there for over 130 years. Before that, the Ferguson family can be traced for another hundred years at other Ayrshire mills. Milling is in the family blood.

Robert though, a still very sprightly 79-year-old, is an architect to trade. But the pull of the family mill has never let him go, and today he is still the driving force ensuring that the mill, with its weathered water wheel still attached and still churning in the Garnock River, allows us to see what the rapidly disappearing country life in Ayrshire was like over the last three centuries.

It's a project that many people - let's admit it, many sane people - would have walked away from years ago. As Robert himself says: "When someone asks, 'Can you describe what you've done here?' you have to admit that in some ways it is a work of madness."

For after his late father John, the last working miller at Dalgarven, on the road from Kilwinning to Dalry, died, the mill fell into disrepair, its ownership split amongst disparate family members unable to agree on its future. After lying empty for 13 years, and now a listed building, the mill could have become a family home, but the conditions attached to it being listed proved too troublesome for the wholesale changes required to make it a house.

Then Robert, perhaps imbued with the memories of the noisy clatter of the mill when it was in operation, or of the summer days of fishing in the Garnock, had the idea it would make a natural museum and began a journey of over 30 years, which he is still navigating, keeping the mill open, and telling the story of Ayrshire life.

As Robert himself says: "What is remarkable is the the mill is here at all. At the turn of the last century there were more than a hundred grain or flour mills in Ayrshire, and now this is the only one left."

The history of a mill on this site can be traced back to the monks of Kilwinning Abbey some 800 years ago. The current mill was rebuilt after a fire in 1869. It was probably working at its peak during World War Two when it was requisitioned by the Government and shipments were brought in at all hours of the day and night, mainly to be turned into cattle feed.

Even in the middle of the night, locals would be called out of their homes to help unload the lorries.

But after it fell into disrepair, and Robert had his inspiration for a museum in the early eighties, it was not a simple task. As a private owner and not a public body, funds were difficult to access. Robert had to finance a lot of the early work to make the building watertight. Fortunately his background as an architect helped enormously.

Post-graduate students also came to help, but it was too mammoth a task it seemed, until someone suggested the Manpower Services Commission. It doesn't exist today, but the commission approved schemes which helped employ long-term unemployed and vulnerable groups of workers. They sent much-needed workers, many of them skilled, to help.

Now apart from, what seems to a simple layman like me, quite complex machinery - the grain has to come down to be ground initially for the husks to be removed, taken back up and then put through a second grinding to make flour or whatever - a mill is a large empty building, so Robert's plan was to portray rural life in the various rooms.

And where could he find the exhibits? Now this really was genius. The mill's records showed the 132 farmers which had used the services of the mill. Robert and his helpers went round the farms and asked if they had any pieces of farm machinery or domestic material from the past they no longer needed.

Farmers, it seems, don't like to throw things out. Many would send Robert to a barn or attic to help himself. So now the mill is set with rooms showing how people lived in the past.

"One farmer was about to chop up a Victorian bed for kindling. He said I could have it if I came up with some kindling so we went and bought the kindling and got the bed," says Robert.

So the rooms are full of items that bring memories of grannies' homes rushing back to the senses. Over there is a yellow three-tier metal cake tin with a green lid - were they compulsory in every house at one time?

"We had a family of sisters in one day who were arguing about which of the three layers their mother kept the rock cakes in," he tells me.

Other items are not so obvious. There is a large metal circle like a giant hockey puck. I've no idea. "It's for pressing tongue," says Robert. "You cook the tongue one day then press it overnight."

Another room is devoted to costumes, with many intricate Victorian dresses. "Word got around about our collecting. There was a knock at the door one day and a woman came out with the memorable line, 'This is a bag of my granny's knickers'."

So Dalgarven Mill and Museum of Country Life and Costume, with a cosy tea room, is open all the year round. Canny pensioners can get the X34 and X36 buses for free from Glasgow.

The water wheel will be next to be replaced. The cycle of being in the water and out of the water, is a harsh life for the wood, and they need replaced every 10 years or so. They are made of elm, which is a difficult wood to source following Dutch Elm Disease. The last lot came from Windsor Great Park. A new batch has been found locally.

Now Robert's plan is to grind flour again. So far this seems impossible as the mill would then be regarded as a food supplier with a whole raft of new regulations. But I'm sure Robert will get there eventually. This is one miller's tale which will have many more chapters as it preserves a disappearing rural world.