Mill of Glenbuchat
Date 25 June 1993
Event ID 893497
Category Management
Type Site Management
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/893497
Compact, single storey and attic, 3-bay, rectangular-plan, meal mill with early (18th century) example of small rectangular-plan attached kiln on higher ground to E, and remains of metal wheel of circa 1900 at W gable, on ground falling sharply to W, forming small group with barn and 19th century house. Random and coursed, snecked rubble with ashlar wheel gable at W.
Still part of the North Glenbuchat Estate, this rare small mill group, incorporating an early example of an integral kiln, was worked by both the father and grandfather of the current (2006) tenant. Gauldie notes that an ´innovation at end of the eighteenth century was the greatly improved kiln situated within the mill. Oats had always required careful drying to make it milleable. Jones (Water Powered Corn Mills) uses the existence of a kiln as one of the features distinguishing the 'upland´ mills, where oats were ground, from 'lowland´ wheat grinding mills´ (p157).
At one time there were three meal mills and 2 waulkmills in the glen, but by about 1900 there was just this one meal mill, which closed in 1927. John Hume includes the following description of the mill wheel and kiln ´a 6-spoke wood and iron start and awe wheel, 28 inches wide by 12 feet diameter which drove a single pair of stones. The kiln funnel is wooden, lined with clay´. (Historic Environment Scotland List Entry)
