Most of these were corn mills (to grind flour), but almost any industrial process needing motive power, beyond that available from the muscles of men or animals, used a water wheel, unless a windmill was preferred.
Listen to the water mill Through the livelong day; How the clicking of the wheel Wears the hours away.
Languidly the autumn wind Stirs the withered leaves; On the field the reapers sing Binding up the sheaves; And a proverb haunts my mind And as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind With the water that has passed."
See yon our little mill that clacks so busy by the brook, She has ground her corn and paid her tax ever since Domesday Book.
Click Mill, Kingussie Robert Small's Printing Works, Innerleithen
