Flour Mill Lane
PLAQUE009
DescriptionThis commemorates the site of the Royal Burgh of Aberdeen’s Upper Mill. The mill, fed by the mill burn, stood nearby from the thirteenth century until 1865. The mill not only provided wheat rye and malt for the burgh but also revenue through the lease.HistoryThe mill referred to here is in fact one of the four of the oldest known historical mills of the burgh. These four are the two justice mills, this one - known as the upper mill - and the nether mill (dating from fifteenth century, in the Green). One of the earliest entries in the first volume of the council registers deals with the fact that in 1394 the town’s mills were let at £20 Scots. The origins of this mill probably stretch further back. It may well have been a meal mill in its earlier days.
Mills and milling developed in Scotland along the pattern of first primitive rubbing stones of the prehistoric ages followed by the quern of which many fine examples have been found in Aberdeen. Querns were used until the nineteenth century.
However the mill here from at least the fourteenth century, was a water powered mill. In all likelihood it was a simple horizontal water mill, rather than having a vertical wheel. Horizontal mills worked best in a certain type of topography: small steeply falling watercourses
The next stage of development was the vertical water wheel which although an advance was still simple as they only shelled the oats and then ground the shelling (i.e. the oats after removal of the husk). These machines generally used oats that had been dried or roasted by the by the farmer in his own kiln. There were drysters in medieval Aberdeen who undertook this role. Barley for ale also had to be dried after it was steeped and malted. Thus the mill was not just one process but a series of processes involving different craftsmen and a large industrial area. Archaeological excavations in the area have confirmed the extent of the industrial site here in the medieval period.
This mill was powered by a mill lade which was a diversion of the Loch and was probably the principle or only burgh mill until the sixteenth century when we know that the Nether Mill existed. Of the water powered mills in 1621 the council projected two new tidal mills to be built near the Quay, the Register of the Great Seal shows that these mills survived for some time but they did not last in the long term and little is known about them.
For much of its life what we call the flour mill was probably not just concerned with wheat. It was only really in the eighteenth century that wheat and flour production took off in Scotland and any conversion to a flour mill probably dates form this time. Although Parson Gordon certainly refers to wheat being grown in 1661, and to this mill as the ‘flower mill’.
The mill continued to function until 1865.
Location InfoFlour MIll Lane
NotesImage Attribution: watty62, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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