Benvie Mill And Miller's House
Cottage (19th Century), Grain Mill (19th Century)
Site Name Benvie Mill And Miller's House
Classification Cottage (19th Century), Grain Mill (19th Century)
Canmore ID 159508
Site Number NO33SW 85
NGR NO 32809 31493
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/159508
- Council Angus
- Parish Liff And Benvie (Angus)
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District City Of Dundee
- Former County Angus
NO33SW 85 32809 31493
(Location cited as NO 328 314). Benvie Mill, rebuilt 1865. A two-storey and basement building on a rectangular pattern, with a kiln at one end. The miller's house adjoiuns, as does a single-storey wooden extension. The wheel is internal.
J R Hume 1977.
2-storey and basement, rectangular-plan grain mill. rubble masonry, droved and margined dressings, piended slate roof. West elevation features; segmental-arched cart entrance to centre right, window to right, low entrance to wheel chamber to left, 2 windows above to ground floor, door to far left, window to outer left, low stone steps advanced at left angle; 4 small boarded windows to 1st floor; remains of cowl at roof ridge over kiln to right. INTERIOR: mill; wheel and all machinery intact.
Neither mill nor house is shown on the 1810 map; both appear on the first Ordnance Survey map. The date 1865 inscribed on the basement door lintel to the east gable of the house probably refers to the addition of the 1st floor. Benvie Mill forms a B group with the Road Bridge over Fowlis Burn near Benvie Mill, Benvie Church Ruin and Churchyard, and Benvie Farmhouse. The mill is A listed for the survival of its machinery. (Historic Environment Scotland List Entry)
Publication Account (2013)
A 19th Century corn mill that is an enigma. There is no immediate sign of the water that powered it, because it arrived in a tunnel just below the
road surface, and was then carried away in a long culverted tailrace, beautifully constructed of tight jointed ashlar. The mill contains a breastshot cast iron wheel with timber spokes and buckets, grain cleaning machinery and two pairs of grinding stones, elevator and White’s weighing scales. This is complimented by a kiln at one end with revolving vane (wire mesh floor) and adjoining that the miller’s house, 1865, sympathetically extended to the rear, where was the pigsty. Still a private house
with mill attached. The lade was also used to power the threshing
mill in the nearby Benvie farm in Angus. That all-timber wheel is set deep into a wheelpit below the threshing mill. Other mills in that watershed
have lost their machinery long ago and some are now converted to houses, like Fowlis Mill. Further upstream the same water course was used to generate electricity for Balruddery House by a Boving Turbine, 1926.
M Watson, 2013
