Often the mill was situated at a considerable distance and there
were many complaints about the delay in processing, the expense and
the imperfections of the work. After dressing, flax was spun at
home on a spinning wheel by women and girls and then sent to
weavers to be worked into cloth on handlooms. Domestic linen making
was still practised in the early decades of the nineteenth century
and in isolated districts was still carried on as late as 1840. In
1835, for example, there was a total of 45 acres devoted to flax
growing in Lower Annandale.
The first process to be mechanised was flax or lint scutching
and the typical lint mill housed simple machinery for this purpose.
The machinery was water-powered and the mill itself single or at
most two storeyed.
By 1793 "The First Statitistical Account" records that Lochmaben
had two lint mills 'which are insufficient to perform the work that
would come to them'; in Applegarth a mill was 'now building' on the
Water of Annan; in Dunscore, where Robert Burns rented the farm of
Ellisland, a flax mill was about to be erected on the River Cairn;
and in Morton the mill 'for dressing lint' serviced a wide area up
to sixteen miles distant. The majority of lint mills were
relatively small units whose main function was flax-dressing for
the country folk of the surrounding district.
Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and the early decades of
the nineteenth century the most important area of linen manufacture
was Lower Annandale, production being centred on the neighbouring
towns of Lochmaben and Lockerbie. In the 1760s, when output was
greatest, nearly 250,000 yards of linen were annually stamped for
sale in Dumfriesshire, the majority from Annandale.
Local conditions suited flax growing, particularly the rich,
fertile valleys of the River Annan and the Water of Ae. Here in the
1790s local and foreign flax was spun by women and woven by men
into coarse linens. In the nearby parish of Tinwald, at Trailflat,
was located "one of the most extensive bleachfields in Scotland",
operated by Cruickshank & Son, and there were several other
bleachers in Dumfries and Maxwelltown.
During the Napoleonic Wars the linen industry declined and by
the early 1820s had virtually succumbed to the overwhelming
competition of the large scale factory industry in eastern Scotland
and nearby Ulster.
