Newtonmill, West Mill
Watermill (Period Unassigned)
Site Name Newtonmill, West Mill
Classification Watermill (Period Unassigned)
Canmore ID 222445
Site Number NO66SW 23.02
NGR NO 60538 64312
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/222445
- Council Angus
- Parish Stracathro
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District Angus
- Former County Angus
NO66SW 23.02 60538 64312
(Location cited as NO 604 642). Newtonmill, 18th century. A two-storey rubble building on a rectangular plan. The mill is now gutted and used as a store, but a superb wooden pit wheel, 7ft 4ins (2,23m) diameter, with 60n face teeth mounted on its 1ft 3ins (0.38m) square axle, survives. The axle extends through the wall to form the axle of a low-breast wheel, the vrest of which has decayed.
J R Hume 1977.
Publication Account (2013)
A hamlet of four mills is coursed through by a mill lade taken from the Cruik water one mile away. Mill 1 is missing, but was a flax (i.e. lint scutching) mill in 1794, and mill 2 is converted to a house, retaining the porthole for the timber axle of water wheel. The wheels to do not survive, as they were probably wooden, but appear to have been low breast or undershot. West Mill, c.1780, retains a large internal toothed wooden gear wheel. This closely resembles illustrations of late 18th century scutching mills. The internal wheel was used to drive the ground floor breaking rollers and first floor scutching box. At East Mill a turbine added in place of a wheel to the gable of a mill, within a timber surge chamber, seems to have been used to generate electricity for Keithock House. The three bay two-storey mill is likely also to have once been a scutch mill, or possibly a woollen waulk mill.
M Watson, 2013
