The Finzean Bucket Mill is a water powered sawmill, found in the Forest of Birse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, built in 1853.

Our organisation, the Finzean Bucket Mill Community Interest Company, is a not-for-profit social enterprise and we are the next custodians of the mill. We lease the Bucket Mill from the Birse Community Trust [BCT Website], who own it.

We are tasked with returning the Bucket Mill to working order, which requires both substantial repairs and alterations to ensure the machinery within is compliant for the modern day. We need to make these interventions in a sensitive and thoughtful way, capturing the embodied wisdom and spirit of the older ways, so that the charm and magic of the Bucket Mill is not lost, nor left idle to become a static exhibit.

The Bucket Mill comes from a time before electricity and plastic. It is powered by water and in its construction, it is made from the landscape around it: stone, sand, lime, timber and minimal metalwork. It is the definition of real and meaningful sustainability.

The task ahead is complex and technically demanding, requiring specialist civil and mechanical engineering and building craft skills, many of which are unique to the Forest of Birse mills. Doing this work ‘the right way’ upholds important cultural heritage unique to the Forest of Birse.

We aim to use the process of repair to teach and disseminate useful, practical skills. In doing so we want to inspire and support others to develop rural craft practices and businesses of their own.