Grandholm Mill’s

Grandholm, a village, with an old converted woollen works that is now modern flats, in Old Machar a parish of the now City of Aberdeen. Situated on the left bank of the River Don, opposite Woodside, and 2 miles NNW of the City of Aberdeen.

Gordon's Mills where built earlier than 1639, when William Gordon of Gordon's Mills was reportedly wounded at the Battle at the Bridge of Dee. According to Milne, the Mill or Mills were 1st of all for meal. Later they became a woolen manufactory and subsequently a paper mill. G M Fraser asserts that Gordon's Mills was the site of the 1st paper mill in Aberdeen, opened by Patrick Sandilands in 1696 and that by 1703 it had become a textile mill referred to as `Northmills at Gordon's Mills'.

The Grandholme Mill’s waterwheel was claimed to be the largest in the world when it was built in 1826 by Hews & Wren of Manchester: at 25 feet in diameter, the wheel weighed 100 tons and generated 200hp. Once the steam engines were installed, the giant water wheel took on a life of its own. It was kept ‘in reserve’ at Grandholm until 1897, but rather than going for scrap, it was bought by Alex. Pirie & Sons, who owned Stoneywood Papermill. They earmarked it for their Woodside Works, where they carried out rag-breaking, so the wheel was taken apart and moved a few 100 yards upstream to Woodside, where it earned its keep until 1965.

By then, the 140-year-old wheel was the largest of its kind left in Europe – a remarkable survivor from the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution – and the Royal Scottish Museum was determined to save it. The wheel was painstakingly dismantled for a 2nd time, and loaded on lorries which took it south to Chambers Street in Edinburgh, where it is still on display.