Stobhill Gunpowder Works

"Stobmills - a small village on the Vogrie and Arniston estates consisting of two rows of houses and an attendant Gunpowder Mill with workshops and an overseer's residence attached. In it are a few grocers shops and a public house etc. Before the Gunpowder works were established here, there was an old corn mill which first gave user to the name Stobmills". (The Ordnance Survey Name Book, 1852).

In 1794, Scotland’s first Gunpowder Mill started operations on the banks of the Gore Water. The company was set up by William Hitchener and John Hunter who has obtained a license from the Midlothian J.P.s to erect the mill at Stobsmills and who had a signed a fifty year lease for the land which belonged to James Dewer of Vogrie and Robert Dundas of Arniston. They took a third partner, John Merricks, who was the one with the previous experience of gunpowder making.

The construction of the gunpowder mill was a major work of engineering. The Gore Water was diverted, four dams were built and a complex system of lades and culverts took water from these dams to operate ten water wheels which powered the various mills.

Besides supplying blasting powder for mines and quarries at home, gunpowder was sold to the Government during the Napoleonic War. There is a record of 100 barrels of gunpowder shipped from Greenockbeing sold in Liverpool in 1802. This much have come from Stobmills as there was no other gunpowder mill in Scotland at that time. This consignment would have travelled by open cart to Leith; from there to Grangemouth by ship; then by barge through the Forth and Clyde Canal.

In the early 1800s a dispute arose between Merricks and the other two partners resulting in Merricks leaving Stobmills and establishing a gunpowder mill at Roslin.

Up to 60 men, many from England, were employed at Stobmills Gunpowder Mills at any one time. They lived in the houses on Podermill Brae, known locally as the ‘Black Raw’. It was a highly dangerous occupation, explosions were frequent and deaths not uncommon.

Business was not too good by the middle of the century and fewer and fewer men were employed. The mill was closed shortly afeter 1861 and fell into ruins. In 1876 Robert Dundas of Arniston bought Stobmills House and the ruined mill buildings which lay around it and he had most of the buildings demolished to make way for a driveway from the gates at Stobmills through the old gunpowder works to Arniston House. Many trees were planted and some of the ruins left to create a ‘romantic atmosphere’.