Developers find Victorian mill remains

THE remains of a Victorian mill have been uncovered at a building site in Currie.

The historic mill lade, or watercourse, was revealed by East Lothian-based RM Brown Demolition at a former tannery by the Water of Leith around a fortnight ago.

Developer George Dunbar & Sons was previously granted permission for a mixed-use development consisting of a dental surgery, nursing home and flats on the former Kinauld Leather Works site.

Demolition work on the tannery in Lanark Road West got under way earlier this year to make way for the new development.

Plans to convert the tannery, which started out as a paper mill, came after J Hewit & Sons Ltd, which runs the leather works, announced it was planning to relocate the business away from Currie.

The company has been based at its new site in Livingston for almost a year.

George Morrison, managing partner of The Morrison Partnership - the city-based architects acting on behalf of George Dunbar & Sons - said: "The records showed that there was a lade at the site because it was a water mill, so it wasn't unexpected.

"Logic would suggest that there would be one anyway because that's what powered the mill. The tannery was one of the uses the mill had been put to way back before we had electricity.

"It was a fairly typical solution in its day of getting power to drive machinery.

"The water was channelled into the lade, through the mill and continued out the other side, joining the Water of Leith again further down stream.

"It passed under a large water wheel and it turned the wheel, which then turned the machinery inside the mill."

J Hewit & Sons Ltd bought the building in 1913 and owned it for almost 100 years until last August.

Sales director of J Hewit & Sons Ltd, David Lanning, said: "The wheel was in place until 1960 - we used it to run the tannery. It was used to turn all our equipment and machinery for making leather.

"Up until 1940, it was used to produce electricity as well. The wheel was taken out and destroyed in the 1960s.

"The lade ran about 300 yards upstream from where the water came, so it was really long. It ran underneath the middle of the building, parallel to the river."

It it not yet clear what will happen to the lade but archaeologists are understood to have been examining it on site.

Nobody from George Dunbar & Sons was available for comment.

Mr Lanning said: "If the lade needs to be saved for archaeological reasons they would probably just seal it in, so in 100 years it could be rediscovered."