Thanks Al - I had a look in CANMORE and it's down as 'Post-Medieval' but I am pretty sure there must have been early medieval tide mills too. Perhaps they just don't leave very much trace. https://canmore.org.uk/site/94931/munlochy-jetty
"The distribution of the horizontal mill in Scotland covers the Northern Isles, Caithness and Sutherland, the Hebrides, Mull, the Kintyre peninsula and also Galloway, to judge by the find of a scoop-shaped paddle there. They also appear in the Isle of Man, and in Ireland, as already mentioned. They are indeed a worldwide phenomenon, except in very flat areas where there is no run of water to drive them."
(Fenton & Veitch (eds.): Scottish Life and Society: Farming and the
Thanks Linda, I did think about that - and in fact the proposed location for the horizontal mill at Kinloss is a place called Scotsburn, which is pretty flat and I think it can't be right. But Moray as a whole isn't *that* flat - the Laich is, but the land starts to rise only a few miles inland. Plus some horizontal mills were tide-mills not stream mills - in fact I suspect this may be the case here. Pont's map of 1590 shows mills *everywhere* and they can't all have been vertical mills. I don't have access to Fenton & Veitch but I think they may be talking about later medieval and/or early modern mills?
IIRC, it was a general discussion of horizontal mills. And, Fenton (in his 'The Northern Isles') thought that those in Shetland were later than medieval, but our resident expert, museum curator Ian Tait, disagrees, pointing out that much of the terminology associated with the mechanism derives from Old Norse, as do numerous place names involving 'kvern'. (Tait's 'Shetland vernacular buildings', p.396)
Ok, wow, after all those years of being an enthusiast of all things Pict you are now giving lectures to Pictish societies? Talk about leveling up, Fiona, nice job!
Thanks Rebecca - I'm trying to be cool about it but in reality I'm experiencing severe impostor syndrome! Three of the other presenters were were giving papers (and indeed organising) the conference I went to last year as a complete noob, and I can't quite believe I'm in the same line-up as them for this lecture series!
Well, just remember, they started from exactly where you are now - with a first lecture - to get to where they are now. Possibly even without quite as many years as a Pict enthusiast, lol. And you're a SCHOLAR now!!! Anyway, please let us know how it goes, I can't wait to hear and this is pretty much the only place to do that now...
Nice one Fiona! The double-disc/Z symbol occurs in good grain-growing spots and some of these symbols may co-locate with a mill - they certainly do in modern terms, but hard to know if that was the case going back to Pictish times too. But it also suggests that the mill for Portmahomack wasn't at the monastery itself, but at Hilton of Cadboll. The land above it has been sectioned with irrigation channels today, but there is still a hint that a line of water comes down to the southern part of the sunken crescent on which the chapel stood. A pond above would have provided an excellent head of water to fall down the fairly steep side of the raised beach there, providing an excellent spot for a mill. And I've always wondered why the Picts had a 'chapel' on such a boggy place low down, now I know, with a mill race it probably wasn't as boggy then after all - so thanks!
And you might like to check out our posts about Congash on the Spey, another very low odd spot, where you can actually see a stream falling out of the steep glen behind it and running past the enclosure - and with a rare double-disc/Z symbol (for this region) there too. I'm pretty sure the Picts did have mills, we may just not be looking in the right places.
Thanks Helen - I remember that discussion about Congash, and it's definitely an interesting site. Hopefully it will get the Northern Picts treatment one day! I too am finding it hard to believe there were really no mills. It can't be because they didn't know about them, and it surely can't be that the engineering skills weren't available. So I think they either haven't been found or there was some special circumstance (a diet of mainly meat?) that meant there was no need for them.
I think there is plenty of evidence for eating loads of grain. And there's loads of quern stones and grain to show that. I think it's more like the situation in north britain and wales, where the problem is more about storing it and then distributing it around the country, because in Scotland the grain harvest would always have been patchy and people needed to redistribute in many years. Also I remember PMHM also had a massive grain drying barn. So they're storing and drying probably ready for re-distribution I'd suspect. And the first thing we hear from the Roman commentators is about 'Horris' which means the people in Angus were already storing and redistributing grain. I think the more interesting question is how this storage and redistribution were being socially organised and by whom.
That's a good point about Portmahomack (and Adomnán also mentions a kiln on Iona) and Adrián Maldonado has pointed out on FB that there are grain storage pits across Eastern Scotland - and the NMS has one lone paddle from a horizontal mill in Dumfries & Galloway. Social organisation of storage and redistribution is definitely an interesting question but for my purposes I need to establish what kind of community was in the area before being able to tackle questions like that. Hence the micro-focus on one reference to a mill!
Hi Alastair, maybe it is. I'd like to think that our late-first-millennium Moravians moved with the times, and I'm still clinging to the idea that if there was a bridge at Kinloss in 966, then the engineering skills were there to have mills as well. But the absence of evidence is pretty overwhelming.
There are traces of, an references to, a very old tidal mill in Munlochy, down at the waters edge below Bayhead Farm.
