Stuart Nisbet traces the history of a surviving mill building on the Kelvin

One of the earliest mills on the Kelvin, and the oldest on the lower Kelvin, was the Old Mill of Partick. This was one of three very early grain mills serving the area corresponding to the present city of Glasgow north of the Clyde, the other two being at Bedlay (Cadder) and Clydesmill (Carmyle). The story of this mill shows how Partick and the Kelvin were influential long before Glasgow rose to be a major city.

The Old Mill of Partick is the easiest in the area to locate, as the main building of the final mill on the site still survives, albeit converted to flats. This is the four-storey mill with wheat sheaves atop its gables in Bunhouse Road. The surviving building is not particularly old, dating from the early nineteenth century, but milling on this site probably goes back a thousand years or more.

The reason for a profusion of mills here is the natural waterfall on the Kelvin directly beside this mill. This fall powered the Old Mill, plus later mills including the Slit Mill downstream, and Partick Old Waulk Mill (later Scotstoun Mill) and the ‘Wee Mill’ of Partick, both on the opposite bank.

The Old Mill of Partick is on the Yorkhill side of the river (the former Barony Parish) and is slightly confusing to us today, as we tend to think of Partick as being on the west side of the Kelvin (Govan Parish). However, Partick originally controlled a much wider area, possibly most of the heart of what we think of as modern Glasgow.

Grain mills traditionally had the right to demand that everybody in the area had their meal ground at the landowner’s mill and paid a proportion of the grain for this privilege. This was known as ‘multure’ and the tenants were ‘thirled’ to the mill. Multure was one of the earliest forms of taxation of the common people and one of the earliest sources of revenue for O Page 9 FORK NEWS SPRING 2008 9 the landowner. In this case the owner was the church, headed by the Bishop of Glasgow, resulting in another old name for this mill, the Bishop’s Mill.

The dominance of Partick and Partick’s old grain mill is shown by the very wide area which was thirled to it in medieval times. In a clockwise circle, a seventeenth-century list included Gairbraid, Broomhill, Woodside, Ruchill, Cowcaddens, Ramshorn, Barrowfield, Kenmure, Gorbals, Pollokshields, Bellahouston and Govan – clearly much of modern Glasgow.

Glasgow sought control of this mill, like most of the others in the area, to feed its growing population. The Town Council achieved this by obtaining the mill in 1608. The Council’s control should not be confused with that of the Glasgow Incorporation of Bakers, who acquired the adjacent Regent Mill directly upstream, on the site of the present Transport Museum car park (see FORK News No. 42, Summer 2007). Glasgow Town Council retained the old mill of Partick until the end of the eighteenth century, when it was sold to the owners of the adjacent Slit Mill.

The old mill was destroyed by fire in the 1830s and was rebuilt in its current form in 1839 by grain merchant William Wilson. The water wheels were subsequently replaced by a turbine, which generated electric power for the mill.

It is a common problem in Glasgow that we only appreciate buildings once they are gone. We therefore have cause to celebrate the survival of the oldest mill on the lower Kelvin, the Old Mill of Partick.

The Lost Mills of The Kelvin is taken from the Spring 2008 edition of FORK News