Stockbridge Mill and Silvermills
The next use of the lade after Greenland was another grain mill situated about 100 yards east of Kerr Street - Stockbridge Mill. In 1760 there was a trace-horse to pull carts up the steep slope from the ford. There was a steam engine by 1814. The mill, which was known as Tod's Mill, was largely destroyed in an explosion in 1901. Six people died. The death toll from mill accidents (explosions) was appalling.'
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Remains of Stockbridge Mill
'The only piece of the site of the old Stockbridge mills that remains is a remnant of wall behind Baxters Place bordering the car park for new housing. The building called Mill House is barely twenty years old! (in 2013)
Carry along Hamilton Place. West Silvermills lane leads past the recently restored Silvermills House of c.1760, now home for a firm of architects. Silvermills House was owned for a time by John Lauder, skinner and tanner, who built a large scale manufactory at the beginning of the 19th cent. His sons Robert Scott Lauder and James Eckford Lauder became well known painters
Silvermills House
The small industrial enclave of Silvermills was mainly occupied by tanners whose skills were in such demand, that when the New Town was expanding in its direction in 1820, the hamlet, which would otherwise be sacrificed to the street and terrace builders, was saved from obliteration.
Parts of the mills themselves stood on both sides of the lane to the south of the Mill house with some remnants of the tannery until replaced by housing in the 1990s
The village of Silvermills is bounded by Dundas Street, Henderson Row, Clarence Street, St Stephen's street
and Fettes Row. At the foot of East Silvermills lane on East side is an old iron gas bracket
which has been converted (and is still in use) into one of the earliest electric street lamps in Edinburgh.
Silvermills Lampost