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MHG29849 - Bobbin mill - The Pirn Mill

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Full Description

There is nothing left of this substantial mill, which was destroyed by fire 1850. The site is in the back garden of the old Post Office. J Dye, Acharacle, info passed on by G Clark, Treslaig (ref 16).
AMF, Highland Council, 09/03/01

Research into the bobbin mills of northern Scotland was undertaken by J Gilliatt as a volunteer researcher for the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Woodland Restoration project (2014-2018), which funded access to online resources including genealogical records and the newspaper archive. Salen Pirn Mill was established in the early 1840s by John Clark Junior, a member of the Clark family from Paisley, who had set up his own business as a thread manufacturer at Mile-End in Glasgow in 1817. John Clark leased land from the local estate at Salen, and not only built the mill, estimated to be worth £400, but also a dam to provide the mill with water power. According to the transcript of an enquiry held when the mill was destroyed by fire, in 1854, Salen Pirn Mill was stone built and consisted of a saw shop at the northern end, with “a number of saw tables and circular saws and benches”, separated from the machine shop, at the southern end, by a stone wall. The machine shop housed three “bobbin machines”, “various other pieces of mechanisms suited to th e trade”, and a number of wooden boxes for the completed bobbins (pirns) to fall into. The mill had large glass windows for light and ventilation and there was a wooden shed attached to the north end, which housed two stacks of squared wood, ready to be converted into bobbins. Above the mill there was living accommodation which was accessed by an outside staircase and occupied by the manager’s housekeeper, and close to it there was a wooden cottage where some of the boys who were employed at the mill slept. The mill was powered by a 40ft water wheel, which was at the southern end of the building, the power from the wheel being transmitted to the machinery by “leathern wheel bands”. Despite the dam on the hill above, however, there was not always enough water ava ilable to power the mill regularly during the summer months, and this had been the case during the summer of 1854, when the mill fire occurred. The mill was not insured and was not rebuilt. While the first OS map (survey date 1872) shows the Old Mill Dam, there is no sign of the mill itself. Evidence of this mill is found in contemporary reports written by travellers (1842, 1848), the census (1851), the transcript of an enquiry held when the mill was burned down in 1854 (John Dye), estate archives and a newspaper report (1949). <1>

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Map

Location

Grid reference	Centred NM 6877 6461 (40m by 40m) (2 map features)
Map sheet	NM66SE
Civil Parish	ARDNAMURCHAN
Geographical Area	LOCHABER

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