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4 Dec 2018

Keeping the writing on the wall

Written by Sandy Chudek (Volunteer)
A close-up shot of a hand holding a pencil and hovering over a wooden beam.
Pencil marks at Barry Mill
Volunteer Sandy Chudek shares how the team are fighting back against pests at our historic Angus mill.

The National Trust for Scotland works every day to protect Scotland’s national and natural treasures. From coastlines to castles, art to architecture, wildlife to wilderness, we protect all of this For the Love of Scotland.

Barry Mill is a working water mill, which was rebuilt in 1814 to replace an earlier mill. It’s a three-storey stone building but most of the internal structure is wooden, as are the fittings and some of the machinery. Over the last 150 years, many of the wooden surfaces have been covered with pencil scribblings. Recent conservation work at Barry Mill has uncovered these traditional contracts, records of transactions and signatures, which introduce us to people from the mill’s history.

An Edwardian black and white photo of the miller and his wife. They are posing in a studio setting. The woman is sitting in a chair and wears a long black dress. The man stands beside her, with his hand on the back of her chair. He has a magnificent white beard and wears a dark suit and waistcoat.
John Duncan, one of the millers (c1901-11) whose signature can be found in Barry Mill.

Signatures of millworkers such as Robert Mackie, who went ‘through the mill’ in 1881, have been found. There are names with dates, addresses and job descriptions. Millwrights who worked on the mill repairs carefully inscribed their names and addresses on the wall of the cupboard housing the gears; farmers’ deals and other trades were represented around the office door. Millers, assistants, carters and other workers not only left their names scattered throughout the mill but also included construction drawings and calculations. There’s even a bunch of flowers and a musical score!

The name Bella is written in pencil on a wooden wall.
The name Bella is written in pencil on the wall behind the grain chute.

Bella is the only female name found in Barry Mill, hidden under a grain chute. Who was Bella and why had she written her name in such an inaccessible place? There are many theories but no definite answers. One possibility is that she was one of the millers’ little sister. Bella is now famous as she appears as a character in a novel inspired by Barry Mill called Bone Deep, and visitors often ask to see her mark. We don’t want to lose her inscription or those of others from over the centuries.

A white-shouldered moth sitting on some grain
White-shouldered moth (copyright CSL / DBP Entomology)

Moths are endemic to meal mills and have happily been in residence at Barry Mill for a long, long time. However, during their reproductive cycle they damage the surface of the timber on which the writing is inscribed. These pencil marks are irreplaceable. We remove the moths at their pupal stage but it’s a detailed and tricky process. We have successfully countered their spread in the areas with the earliest inscriptions, but work is still ongoing to remove them from the mill completely.

An exterior view of Barry Mill showing its stone walls, tiled roof and tin-roofed outbuilding. A path leads into woodland behind the mill.
Barry Mill today

For centuries local communities depended on the oatmeal produced in mills like this, which used to be found roughly every 4 miles across the countryside. Mills were often the foundation point around which villages grew, evidenced by the common ‘mill’ in street names next to a bridge near the centre of most towns. Now, only a handful of people work in these traditional mills; Barry Mill is one of less than a dozen working water mills remaining in Scotland. Our conservation programme hopes to protect the mill and its irreplaceable writings – the personal face of the mill’s history.


The National Trust for Scotland works every day to protect Scotland’s national and natural treasures. From coastlines to castles, art to architecture, wildlife to wilderness, we protect all of this For the Love of Scotland.

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