Following the demise of the Herbertshire Printfield the site with its three water wheels was bought in 1866 by John Miller of John Miller & Co who quickly established a lithographic print work on part of the site of the old calico printfield. Another part was leased to John Gray for a dyewood works, but the third water wheel seems to have been neglected for in 1883, when the site was again up for sale, only two wheels are mentioned. In 1884 the property was bought by John Luke of Headswood Paperworks and the dyewood mill converted into the Anchor Paper Mill. The lithograph works seem to have been converted into a black mill which was leased out to the Denny Black Milling Company whose main partner was James Cumming.
The black mill stood immediately on the north side of the lade, separated from the paper mill by a wide road. On the other side of the lade was the Vale Paper Works.
On 5 November 1893 the black mill was almost entirely destroyed by fire. The two-storey building was not insured. However, it seems to have been rebuilt for on 25 March 1895 it again caught fire. The fire started in the boiler-house and a large number of employees from the adjacent papermill helped to confine it to that part of the building, saving several tons of completed blacking (Falkirk Herald 27 March 1895, 6). The following year Cumming’s new blacking mills at Sunnyside, Camelon, opened and Carronvale was closed.
National Grid Reference
| Carrinvale Black Mill | NS 8106 8330 |
Falkirk Local History Society 