Forestry Memories

Bobbin Mill at Inver, Deeside

Bobbin Mill at Inver, Deeside

Date Added: 25 November 2019 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1910 Picture No: 4574

The image is courtesy of Alastair Cassie, Ballater, and shows a bobbin mill complex at Inchmarlow, Inver around the early 1900s. Alastair does remember the chimney stack.

There is a stream running close by and it would be surprising if this was not used to power a water wheel and one could be to the right of the white building. Perhaps the steam was more reliable and had more power. Note that the two horses appear to be hitched to carts whether to transport timber from the forest or bobbins to Aberdeen.

Any more details and images of this mill would be very welcome.

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Groups: Northeast Scotland , Sawmills, pulp mills, chipboard mills

4 Comments

Aye Norman, further to your comment "Perhaps the steam was more reliable and had more power." Mills (timber and flax) in Dura Den, east of Cupar adopted steam power, not only for it's power, but in the main for when water levels were low and unable to power the large wheels required to drive the mill. Therebye, keeping production going. Coal was an expense, so the steam engines were usually fired only during the droughty times of the year. I would agree with your assumption of there being a wheel, to the right of the mill, over the lade and the steam engine house and chimney being on the other side of the underground lade.

Another observation about this wheel is that it appears to be an under-shot, rather than an over-shot wheel and these are less efficient and less powerfull than the latter type.

I have also looked at the online copy (National Library of Scotland website) of the Ordnance Survey, Six Inch, 1888 - 1913 map series and whilst I cannot see a bobbin mill at Inchmarlo, I can see one mapped at Bridge of Canny, just upstream of the bridge over the Burn of Canny, opposite the school. It appears that the photograph would have been taken from the south east of the mill on the approach road. The map (Surveyed 1899, Published 1901) is also drawn to show that the lade passes under the mill between the mill and the engine house. NGR NO653972 or 365298, 797239. 57 degrees 03' 54"N and 2 degrees 34' 26"W.

If I have this correct, the building in the left of the image is the end of the steading at Delavaird (now demolished and the cottages to the right of the engine house would be at Bogarn; they too have been demolished and a new house built on the site.

New houses now also occupy the mill site.

Bill Comment left on 25 November 2019 at 17:10 by Bill Rayner
I did some research into this bobbin mill a few years ago. At the time I understood this image to be of the Mills of Inchmarlo, so I'm very interested to read the suggestion that it may have been an image of the Bridge of Canny Bobbin Mill. See https://online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/smrpub/master/detail.aspx?refno=NO69NE0115 for some of the information I gathered about the Mills of Inchmarlo.

There is some more information available about the Bridge of Canny Bobbin Mill at: https://online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/smrpub/master/detail.aspx?refno=NO69NE0052

Unfortunately (despite my best efforts) the full reports I wrote about each bobbin mill aren't available online, but my book Bobbin Mills in the North of Scotland is available from Amazon, if you are interested.

Joanna Comment left on 09 December 2019 at 20:37 by Joanna Gilliatt
The image is definitely the bobbin mill upstream of the Bridge of Canny. I lived at Trustach Cottage (now demolished) and passed over the Bridge of Canny on my way to Inchmarlo School in the 1950's. We knew the burn as the Beltie Burn, and in its lower reaches was called the the Canny, hence the Aberdeen Water Works being called Invercannie (sic). The spit of land bounded by the Canny and the Bogloch Burn, where the mill stood was in Aberdeenshire, surrounded by Kincardineshire, so children from the mill area attended Inchmarlo, a Kincardineshire primary school, but for secondary education had to attend Aboyne school rather than Banchory Academy, as I did. Comment left on 28 November 2021 at 11:04 by Sandy Craib
Aye Sandy, thank you for your confirmation of my suspicions that the image is of the Bridge of Canny Bobbin Mill.

The intricacies of local authority boundaries can be mind boggling and your schooling tale is just mind numbing. Even worse if you tried to obtain a tertiary education grant from the local authority!

Good health, Bill Comment left on 28 November 2021 at 21:33 by Bill Rayner
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