Luing, Black Mill Bay

NM 73433 08560

Little remains of the corn mill, two buildings and an enclosure that stood at the shore on Black Mill Bay where the modern road crosses the deeply cut drain known as the Dig Mhòr. The ‘Croft and Mill of Blackmill Bay’ is mentioned in 1766 (Braithwaite 2021, 142) but all three of buildings had fallen out of use before the survey for the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map in the 1870s.

The mill (NM 73424 08594) may be represented by a fragment of walling aligned from WNW to ENE that is exposed in the S side of the drain about 12m W of the road and a second parallel fragment of walling about 9m to the S which measures 5.4m in length and 0.8m in thickness. They correspond with the position of a small unroofed building on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Argyllshire, sheet cxxix, 1880), and with the location of a gabled ruin shown in an early 20th century historic photograph (Valentine Series 42773*). Part of a millstone with a radius of only 67cm, a thickness of 9cm and an eye 12cm in diameter, is located immediately N of the drain. A curving ditch about 70m to the E of the mill and to the N of the Dig Mhor (at NM 73511 08632) may represent part of the lade or pond that supplied the mill.

Traces of an enclosure at NM 73419 08556, 35m to the S of the drain and W of the road, appear to correspond with that shown on an estate map of 1847 (NRS, RHP571) but nothing could be identified of the two buildings shown on the same map. The larger of the two lay between the enclosure and the site of the mill (NM 7343 0858) while the second occupied a position to the E of the modern road (NM 7344 0856).

Visited by HES Archaeological Survey (George Geddes and Darroch Bratt) 29 March 2022

*This view is listed in vol.6 (1902-5) of the Valentine View Registers held by the University of St Andrews Special Collections.