Broadford Works: Sewing Mill
Date 30 July 2008
Event ID 910015
Category Management
Type Site Management
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/910015
Five storey sewing mill, 3 by 12 bays, oculi to gables. Bricked arched floors on iron columns. Steel roof trusses to pitched slate roof. Part of large group of textile manufacturing and storage buildings, granite and brick-clad, of iron-framed or reinforced concrete construction, with setted streets between them. Slate or flat roofs.
The oldest iron-framed mill in Scotland and the fourth oldest known to survive in the world (after others of 1796, 1804 and 1805, all inter- related).
The adjoining South Mill may be the third iron framed building in Scotland.
Built for Scott Brown and Co (of Angus), 1808, bankrupt 1811 and sold to Sir John Maberly MP, entrepreneur, speculator and introducer of jute to the UK. Maberley rapidly developed Broadford Works, adopting the first gas lighting of an industrial complex in Scotland, by Boulton and Watt in 1814-15, and Scotland's second power loom linen weaving factory in Scotland in 1824. Maberly was himself bankrupt and in 1834 the works passed to Richards and Co, who had a bleachworks at Rubislaw and branches at Montrose, produced canvas tarpaulins and as a particular specialism, fire hoses. Latterly man- made fibres for carpet yarn etc has replaced flax. Employment peaked at 3,000, once the largest single employer in Aberdeen. (Historic Scotland).
