Help
The Scottish Water Mills Website provides a web-based resource displaying mill locations and related information across Scotland.
It was created by Iara Nave Calton and Chris Fleet during Iara's 6 month placement with the National Library of Scotland from September 2020 – March 2021.
Single map
- The primary way of searching for water mills uses a single map.
- It is possible to browse all the mill names as a scrollable table. This table can also be filtered by keyword - ie. if you type a name, or part of the name, those entries matching your typed name will be returned in the table below. You can then click on these named entries to zoom the map to this specific mill.
- It is also possible to refine or filter the mills by Mill Type or by Date Range and also add check boxes to show only show water mills, or only show those mills not in NMRS - the National Monuments Record for Scotland / 'Canmore'. When filtering in this way, the total number of mills that have been filtered, as well as the number that have been filtered that are within the current map view, are presented at the bottom of the left-hand panel.
- You can zoom in to view specific mill records, and click on them to view further details about the specific mill.
- By default, the background map displays Ordnance Survey maps from ca. 1900 (2nd edition six-inch to the mile, at the most detailed zoom levels). You can change this using the drop-down list at the bottom of the left-hand panel. When the date range is narrowed so that the latest date is the 'pre-1840s' or the '1840s', the background mapping changes to this earlier time period, showing 1st edition one-inch and six-inch to the mile maps.
- There are links on screen and at the bottom of each mill record to view the site on the specific OS six-inch and 25 inch to the mile maps that cover where you are viewing.
Split-screen map
The split-screen viewer can be used for comparing different filtered results side-by-side. As with the single map, it is possible to filter by Mill Type or by Date Range and also add check boxes to show only show water mills, or only show those mills not in (NMRS) - the National Monuments Record for Scotland / 'Canmore'.
About
- Read background information About mills. This includes further information about Windmills, Animal Powered Mills, Watermills, Steam Mills and Further reading.
Project
- Project background and data sources. Combining the GB1900 gazetteer and NMRS / Canmore datasets.
- Identifying and classifying mills. The workflow followed to identify the mills on the map and classify them.
- Setting up the web-mapping interface. The workflow to create the map-based search interface.
Contact
- If you have further suggestions or comments about this website, please do contact us at maps@nls.uk.
- Whilst we regret that we do not have the resources to actively develop this website, we are collaborating with the Away from the water' : the first energy transition, British textiles 1770-1890 research project, based at the University of Glasgow, who will be working further on water mills in Scotland. We are happy to pass details to them and also put researchers in contact.