The Mill of Cosh
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The basin of the Cosh, gives a Girnoc greeting
The Mill of Cosh is aptly titled for in etymological terms this is the "mill of the hollow". It occupies a flat basin at the foot of the Girnoc between the fir covered Creag Ghiubhais (the Sister Hill) and Creag Phiobaidh (Rock Hill of the Piping), both peaks that rise above 450m.

This was the Mill of
Joseph Gordon (1782-1858), the eldest son of "Camlet John" and Euphemia MacAndrew.

Joseph was born at Camlet at the end of 1782, and in the year before his mother Euphemia's death, 1806, he married Nicolas Gordon of a neighbouring family. Nicolas was the youngest daughter of James Gordon in Khantore and Janet Smith, and her older sister Margaret, became Joseph's step-mother two years later.

So within a very short passage of time, father and son, had married two sisters! Truly the "inextricable sibness!"

Between 1807 and 1823, Joseph and Nicolas Gordon, had eight children, though their eldest daughter, and probably two others, died in infancy. All were born at Camlet, which at that time, may have held up to twenty families making up a small
"fairm-toun." Sometime thereafter the family moved down the glen to the 10-acre croft at Mill of Cosh.
After the death of Joseph in 1858, his son-in-law, Charles Leys ran the mill however this was for a relatively brief period as he emigrated to Australia before 1871. It seems his wife (Jane Gordon, daughter of Joseph) did not wish to go, for she remained at Girnoc cottage with her youngest daughter, and died there in 1898.

The mill was then tenanted by
Alexander McPherson, who relocated his family from Glengairn. Some distant recollections of an old Girnoc resident, John Robertson, remain:

"The Mill of Cosh was burned fa'n a lad Reid took over from Alexander McPherson. It was rebuilt, and put back into working order but it did very little after that I was told. I was often there when it was rinnin."

"The dam was away out the Girnock. The dam was opened on a wire connected to a chain wrapped around a drum. It was a fair sized dam at one time but to look at it noo it's nothing. The whole things grown in, there's trees growin in it noo.They took the water oot the Girnock to supply it. They just used the dam tae top up the Girnock fan the mill wis workin."
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