Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1016168
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016168
In 1835 Preston Mill was one of seven water-mills in Prestonkirk parish-4 oatmeal and barley mills, 1 exclusively barley mill, 1 flour mill and 1 associated with a distillery. In 1854, some 73 are recorded in total for rural East Lothian, 34 of them corn mills and 14 on the River Tyne. The Preston mill complex is not as entirely typically Scottish, however, as Livingston Mill in West Lothian (NT 033668), for its polygonal kiln with conical ventilator suggests something of the Low Countries and parallels with hop-country oast-houses in south-east England. Originally, access to the kiln was restricted to the stone staircase outside. At firstfloorlevel the grain was spread about 13 cm-16 cm thick on the iron plates (formerly, perforated clay tiles) to be dried by the fire below.
The mill itself is on two levels-the upper floor housing the stones and hoppers. First the grain was cleaned, through the cockIer; then fed into the shelling stones to separate the husks, removed by the fanners below. Upstairs once again, and the kernels were ready for grinding into meal. All this machinery is powered by an undershot water wheel and wooden cog wheels and gearing, the flow of water to which is controlled by a sluice operated from within the mill. The mill is likely to be 18th century; the kiln may be somewhat earlier. The whole complex is attractively built of orange sandstone rubble and roofed in traditional east coast pantiles.
A ten minute stroll south of the mill lies Phantassie Farm, where the engineer John Rennie was born in 1761 and where a wind-powered threshing machine was introduced in 1799. The farmhouse is 18th-19th century; the long two-storey steading is mid 19th century- as is the single-storey half-square block of farm cottages. The lime kiln, however, is late 18th century and the distinctive doocot probably 16th-17th century.
Such beehive doocots (cf Corstorphine in Edinburgh, NT 200725) are normally older than rectangular doocots. All their roofs, however, usually slope from north to south to give the pigeons a surface to bask on, and the north wall often projects upwards to give shelter from the north winds. String courses around the building were not merely decorative, but helped deter rats from climbing and entering through the flight holes. Within, the walls are lined with stacked rows of stone-built nesting-boxes, human access to which at Phantassie is by way of a ladder fIxed to the cross-beam.
For these were the intensive farming techniques oflate medieval and somewhat later times, when lairds sought to provide themselves with fresh young pigeon meat, in season, at the expense of their tenants' and neighbours' crops! Phantassie had nearly 600 nestingboxes; but some of the later 18th century doocots had over 2000. They were common in many parts of eastern Scotland, and remarkably high numbers have survived-perhaps on account of the old belief that if a doocot were demolished, the wife of the proprietor would die within the year!
Information from 'Exploring Scotland's Heritage: Lothian and Borders', (1985).
