Bannock Burn - Mills

Mills

Further down, the power of the burn was harnessed in a series of mills, all the way to Bannockburn, after which the burn descends to the level of the carse lands where no more gravitational energy could be extracted. Many of the mill buildings still exist, but the water wheels have gone. These were mainly of the overshot type. The highest mill was the Park Farm and Mill, and of approximately four cottages in a row, two were still occupied in 1957, and one until the early 1960s. Unfortunately they have now been demolished. The Cultenhove Flour Mill and Chartershall Corn Mill were fed by a reservoir, now the Cultenhove Fishery, fed by the Sauchie Burn, which joins the Bannock Burn on its south bank just above Chartershall, where a dam, rebuilt due to the construction of the M90 motorway, via a lade, supplied a number of both wool and corn mills downstream of Whins of Milton, as far as Bannockburn. A further complication is that some of the water in the Cultenhove Reservoir may have been diverted from the Auchenbowie Burn (which normally flows to the River Carron at Denny), or its tributary, the Loch Coulter Burn, and so may have passed through the early turbine at Milnholm. It is likely that much of the water arriving at Bannockburn had been used in approximately six mills on its journey downstream.

One of the mills in the section downstream of Whins of Milton was Beaton's Mill, where James III of Scotland was murdered on 11 June 1488, following the Battle of Sauchieburn, itself fought near the south bank of the Bannock Burn.