Innerleithen Mill Lade Trail
Innerleithen’s mill lade is one of the town’s most visible reminders of its industrial history. With support from Destination Tweed’s Community Grants Scheme, Innerleithen Community Trust (ICT) created a heritage trail to tell the stories of the mill lade and its role in the town’s past, present and future.
ICT aimed to create a trail that would interpret the heritage of the lade and its role in the town’s past, present and future, with a focus on the industrial history (textile mills and other businesses) and the natural history of the Leithen Water and River Tweed as well as the lade, especially showing how nature has recovered since industry came to an end.
The trail was intended to encourage people into the town, and then out to the Tweed and up to the start of the lade on the Leithen Water.
To produce interpretive content, ICT drew on extensive local knowledge and expertise, with support from Destination Tweed’s Connecting Threads and Uncovering the Tweed projects. They delivered series of arts, ecology and archaeology workshops for volunteers, school groups and local residents: topographic and photographic surveys with AOC, filming, sketching, painting, sound recording etc with Connecting Threads.
Art Workshops
With support from Connecting Threads, artist Zoe Atherfold ran art workshops for a range of age groups, encouraging creative responses to the mill lade and its natural and historical heritage.
Archaeology Workshops
Partnering with another of Destination Tweed’s projects, Uncovering the Tweed, a team of volunteers worked with archaeologists from AOC Archaeology Group to create a comprehensive record of some of the mill lade’s historical features. The link below takes you to the results of this work:
Wildlife on the Mill Lade
Ecologist Elaine Rainey led a series of workshops to introduce people to the ecology of the mill lade. She also set up wildlife cameras to record some of the creatures that live on and around the water. The results of that survey are below – from ducklings to dippers, and otters to stoats!
Video credit: Elaine Rainey
Total project costs: £10,000.00
Grant awarded: £10,000.00 (100% of total costs)
Three multi-disciplinary workshops, each comprising archaeology, art and ecology engagement, for St Ronan’s Primary School, Tweeddale Youth Action, and local senior citizens
1 history pamphlet produced
1 community drop-in event
8 interpretation panels installed
Launch event with over 70 attendees
It’s always a pleasure to see a community so proud of its history and embracing what that history can bring to the future. Thank you.
Spent a lovely afternoon learning about the mill lade
[Youth group member] has taken a great deal from the day, using the knowledge he gained to assist with his work experience and college course that revolve around animal welfare, and has shown an interest in continuing to learn about ecology. – Feedback from Tweeddale Youth group leader
The Community Grants Scheme was made possible by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland.
Find out more about Destination Tweed’s Community Grants Scheme