No 99. Little Mills.

No 99. Little Mills.

The Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage, Dunnet.
Made by T.S.Allan, Cowgate, Thurso,


I have dwelt enough on flails, on small hand mills and the large high-speed drum mills I knew and worked with, but I must not overlook the Crofters Mill. The crofts of Rousam in Stronsay were peppered with them in my younger days, and most of the smaller farms too. There were so many of them at one time including Caithness but few are now left.
There is a Crofters Mill in Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, still erroneously described there as a hand mill in spite of my well-meant advice over many years that it is not. They say it was built in Orkney and came from there. Not so. The Mill may indeed have come ultimately from Orkney to Mary Annes, but it is a Crofter’s Mill built by T.S.Allan, Millwright, THURSO. His firms name is stenciled in black letters on the side. His long gone workshop was in the Coogate in Thurso next door to a blacksmith called Gunn.
Regrettably, the Coogate, that historic old Viking name for the street where old Thurso’s milking cows were kept, was changed long since to Riverside Place by the Atomics on the old Thurso Town Council, the Coogate being thought not quite proper enough for New Age Thursonians. Perhaps, but it is still good enough for not so snooty Edinburgh.
The milking cows kept in the Coogate were grazed on the Commons of Thurso above Ormlie, or any other grass available, and fed in winter on bought in or cadged hay. Just a reminder that towns not so long ago had milking cows
within their boundaries, and horses and stables too big time, both of which had dung middens needing to be cleared away and carted out of town to nearby farms.
Wm Tait, working a few miles outside of Kirkwall with his brother-in-law Robert Lennie at Work Farm, not too far to cart feed in and dung out, recorded in his Diaries:-
“1889.
feb 19 tues 4 carts a run to Town (Kirkwall) with oats 16 qrs - took out dung from J. & W. Tait a.m.
feb 20 wed 1 cart at Town with last of oats to Cumming - took out dung.

And in 1893, 23rd Jan, 6th Feb, 8th Feb, there were entries to taking out polise!!! manure (dung) from Kirkwall. “

Probably dung middens from their horses, and probably a milking cow or two.
So too with Thurso, and the late Dr Fell’s garage next to the Coogate could previously have been the Doctor’s stable for his horse and gig, now appropriately replaced by Dunnet’s Garage Showrooms.


T.S. Allan’s Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s Cottage has two straw walkers each a mere 8 inches wide, an overall width for the Mill of 20 inches allowing for side clearance. The 24” diameter open drum has high grade steel pegs mounted in strong wooden crossbar beaters.
The concave is solid and would have kept the straw inside it for maximum separation of grain before being thrown out onto the slatted straw walkers. There the grain fell through and the straw carried on over the end of the Mill. The rest of the Mill is a mere enlargement or copy of the fanners used so long ago for cleaning grain from chaff and small bits of straw. Grain fell onto a shaking or oscillating shoe with a few perforated trays to allow grain to fall gently into a draft of air from the fan, which draft swept through it and separated the grain from the chaff. The chaff was blown into a closed-off compartment at the back of the Mill under the drum, keeping it from blowing all over. The chaff being blown in that direction was a reversal of the usual direction we all knew with our thrashing mills, being the only time I have seen it so. With a small Crofters Mill in a small building that was an advantage, having the benefit of keeping straw and chaff separate in a confined space.
The chaff door of course could be opened when needed for chaff for feeding the cows or filling a chaff bed!! It brought home to me that nothing was wasted on a croft, the chaff we put so cavalierly under the cattle in the courts for bedding was a much valued feed for a crofter. I have seen a byre on a Croft bedded down for the night with just one small pail of chaff, it worked well enough as the cattle immediately lay down. No straw wasted on bedding on a Croft!!
Good grain came out of one small chute in the side of the mill into a box. In Mary Anne’s it is a bushel measure, unstamped but regulation size all the same, sitting in situ on the floor. The tails or light grains would have been delivered from a second chute into another box, or perhaps just allowed to accumulate in a small heap.

A similar Mill is balanced precariously on top of an indoor wall at Andrew Mackay’s West Greenland Farm in his spacious implement shed. I was told it was hand made in Dunbeath by an Archie Sinclair, grand-father of the present Archie Sinclair, and I presume he bought the pulleys and shafts ready made and his part would have been in assembling the bits and pieces on his own well made wooden frame. It is still in working order, but not needed now as Andrew has bought a big combine.
With Crofts there were not too many people to help, so the continuous thrashing we did on bigger farms could not be done. The sheaves would have been carted in from the stack prior to thrashing and at Mary Anne’s would have been pitched in at the high sheaf window and stored behind the Mill on the floor ready for subsequent thrashing. Then the horse, or preferably two horses if you had them, would be hitched to the horse mill course outside the barn wall and all would be ready. Even these small mills needed a good bit of power so many neighbours shared, each helping the other with a horse to make up the pair needed. They might do the same for ploughing as keeping two working horses on a small croft was neither easy nor very affordable.


A very good example of the iron harness work of a horse mill course can be seen outside the barn gable end at Laidhay at Dunbeath, well laid out and worth a look in passing if you can spare a moment, as indeed is the whole complex. Large beveled Crown wheel and small beveled sprocket at right angles on a shaft that went in underground through the barn wall to a large toothed wheel to take the drive to the Mill. One of the heavy wooden shaft poles for the horse course is inside the barn hung from the rafters.
In the wall beside the Crofter’s Mill at Mary Anne’s is a small opening window called the “Whoa Hole”. From there the Crofter could call through the open window to his horse or horses and control their movements as he thrashed, “Hup” to go and “Whoa” to stop. Well trained horses answered immediately to such commands. There were not enough people available on a croft to have someone looking after the horses while thrashing. Horses were well trained, and I have used such commands when carting neeps from the field. They would answer the commands to go or stop with these well chosen words, better trained than a tractor, moving on and halting when needed!!!
Mary Anne’s does have many other things to see and is open 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm every day till the end of September. It is well worth a visit with your overseas visitors!! I have met there on occasion, when passing by, people visiting from all over the World, and recently met with a couple from near Pukekohe in New Zealand who shopped at the same superstore there as our daughter Janet. And they were farmers too!! It is indeed a small World.