Nanny Abercrombie’s Windmill
By Duncan Harley
When Presidential hopeful Donald Trump began his tirade against Scotland’s renewable energy policy year he famously commented “”I don’t want to be standing on the first tee looking into an industrial wind turbine if I’m going to be spending all this money” and “we will spend whatever monies are necessary to see to it that these huge and unsightly industrial wind turbines are never constructed.” Perhaps he would be persuaded otherwise if he were to pay a even a fleeting visit to one of Aberdeenshire’s hidden gems, the Glassaugh Windmill just east of Sandend on the Buchan coast. Both used to blow in the wind.
At first glance, the windmill can easily be mistaken for a Pictish Broch or even a Martello Tower. Set back over 500 metres from the A98 between Portsoy and Cullen the structure has a covering of ivy which masks the outline and suggests a tower house with a walled garden circling around the base. Nothing could be further from the truth however!
In common with much of the Banff and Buchan coastline, the area around Sandend is full of Pictish remains. These are often built over or indeed incorporated in later structures such as farm houses, churches and dykes. The Glassaugh Windmill is just such a building.
General James Abercrombie of Glassaugh was as his title suggests a military man. He was born in 1706 to a wealthy Banffshire family and as was the custom of the time, he purchased a major’s commission to enter the army in 1742. He was promoted to colonel in 1746 and major-general in 1756. He is credited with having good organisational skills but little understanding of the art of warfare and was known to his troops as “Mrs Nanny Abercrombie” because of his skills at provisioning and providing creature comforts such as tents and hot food on the long marches through North America during the French and Indian War of 1689-1763.
Unfortunately, in the July of 1758 he met his “Charge of the Light Brigade” moment when he rather rashly directed his troops into a frontal assault on a fortified French position without the benefit of artillery support. More than 2,000 of his force of 15,000 were killed or wounded resulting in the good general being recalled to Britain where he duly became a member of parliament supporting the cause of British dominion over the Northern Territories of America and Canada. No surprises so far then.
When Major General Abercrombie MP returned to his native Scotland he of course took over the running of the family estate at Glassaugh and possibly lacking much to do in the parliament of the day he began organising the improvement of the agricultural economy of the area.
This was a time of land improvement and land enclosure. Labour was plentiful and indeed cheap as a large number of Irish Catholics had been disposed by the influx of English and Scottish aristocracy and had in many cases sought work on the land in Scotland. What was Major General Abercrombie MP to do?
He had been a poor general indeed but had as has been said, had good organisational skills. In the true spirit of Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk which is essentially a series of absurdly comic episodes, Abercrombie decided to build a windmill.
Now, in those far off days, most mills were powered by water. There are tens of thousands of watermills in the UK and at a guess there must be at least one in every inhabited town and village in Aberdeenshire. Transport was improving during the 1750’s but local flour and grain mills were still the order of the day and met the needs of the townships and small communities all around the shire. Windmills were not unknown in the North East, but were not that common due to the ease and availability of waterpower. The good General however decided that wind was the way to go.
As any engineer will know, the biggest challenge in building large structures is the sourcing of building materials. If you need to build a wall then you will require large quantities of heavy and difficult to transport stone. The shorter the journey from quarry to building site the better.
Well, it just so happened that Major General Abercrombie had a ready made supply of building materials in the form of a bronze age burial cairn. The folk who had built the cairn would have no objections to its recycling after all and of course Scottish Natural Heritage was not even a slight smile in the womb of the Natural Heritage (Scotland) Act 1991.
The Cup and Saucer was born. Using the materials from the ancient cairn, Abercrombie bade his workers to build an enormous windmill four stories high and with a tapering tower topped with white sails. It must have been the sight of the century for folk who had never travelled further than Sandend or Portsoy.
How long Abercrombie’s windmill was in full tilt is not recorded, however in a letter dated 23rd August 1761, the good general advised his daughter that high winds had almost blown off “the pompon of the wind mill which was only set up yesterday.”
The ivy covered stump of the structure is all that remains today to remind us of the man who had the vision to build it.
Mind you, when you think about it, you’re actually looking at a Bronze Age burial cairn undergoing a Tibetan sky burial.
Perhaps the man who would be President should re-visit his homeland for a few more hours.
© Images and words – Duncan Harley
(c) Stupidity – Donard Tlump
Kak 
THE LAST GARDNER
From The Secret Sunday Club – by Duncan Harley
In what turned out to be a uniquely unlikely event, the early morning bus from New Mordrach to Peking via Kabul and Lhasa had suffered an engine fire just outside Invermorrisay. It was mid-afternoon when Dod chanced upon what remained of the drama. He’d been on his way back from the monthly purchasing meeting at Library HQ but instead of taking the regular return route had driven round by Quarthies to sup tea from his Thermos flask in a lay-bye before heading back to work for the remainder of the afternoon. But, just a few hundred yards from the familiar rest stop, a less familiar sight in the form of a smoke blackened double decker bus hove into view.
The local fire engine with its volunteer crew had come and gone and a local farmer, busy with his beasts today, had stopped past to offer help in the morn. The damage appeared more than just superficial.
A tractor would come next day to drag the bedraggled double decker back home to New Mordrach for inspection but in the meantime, the big red liveried London bus was parked up at the end of a farm track with a balding man in a pink summer dress tinkering loudly under the blackened bonnet with what sounded like a lump hammer.
As he thumped away at the engine block, he could be heard cursing loudly as whisps of black oily smoke emerged from underneath the cab. A pool of sump oil floated on top of the fire-brigade water around the front of the vehicle and the cursing mechanic’s red patent leather sandals were now stained almost as black as the shiny leather handbag which lay open and discarded on the grass verge. A hairbrush, a mirror, a lipstick and a pair of soot blackened gloves had spilled onto the grass. And an oily, pink knitted cardigan hung abandoned on the hedge behind.
A curious Dod pulled up alongside and got out to inspect the strange scene.