Thanks Al - I had a look in CANMORE and it's down as 'Post-Medieval' but I am pretty sure there must have been early medieval tide mills too. Perhaps they just don't leave very much trace. https://canmore.org.uk/site/94931/munlochy-jetty
Was Moray just too flat?
"The distribution of the horizontal mill in Scotland covers the Northern Isles, Caithness and Sutherland, the Hebrides, Mull, the Kintyre peninsula and also Galloway, to judge by the find of a scoop-shaped paddle there. They also appear in the Isle of Man, and in Ireland, as already mentioned. They are indeed a worldwide phenomenon, except in very flat areas where there is no run of water to drive them."
(Fenton & Veitch (eds.): Scottish Life and Society: Farming and the
land ,p. 745-6)
Thanks Linda, I did think about that - and in fact the proposed location for the horizontal mill at Kinloss is a place called Scotsburn, which is pretty flat and I think it can't be right. But Moray as a whole isn't *that* flat - the Laich is, but the land starts to rise only a few miles inland. Plus some horizontal mills were tide-mills not stream mills - in fact I suspect this may be the case here. Pont's map of 1590 shows mills *everywhere* and they can't all have been vertical mills. I don't have access to Fenton & Veitch but I think they may be talking about later medieval and/or early modern mills?
IIRC, it was a general discussion of horizontal mills. And, Fenton (in his 'The Northern Isles') thought that those in Shetland were later than medieval, but our resident expert, museum curator Ian Tait, disagrees, pointing out that much of the terminology associated with the mechanism derives from Old Norse, as do numerous place names involving 'kvern'. (Tait's 'Shetland vernacular buildings', p.396)
Ok, wow, after all those years of being an enthusiast of all things Pict you are now giving lectures to Pictish societies? Talk about leveling up, Fiona, nice job!
Thanks Rebecca - I'm trying to be cool about it but in reality I'm experiencing severe impostor syndrome! Three of the other presenters were were giving papers (and indeed organising) the conference I went to last year as a complete noob, and I can't quite believe I'm in the same line-up as them for this lecture series!
Well, just remember, they started from exactly where you are now - with a first lecture - to get to where they are now. Possibly even without quite as many years as a Pict enthusiast, lol. And you're a SCHOLAR now!!! Anyway, please let us know how it goes, I can't wait to hear and this is pretty much the only place to do that now...
Nice one Fiona! The double-disc/Z symbol occurs in good grain-growing spots and some of these symbols may co-locate with a mill - they certainly do in modern terms, but hard to know if that was the case going back to Pictish times too. But it also suggests that the mill for Portmahomack wasn't at the monastery itself, but at Hilton of Cadboll. The land above it has been sectioned with irrigation channels today, but there is still a hint that a line of water comes down to the southern part of the sunken crescent on which the chapel stood. A pond above would have provided an excellent head of water to fall down the fairly steep side of the raised beach there, providing an excellent spot for a mill. And I've always wondered why the Picts had a 'chapel' on such a boggy place low down, now I know, with a mill race it probably wasn't as boggy then after all - so thanks!
And you might like to check out our posts about Congash on the Spey, another very low odd spot, where you can actually see a stream falling out of the steep glen behind it and running past the enclosure - and with a rare double-disc/Z symbol (for this region) there too. I'm pretty sure the Picts did have mills, we may just not be looking in the right places.
Thanks Helen - I remember that discussion about Congash, and it's definitely an interesting site. Hopefully it will get the Northern Picts treatment one day! I too am finding it hard to believe there were really no mills. It can't be because they didn't know about them, and it surely can't be that the engineering skills weren't available. So I think they either haven't been found or there was some special circumstance (a diet of mainly meat?) that meant there was no need for them.
I think there is plenty of evidence for eating loads of grain. And there's loads of quern stones and grain to show that. I think it's more like the situation in north britain and wales, where the problem is more about storing it and then distributing it around the country, because in Scotland the grain harvest would always have been patchy and people needed to redistribute in many years. Also I remember PMHM also had a massive grain drying barn. So they're storing and drying probably ready for re-distribution I'd suspect. And the first thing we hear from the Roman commentators is about 'Horris' which means the people in Angus were already storing and redistributing grain. I think the more interesting question is how this storage and redistribution were being socially organised and by whom.
That's a good point about Portmahomack (and Adomnán also mentions a kiln on Iona) and Adrián Maldonado has pointed out on FB that there are grain storage pits across Eastern Scotland - and the NMS has one lone paddle from a horizontal mill in Dumfries & Galloway. Social organisation of storage and redistribution is definitely an interesting question but for my purposes I need to establish what kind of community was in the area before being able to tackle questions like that. Hence the micro-focus on one reference to a mill!
You raise a very good question Fiona.
Is this perhaps an unusual case of absence of evidence actually being evidence of absence?
Keep burrowing 🐇
Hi Alastair, maybe it is. I'd like to think that our late-first-millennium Moravians moved with the times, and I'm still clinging to the idea that if there was a bridge at Kinloss in 966, then the engineering skills were there to have mills as well. But the absence of evidence is pretty overwhelming.