Meikle Meal Mill is an early-nineteenth century mill on the south-west edge of Mill Bay, Stronsay (NGR HY 65886 25519). The mill replaced an earlier mill, which was probably located slightly to the north.
The area around the Mill Burn, to the north of the mill building, was known as “The Milltoon” and both this and the mill belonged to the Balfour Estate. Throughout its use, the mill was worked by the Chalmers family or their descendants. When the mill ceased operation in 1972, it was the last working mill in Orkney and the last miller was David Groat, a grandson of the Chalmers family.
The mill is a three-storey, stone rubble-built building, with a corn-drying kiln is at the north-east end of the mill and a chaffy house to the rear. Originally, there were two water wheels, one at each gable end, but the wheel on the east gable was removed in the nineteenth century. The surviving waterwheel is housed in a roofless structure against the south-west gable and is fed by Mill Burn, which runs from Meikle Water to the sea at Mill Bay. The wheel is an overshot wheel with the mill race running through a trough supported on stone piers.
In 1861, the mill was heightened with timber from a wrecked vessel, the Festina Lenti. Bars were added to the first-floor external doorway in 1896 following a fatal accident when John Mainland of Millfield mistook which floor he was on and stepped out of the door.
The building was entered through a centrally-placed doorway in the front elevation leading into the main ground floor room – this area would have been used for storing dried grain and would have housed a weighing machine. At the south-west end of the room, two chutes descend through the ceiling which carried the meal down from the first floor, before passing through a sieve and a screen into bags for storage. A wooden partition at this end separated the main room from the mill machinery, much of which survives, and includes fly wheels, gearing and shafts.
Some of the machinery at Meikle Mill which transfers the power from the water wheel to the grinding stones. (📷 ORCA)
Timber staircases provided access to the second and third floors. Grain was ground on the first floor and the meal bags were also stored here, awaiting collection by the farmers. Three pairs of grindstones survive within their casings remain in the south-west part of the room.
Grain would be ground initially to separate the kernels from the husks before they were ground into meal. Different grindstones would be used for producing bere meal or producing animal feed. These meal bags were lowered through the first floor-doorway in the front elevation.
The second floor was used to store grain prior to drying. Bags of grain were lifted from the ground floor using a chain and a pulley attached to the roof beams and operated using the water wheel. The pulley and its associated shafts and gears still survive.
When in use, the flooring would have only extended from the south-west gable as far as the top of the corn-drying kiln wall. Cross beams across the open space between this wall and the north-east gable would have supported tiles to form the corn-drying floor. Grain would have been spread across this and heated from the kiln below to dry it before grinding.
The corn-drying kiln occupies the north-east end of the building, with the ground floor structures extending to second floor level. The kiln space was accessed from through a doorway in the front of the building and also from the chaffy house. A single fire-charging hole was present in the south-west wall of the kiln, formed by a dressed stone round-arch, and incorporating a cast iron grate. A large stone block above the hole bore incised graffiti reading “888 + P S”.
As its name suggests, the chaffy house was used for storing chaff, the husks and other debris separated from the seed during threshing, and the mill dust. A single-storey, stone rubble-built building which once had a pitched roof, it was set against the rear of the mill building. Four doorways gave access to the mill interior from the chaffy house.
The water wheel was powered by water from Meikle Water, via Mill Burn, which originally fed into Mill Pond.
A sluice gate controlled the volume of water flowing to the water wheel. The water flowed along a stone-lined channel cut and into a timber trough to the wheel. A second sluice which was operated from within the mill controlled the flow of water and, consequently, the operations of the mill machinery. The water wheel house survives as a roofless, stone structure. The axle, arms, rim and sole plate are all cast iron, with the buckets being timber.
