Archaeology Notes

Event ID 689475

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/689475

NO50SW 70.01 53308 01833

Windmill [NR]

OS 1:10,000 map, 1994.

Formerly entered as NO50SW 48.

For associated salt pans and workings (on shore to SE, centred NO 5334 0180), see NO50SW 70.00.

Reference:

Cuttings

'Fife Leader': "Windmill set to attract tourists" - article and photographs

20 September 1993

'The Scotsman': photographs and caption

27 September 1993

(Undated) information in NMRS.

(Location cited as NO 534 019). Windmill tower, 18th century. Slightly tapered circular-section rubble tower of a windmill, originally used to pump sea water to salt pans.

J R Hume 1976.

On the raised beach at East Braes is the stump of a windmill, known locally as Windmill Tower. The structure, roughly 9m high and 4.5m in diameter on walls 1m thick, is built of rubble and sandstone. It has two doors in each of the E and W arcs. The wooden superstructure has been removed and the mill is open to the weather. In the base of the tower at ground level is an opening (1m square) which probably allowed axles and gearing to be led from the mill down to the rocks below where the salt pans (NO50SW 70) were situated. The mill dates from the late 18th century and according to the OSA (1793), was erected to pump water into the nearby salt pans.

I L Donnchie and N K Stewart 1967; G Douglas, M Oglethorpe and J R Hume 1984.

Excavation within the windmill tower uncovered a rectangular stone-lined pit housing a narrow timber beam set on sandstone flags. Iron staining on the flags probably indicated the position of the tower's vertical shaft.

Trial trenching to the S of the tower revealed part of another stone-lined pit on the slope of the raised beach and a similarly aligned rock-cut channel at the base of the incline. Although the mechanism is not fully understood, these channels are thought to have linked the tower to a pump that raised seawater from a tidal reservoir into the nine panhouses situated close to the sea shore. (See NO50SW 70 for salt pans.)

It is hoped that further excavation will fully expose these features and help in their interpretation.

Sponsors: East Neuk of Fife Preservation Society, Fife Regional Council.

J Lewis 1990b.

This windmill was used to pump up seawater into the saltpans NO50SW 70.00. It thus forms part of an early intergrated development which has not been obliterated by later works. Public information boards have been put in place.

P Martin 1992.

Scheduled (with NO50SW 70.01) as 'St Monans windmill and saltpans, 350m E of 45 MillerTerrace... the remains of a saltworks of 18th-century date, surviving as a complex of upstanding walls, earthworks and rock-cut features at 0-10m above sea level. The monument lies on gently sloping land extending onto the foreshore, 350m from the village of St Monans.'

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 22 July 2011.