Publication Account
Date 1997
Event ID 1017029
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017029
The burn runs only a short distance from a small loch to the sea, but it falls steeply in its lower reaches, creating ideal conditions for small mills, and the loch itself has an excellent feeder burn that falls from a height of some 200m OD in the hills to the south-east. There are three mills in the steeply cut lower reaches of the burn, the last of which went out of regular use during World War II but was kept in good order until recently.
Each mill is arranged identically on the burn: the mill itself is built astride the direct route of the water-course, with a wide meander round it on the west side into which the water could be diverted, when the mill was idle, by means of sluice-gates. The timber gates are missing but their vertical slots are visible. Each rectangular building is about 5.5m by 3m, with an entrance only 0.6m wide in the east gable, and the roof surviving on the lowest mill consists of heather thatch over turf and branches carried on a wooden frame. The little window over the door of this mill is very unusual and likely to have been a late modification. This last mill still has its millstones, and all three have remains of their horizontal wooden water-wheels, that in the uppermost mill retaining six of its original nine blades or feathers. The la des are beautifully constructed with stone linings, feeding the water into wooden chutes which direct it on to the inclined feathers of the wheels.
It is worth following the burn up to the Loch of Huxter to see the well-constructed stone dam and oncrere sluice-gate setting, the stones for the dam almost certainly robbed from the adjacent broch. The latter has a recent sheep stell built on top of it, but the outer base of the broch wall is visible on the loch side, the broch entrance with a lintel still in position is incorporated into the stell, and, on the south side, the sheep are clearly using the broch entrance passage and the entrance into a guard cell as a means of getting in and out of the stel!. To the south of the loch are two burnt mounds which, unusually, have been given names: Little Brownie's Knowe (HU 173566) and Muckle (Big) Brownie's Knowe (HU 171563). There is a magnificent view to the north of the island of Papa Stour, on which an important late Norse settlement has been discovered and partially excavated at Da Biggings.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Shetland’, (1997).
