Mulling over the mills

made to harness Glasgow's rivers

IN areas like Strathclyde, rivers, constantly replenished by rain, are an obvious source of energy and our ancestors made full use of them. Grinding corn by hand for bread-making must be one of the most tedious jobs ever invented. Then someone had the bright idea of harnessing the energy of a river to a wheel coupled to a grindstone and took the backache out of grinding corn.

Two hundred years ago the bulk of Europe's flour was produced between hefty grindstones turned by water-driven wheels. It was low-grade technology but it worked well and provided about one hundred million people with flour. Even the small mill on the Allander at Milngavie, known as Gavin's Mill, was sending flour to Cornwall. The water-driven Newmills Grain Mill on the River Leith supplied the West Indies with barley meal for feeding slaves.

Massive handbuilt water wheels empowered much else. The slitting and grinding mill at Pointhouse, erected in 1734 by the Smithfield Iron Company, had eight water wheels. These turned the rollers of a slitting mill and operated a pair of shears for slitting and clipping bars of iron into suitable lengths for making horseshoes and nails. Sawmills, waulk mills, cotton mills, and paper mills obtained their energy from the river. There was even a ``shammy'' (chamois leather) mill on the banks of the White Cart near the Shaw Bridge, built in 1735 to the specifications of the Tassie family, Protestant refugees from Italy.

The wheels and machinery of those early grain mills were made from wood by highly skilled craftsmen. The act of milling involved balancing the power produced by the water wheel against the resistance to motion offered by the internal machinery and the great runner stone.

An arrangement of simple levers and ropes enabled the miller to control the water driving the wheel and the amount of grain entering the millstones. During the milling he adjusted the gap between the stones by raising or lowering the ``runner'' stone.

Failure to get the adjustments right either brought the whole operation to a ``grinding halt'' or damaged the stones. No precise system of measuring the gap was employed. Instead a sample of the meal emerging from the stones was tested by the miller using that oldest of man's measurements, ``the rule of thumb''. He assessed the quality of the meal by rubbing it between his thumb and fingers. An experienced miller developed a broad, polished thumb.

The law of Scotland in the year 1248 enacted that no-one was to grind corn by hand except in an emergency. The miller was entitled to keep back his ``toll'', about one-sixth of volume of grain, or peas or berries. The farmers of an estate were ``thirled'' to the mill until the Act was cancelled in 1799. Today we are all ``thirled'' to the electricity companies: we may not generate our own electricity.

Glasgow's first mill belonged to the Church and was situated on the now banished Molendinar Burn quite close to the cathedral. The name means ``The Mill on the Hill''. The burn, once a trout steam, is today a sewer. In the twelfth century the church abandoned it in favour of advantages offered by the natural waterfall on the faster flowing Kelvin at Yorkhill. The falls have a 10ft drop and the Incorporation of Glasgow Baxters, who operated a mill higher upstream, later calculated the work value of the flow at 60hp.

The Baxters owned an orchard in Partick by the Kelvin in which grew a magnificent pear tree. Once a year when the fruit was ripe a little ceremony was held, ``the shaking of the pear tree''. Would-be purchasers assembled in the orchard and the crop was sold to the highest bidder. He was not allowed to climb the tree to harvest his crop. Instead a cloth was stretched out tightly round and under it and the fruit was shaken off.

A later Baxters mill was rebuilt several times and in 1903 became the property of the Scottish Co-op, producing ``Lofty Peak'' flour until the 1970s. The site is now the Kelvin Hall car-park.

It wasn't until the 1800s that steam power started to overtake water as a main source of energy. The lower reaches of the Kelvin were too flat for the overshot wheel. From 1850 onwards the surviving mills at Partick were using turbines and electricity. The Scotstoun Mill, which belongs to RHM Foods, is still grinding flour, about 700 tons a week, which is sent to the company's Duke Street Bakery. A nineteenth-century mill building stands on the site of the oldest mill. It is now called the ``Bishop's Mill Court'' and has been converted into 20 flats. The original stone wheatsheaves still crown the gable ends.

However, at Milngavie, where the Allander drops sharply down the hillside, the miller was able to take advantage of the new-style water wheel. He reconstructed the dam and lade and installed an overshot wheel. The original wheel, which dipped into the Allander, was on the other side of the building. The mill was worked until around 1945. The lade was demolished when the town expanded, but the wheel is still there.

At Baldernock a small sawmill is still empowered by the work energy it receives from one of the many little burns that tumble down the Campsies. The mill building dates from the sixteenth century when it was a grain mill and included a kiln where the grain was dried before milling. The mill dam is 250 yards upstream. The lade runs from the weir below the dam to the mill and a ``heck'' prevents debris from blocking the tunnel under the road. The mill owner and a group of enthusiasts are making heroic efforts to carry out urgent repairs both to the lade and the machinery.

Eileen Goodchild is Historian to the Friends of the River Kelvin.