Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017355
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017355
This range of buildings has been described as 'a classic example of the Galloway country mill'. Indeed, it may be regarded as representative of the numberless water powered grain mills that have done service throughout
Scotland since about 1750, although every mill, like every miller and almost every owner, had its own particular way of getting the work done.
A mill probably stood on or near this site in the Middle Ages serving the nearby Cistercian monastery (no. 71), hence the name 'Monksmill' by which it is stIll known. The existing building, however, dates only from the late 18th century, and was erected by the Stewart family ofShambellie (no. 22), heirs to part of the medieval monastic estate. It was altered and heightened to three storeys during the 19th century, and continued in commercial use until the Second World War. Afterwards maintained as a precious relic by Mr Charles Stewart of Shambellie, it has more recently been restored with painstaking care by Scottish Development Department. The present condition of the building and its intricate mechanism reflects great credit on the prescient efforts of both these parties.
The restored water-wheel, which is affixed to the rear side-wall, is of a high breastshot or pitchback type, that is, the water drops on to its wooden buckets at a point. Just short of the wheel's vertical centre line, causing it to turn against the natural flow. The volume of water striking the wheel, and hence its speed, can be regulated by a trap-door in the wooden trough which carries the water to the wheel.
Inside, following usual Scottish practice, the mill is 'underdrift', that is, the pairs of grinding stones (in this case, three) are on an upper floor and driven from below; windmills for instance, are usually 'overdrift' because the power comes from above. The drive mechanisms in this mill are thus on the ground floor directly behind the water-wheel; they are contained within the timber-framed cupboard which confronts the visitor on entering the mill. The main purpose of the gearing is to transmit and convert the power from the slow-speed, large-radius and vertically-set turning motion of the water-wheel outside into a series of high-speed, small-radius and horizontally rotating millstones within. It does this through a system of shafts and gear wheels of different sizes and mesh, some bevelled, some straight-edged, and one with wooden teeth. The small gears (the stone nuts) on the fmal drive to the stones can be raised and disengaged when not required.
On the first floor, the three pairs of millstones are cased in wooden vats, so only the top of the upper stone of each pair (the mobile or runner stone) can be seen; the lower stone (the bedstone) remains static. One set of emery-faced composition stones operated independently to produce animal provender. The other sets of stones were used in succession to obtain oatmeal: the shelling stones separated the husks and the kernels; the finishing stones ground the shelled grain (groats) into fmished meal of different grades. These operations required better quality stones like those lying outside the mill, which have sandstone centres and banded segments of quartz. The wooden hoppers mounted above the stones were fed with dried grain from the loft above.
The grain was dried in the adjacent kiln, laid on a perforated iron-tiled floor above a blick-built furnace. The kiln was fired in a hearth on the ground floor where a passage-vault, possibly to assist internal ventilation, runs around the outside of the flared furnace-stack. The ventilator cowl on the roof-ridge-a tell-tale indicator of a kiln-is here topped with a weather-vane in the shape of a salmon. Unusually, the kiln and the miller's house have been built as one unit.
These primary processes were supported by a number of ancillary operations: on the ground floor, a winnowing machine and fan (for sieving the husks and blowing them through to the kiln for fuel) and an oats bruiser for animal feed), no longer extant, were driven from the pit-wheel; on the fIrst floor, a shaking sieve (for refmed sifting of meal) was belt-driven from an extended millstone drive-shaft; and in the loft, a pulley-operated sack-hoist was driven from an extension of the main upright shaft.
Finally, and most crucially, water to power the mill was conducted from the northern end of Loch Kindar (NX 964648) on a 1km-long lade to the pond which lies just to the south-west of the mill. This too has been restored to working order, placid and complete with its sluice-mechanism, its overflow channel-and its ducks!
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Dumfries and Galloway’, (1986).
