Flax & Flood

Why was there a 32-year gap (1798-1830) between mills on the Ericht (Lornty was on the Lornty Burn). Here’s one explanation:

There had been no prolonged droughts for almost 20 years when Meikle Mill was built: after 1798 they occurred each year from 1800 to 1806 and from 1812 to 1815. The 1810s were also the coldest decade in the last 500 years due to the final phase of the ‘little ice age’; frosts have similar impacts on stream-flow to droughts; no water. A new chronology of floods from 1820 made by the Detectives also showed that there were few between 1823 and 1845.

Millers couldn’t trust the weather and in response, mills built in later years gravitated to the steepest gradient reaches with the highest stream powers, above the rapids called the Keith. It made economic sense to do this to ensure sufficient water power and by 1836 there were five mills on a 500m length of river on both banks above the Keith.  

The Detectives also re-discovered the heights of weirs of these mills from local newspapers in 1884: these control the fall of a mill.

This density of mills on other British rivers led to “vexatious lawsuits”: this did not happen on the Ericht: why not? Why did mills share weirs? Costs were halved but so was stream-power; weirs perpendicular to the river (which they had to be to share stream-power) were more susceptible to costly collapse. One explanation is that co-operation was necessary to cope with water shortages.

“what emerged in this economy in the eighteenth century was a mixed system in which competition and cooperation worked together, odd as it may sound.” 

The later 19 ^th  century was no drier. Only the 1870s saw a reliable water supply.

One way to manage water shortages was to turn to steam. Of the mills above Brig 'O' Blair, Westfield had steam in 1835 but the others were still water-powered in 1845; this was not seen as a way out here or on other Perthshire mills; 22% only were steam-powered as late as 1862.

The second way was to build reservoirs. This didn’t happen at all on the Ericht. Lornty and Brooklinn Mills on the Lornty Burn were especially vulnerable, but estate plans show that 1863 was the earliest date the Lornty Dam can be demonstrated. However, this LiDAR image, below, shows that no effort was made to maximise efficiency of the dam. The reservoir is in pale blue on the floor of the Lornty Burn. The image picks out the many parallel glacial meltwater channels; two are named. Both could have been diverted easily enough to increase capacity of the reservoir, but they weren’t.

In 1868 the Parochial Board of Blairgowrie, the town council, sought to tap the Lornty Burn for an improved supply to the town: Agreement was reached but local droughts, almost every season from January 1899, led in 1904 to friction and legal action by Grimond of Lornty: he lost.

The later 19 ^th  century was no less turbulent for the mills: previously unreported were very damaging fires at Erichtside (1865 and 1885), Oakbank (1872), Ashbank (1880), Bramblebank (1881), Ashgrove (1890) and Westfield (1901). Lay-offs, short-time working, reduced wages, short-lived strikes impacted in sustained economic depressions 1867-1873 and 1880-1888.

Though it wasn’t the end for the mills, (the last working mill shut down in 1979) as the market began to change and technology evolved, a sense of fin de siècle was building by the turn of the century. In an extraordinary Perthshire Advertiser editorial in July 1900:

“..it is Perthshire that is bidding fair to become the fruit garden of Scotland … steam factories were erected on the banks of the Ericht. They in turn have had their innings, and Blairgowrie has now become a popular summer resort … [with] unrivalled scenery around Craighall … fishing in river and loch, and sport with the gun on Highland hills”.        

The first notice of the Ericht and its salmon fishings is contained in a Charter dated 1326, granted by Robert the Bruce to the monks of Coupar Angus Abbey, translated as follows:

“Charter of Robert 1st, King through God, to the Holy Mary…We, of our special favour, have given permission to the same monks of fishing for and taking salmon in times, prohibited by our statutes, whenever they wish, in their fisheries of the Waters of the Tay, the Isla, the Ericht . . . to their own proper uses, and for the soup of the aforesaid convent.”

The Keith fishings, with the rocky gorge immediately below the waterfall, was a favourite scene of salmon netting and can be traced to 1620. This was commercial fishing: a keith was a ‘bar across a river … to prevent salmon from [moving] further, a kind of dam’. It may have been erected around 1700; it may have been the subject of a court-case in 1750. Parishes above Craighall bitterly complained at the end of the 18 ^th  century of the impact of the Keith on their fishing.

From 1740 to 1830 the Ericht was known to be very fine stream for rod-fishing, although the salmon taken were never large. The heaviest ever known to have been captured in it weighed 24 lb.

