Huxter, Norse Mill

These buildings form a chain of three mills on the burn that empties from the Loch of Huxter into the Sound of Papa. The mills are grouped within a short distance of about 75m, with the site of a fourth mill, now demolished, a similar distance upstream [HU15NE 19]. They are served by short stone-lined lades, cutting off meanders in the burn, and there is a fall of some 8.2m between the floor levels of the top and bottom mill. All the buildings are aligned across the lade with the water-courses running transversely beneath the side-walls.

The two upper structures survive as masonry shells, but the lowest building retains its heather-and straw-thatched gabled roof. It is oblong on plan, averaging 18 ft (5.49m) in length by 9 ft 6 in (2.90m) transversely over walls 2 ft (0.61m) thick; the entrance is in the E gable-wall. It still has the wooden chute, or pentrough, for directing the water onto the tirl in a clockwise direction. The tirl is of concrete, but an original specimen survives in one of the other mills. This consists of a wooden, elongated barrel-shaped hub (nave) with nine flat paddles. The lower mill also retains a pair of millstones, the bedstone (understone) being 2 ft 9 1/2 in (0.85m) in diameter and 5 1/8 in (130mm) thick, the runner stone (upperstone) slightly less in each dimension. Until a few years ago it was complete with a square wooden hopper. The drawing is intended to be a general representation of a horizontal mill, based on the Huxter examples and documentary sources.

Information from RCAHMS ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’, (1986). Visited 1980.