Tilting at windmills in Banffshire - the story of the Glassaugh Windmill

I love to find out about local history, so when the opportunity to find out more about a strange looking building, locally called the ‘Cup and Saucer’, it was too good to miss.

The building is the remains of the Glassaugh Windmill, locally referred to as the ‘Cup & Saucer’ due to its shape. It’s located in a field between the coastal village of Sandend and the GlenGlassaugh Distillery on the A98 road. Nowadays it’s easy to miss if you are travelling from Portsoy heading west, because the recently built large bond warehouses that have been erected at the distillery partially block it from view.

So last Wednesday, the Banff Preservation and Heritage Society, offered a talk on this very building. Ian Mitchell Davidson, a heritage consultant and surveyor took the audience on a journey through time, detailing the history of the area and how and why the windmill was built with the aid of historical maps and documents.

The windmill was commissioned by Major General James Abercrombie, who upon retiring from the British Army, returned to Scotland and set about working and improving his estate around Glassaugh. It was the 1760’s and Scotland was experiencing agricultural and economic growth and while mills operated by water existed at the time, Abercombie went with the idea of a wind powered structure.

Abercrombie didn’t have to look far for some of the raw materials to start building the structure, it was built on the site of large bronze age burial cairn, it measured about 15 meters in diameter and over 4 meters in height, to give you an idea of the scale –
it was the same diameter as the windmill base itself.

There are some great articles available of the history of the windmill, the one that gave me a chuckle can be found here.

Specific details of the building design can be found on sites such as Canmore and Historic Environment Scotland (HES) - some of the descriptions states that the inside if the windows were made of red bricks and had arched heads. It was suggested that Abercrombie would have had the bricks made of site, as there is no record of a local brickworks nearby at that time. The Blackpots Tileworks at Whitehills, which was setup by Dr Saunders wasn’t established until after 1766. The Cullen Tileworks at Tochieneal wasn’t established until the much later.

It's not clear how long the windmill was a working building – Major Abercrombie wrote to his daughter in 1761 stating the high winds had nearly blown the top of the windmill off.

One of the sources that the speaker quoted from was a book by Thomas Pennant “A tour in Scotland in 1769”, he makes no mention of the windmill but does note the Craig Mills. This title is still available to buy or you can read it digitally, and free, on the Internet Archive - https://archive.org

Now, the structure is under new ownership and being restored. Gone is ivy that has been threading itself around the old mill. The rough stonework has been harled over and there is a domed top to the windmill itself. What a place to call home!

The author of the talk, Ian Mitchell Davidson, also mentioned his book, which looks a fascinating read!

Published by Sandstone Press Ltd, 2017.

References:-
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/378083
https://canmore.org.uk/site/18433/blackpots-brick-and-tile-works