By 1836 “The salmon no longer ascend the Ericht … which they once did in great quantities, because of the numerous Spinning-mills now upon it.”, and by 1845, the fishery was “much decreased in value”.

We cannot quantify the reductions in salmon numbers or factors like overfishing on the River Tay and River Isla, or poisoning from chemical processes in the mills, but these and other problems may account for not one fish being reported below the Keith in 1851.

In 1870, when Frank Buckland and Young inspected the salmon rivers of Scotland, they found the Ericht at Blairgowrie, which had once been a famous salmon river, entirely blocked up by impassable dams, of which there were no fewer than six in the course of about 2 miles of water. The uppermost was not an insurmountable barrier, but the second at Westfield’s was entirely impassable, being twelve feet (3.6m) in height, and quite perpendicular.

Equally impactful was the 12 ft wide, 4 ft deep lade intake just above Brig 'O’ Blair to the left-bank mills, which “absorbs and carries off the larger proportion of the river in the dry season”, leaving the river dry. The lade gate at this point on the river is still causing issues today.

In the summer of 1884, the Tay Board (today known as the Tay District Salmon Fisheries Board), brought over a Colonel Macdonald from the United States (who had successfully resolved similar issues on the Potomac) to look into the problem and improvements were made, including the construction of fishways which were placed on the inaccessible weirs at Ashbank and Westfield. “These being the first fishways of the kind ever placed on absolutely insuperable obstacles in a salmon river in Scotland.” Around 1960, another impediment to fish passage, Craighall Linn, a small fall just north of Blairgowrie, was blasted. This helped increase salmon numbers and for a time, until the 1990's, the Ericht was known as a very productive salmon river.

This research builds on  previous work  – ‘Vital Signs’ - undertaken by the Cateran Ecomuseum. Both projects  aim to lay the foundations for a new environmental history of the River Ericht, one that can help us take better care of it in the future. In this project, the River Detectives created the first detailed chronology of weather events affecting Strathmore from the later 18thc and showed how the unreliable water supply affected decisions about where the mills were built. They brought LiDAR imagery into play to help create new descriptions of how humans had changed the watercourse over time and began to uncover the impact of the mills on the Atlantic Salmon, now categorised as an endangered species, with some of those impacts still being felt today.

This first stage of work on the Ericht has opened tantalising doors into the potential for further research on past climate change in the area and how it stimulated technological and social transformation. More work could be done on how current biodiversity relates to the past, including the effects of past land management and how future ecosystem management  practices can take these into account. The health of Strathmore’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) could help shape a new understanding of these important protected landscapes and analysing river sediments for micro plastics could provide a depressing but important glimpse into the legacy of our modern lifestyles.

The investigations begun in Vital Signs and furthered through Flax & Flood underline the long term nature of the environmental degradation humans have caused along the River Ericht. Understanding this history is key to how we make better decisions about land use change in the future.

The research undertaken by the River Detectives in Flax & Flood has shown how climate conditions in the past caused unreliable water supplies on the Ericht, driving mill owners to crowd mills alongside particular parts of the river and invent engineering solutions that ensured the levels of water power they needed. But their decisions blocked the passage of the Atlantic Salmon back and forth to spawning grounds in the north of the catchment and the legacy of their industry is still negatively impacting the health of the salmon population a century and a half later.

The insights gained, and the questions raised will help those involved in leading nature restoration on the Ericht today, such as the new  River Ericht Catchment Restoration Initiative , respond to the impacts of increasing floods and drought driven by climate change and take the urgent action needed to give our endangered salmon access to cold, clean water they need to survive.

The River Detectives were:

Peat & Productivity: Annie Anderson, Donald Clerk, Christopher Dingwall, Kate Methley, Gordon Millar, Jean Oudney and Richard Tipping.

Flood & Flow: Richard and Laura Bates, Richard Brinklow, Christopher Dingwall, John Henderson, Gordon Millar, Jenna Muir, Jean Oudney, Carol Pudsey, Pete Richardson, Aileen Stackhouse and Richard Tipping.

Flax & Flood: Ralph Baillie, Graeme Berry, Jack McIntosh, Gordon Millar, Jean Oudney, Robert Peek, Robert Powrie, Aileen Stackhouse and Richard Tipping.

Marl Mania: Richard Brinklow, Donald Clerk, Christopher Dingwall, Patricia Kerr, Jack McIntosh, Gordon Millar, Dave Orr, Jean Oudney, Richard Tipping and Jennifer Woods.

With grateful thanks to Dr Richard Tipping and Christopher Dingwall for leading the drafting of this documentation.