Through the Mill
Personal Recollections by Veteran Men and Women Penicuik Paper Mill Workers

"These memories of the Penicuik paper workers paint a picture of an entire world, recent yet now quite vanished. Told in picturesque but by no means, nostalgic detail, they make riveting reading" Professor Sian Reynolds

"The great ring of paper mills around Edinburgh form a crucial and often ignored part of Scotland's history. This oral history of the experience and working practices of the industry is presented with the care and quality for which Ian MacDougall is well known." Professor Bob Morris

Veteran men and women Penicuik paper mill workers speak here in their own recorded words of what it was like to work in one or other of the three paper mills at Penicuik, Midlothian, the last of which closed in 2004. One mill, Valleyfield, produced paper for almost 300 years; another, Esk Mills, originated in 1775 as one of the earliest cotton mills in Scotland.

These recollections cover almost the entire 20th century. But they also reach back into the 19th century as veterans recall what their parents or grandparents told them of their years on work in the same mills. Working conditions, hours of labour, wages, the division of labour between men and women workers, relations between workers and management, accidents, deference, trade unionism, how the paper was made, the raw materials and their source, the mills' chief customers at home and abroad, characters who enlivened the daily toil, are among the multitude of aspects recalled. So are housing, schooling, recreation, courting traditions, church-going, employment in domestic service and in supporting local industries such as coal mining, farming, and metal founding, as well as the long shadows cast by the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars. This is the latest volume in the acclaimed series of working people's spoken recollections harvested by the Scottish Working People's History Trust.