A & R Tod’s Mill

Tod’s Mill on the 1894 map, at the junction of Commercial Street and North Junction Street.

Extracted from Ordnance Survey Town Plan, Edinburghshire Sheet I.16.17. Surveyed: 1894, Published: 1895. Original scale 1:500. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

A view of the mill, from outside the Caley Station looking east along Commercial Street.

Courtesy of Hamish Stevenson

These mills were owned by A & R Tod, and known formally as the North Leith Flour Mills. They were a prominent landmark in Leith because of the tall chimney near the junction. According to ‘The Story of Leith’ by John Russell, written in 1922 and accessed via Electric Scotland, ‘ The Leith Flour Mills (locally known as Tod’s Mills) in Commercial Street are the largest in the Port. The original mills were burned down in 1874. Leithers still remember and speak of this fire as one of the most destructive in the history of the town, the damage amounting to £168,000. In the original and also in the rebuilt mills the wheat was ground by millstones, but in 1882 steel roller mills were installed. Since that date great improvements have been made in milling machinery, as we have already said, and the Leith Mills have several times been reconstructed in order to give effect to these improvements and to keep the mills thoroughly up-to-date. They have now a capacity of over six hundred thousand bags per annum’.

There is much more abouth them mills on the Threadinburgh website.