Bell’s Mill scrapbook on Edinburgh Collected

One of the great things about Edinburgh Collected is that everyone can add images themselves. Many associations have uploaded photographs from their own collections. One of them, The Living Memory Association has provided us with many hundreds of photographs and have created scrapbooks each telling their own stories.

Two boys sitting on tree trunk at Bell’s Mill By Belford Bridge c.1890

One scrapbook features the Walker family and Bell’s Mill in the Dean Village around the late 1800s and early 1900s and shows different aspects of life at the mill.

Workers at Bell’s Mill c.1895. Gideon Walker front right.

Bell’s Mill was run by Gideon Walker at that time and he appears in some of the images. The mill had originally been used to grind corn and flour, but by the late 19th century it was used to grind sawdust into wood flour which was used to make everything from bus tickets to linoleum.

It was while the mill was being used to provide this product that it was destroyed by a blast in 1971.

Nowadays, the site of Bell’s Mill is occupied by modern apartments, but some of the old mill still exists if you look close enough.

You can view the complete scrapbook, about ‘The Walker Family, a family of millers on the Water of Leith’ on Edinburgh Collected.