Introducing the project

Penicuik Community Development Trust is setting out to buy and refurbish Bank Mill in Penicuik, together with its historically related lades, to create a national heritage centre for Scottish paper-making and industrial water power.

Penicuik - the papermaking town

the principal papermaking mills lie close to Penicuik

By the mid 19th century Penicuik was one of the foremost papermaking centres in the world: when, in 1872, the Japanese Emperor sent a two-year technological fact-finding mission to North America, Britain and Europe, his mission chose to come to Penicuik’s Valleyfield Mill to find out about the West’s industrialised paper making. When local Scots built a paper mill in Quebec in 1856, they saw added prestige and a commercial premium in calling the factory Valleyfield, a seed for Canada’s industrial revolution that became the city of Valleyfield.
There were six paper mills in the town, all originally water powered: Alexander Cowan operated three mills together – Valleyfield Mill (built 1709); Bank Mill (converted to paper making in 1803 and the source of paper for bank notes), and Low Mill (built for wool processing 1708, and converted to papermaking in 1746) – making this Valleyfield complex the largest mill in Scotland. In addition were Esk Mill (built in 1770 as Scotland’s first cotton mill and converted to papermaking 1790); Auchendinny Mill (built 1756) and Dalmore Mill (built 1820). There were five more paper mills further down stream.

three Cowan mill sites in the the 19th Century

All of these historic riverside paper mills have now closed and all except Bank Mill have been demolished and the sites redeveloped for housing. The Bank Mill Project is an opportunity to preserve the last building related to Penicuik’s and the River Esk’s paper making heritage.