Key Info

• Learning experience
• Verdant Works Café
• Gift shop
• Online store
• Hire part or all of Verdant Works for your special event

Introduction

Welcome to Verdant Works! 

Verdant Works is a world class visitor attraction which tells the story of Dundee’s industrial textile heritage in the atmospheric setting of a beautifully refurbished Mill building.  Hear the tales of the mill workers, see how they lived and worked in an industry which enveloped Dundee.  Explore this amazing building, see (and hear) the machines at work, and step back to a time where the Mills were the heart of Dundee.

What you will see

The story of jute and the story of Dundee are inseparable. The industry employed 50,000 people in the city at its peak and supplied much of the world’s demand for jute goods. As you explore the self-led museum at your own pace you will:

• Soak up the atmosphere of the cobbled 19th century courtyard.
• Enter a busy jute office of 1900 and meet some characters of the period.
• Find out how jute was harvested in India, how and why it came to Dundee and more about Dundee’s bustling docks.
• Experience the incredible sounds of the machines and see the jute process from raw fibre to woven cloth.
• See a typical Dundee ‘plettie’, learn about tenement life and the health of the mill workers.
• Discover who ‘kettle bilers’ were and all about the reversal of traditional gender roles in Dundee – finding out about mill girls, Suffragettes and the unions.
• Visit the Victorian Half-Time School and also see how the workers spent their precious leisure time.
• Enjoy drop in family activities in our specially designed Red Box learning hub.
• Appreciate the stunning mill architecture from the two viewing platforms in the High Mill and watch in awe as the 1801 Boulton & Watt beam engine tuns into action.

Don’t forget to stop by our gift shop and our award winning café to get a well-earned cup of tea and Dundee cake!

The Verdant Story

Verdant Works is at the heart of one of the earliest urban industrial areas in Scotland. Mills grew up here from the 1790s because of the availability of a water supply- the Scouring burn- to run the steam engines that powered the machinery.

The seemingly incongruous ‘green’ name of ‘Verdant’ for a textile works in an industrial area dates back to when Verdant was built. At that time most of the surrounding area was still green fields and nursery grounds.

The High Mill of Verdant Works was built in 1833 for David Lindsay, merchant and flaxspinner. Over the following thirty years further buildings such as warehouses, batching areas and offices were added until the site looked as it does today. Like many Dundee flax mills in the 1840s and 1850s Verdant Works witched to processing jute. By 1864 Verdant is recorded as possessing three steam engines driving 70 power looms and 2,800 spindles. A workforce of 500 was employed to prepare and spin jute in the mill and to weave in a separate factory across the road in Milne Street.

By 1889 Verdant’s time as a true textile works is over and the name disappears from the lists of mills and factories in the Dundee Directory. During the 1900s, under the ownership of Alexander Thomson & Sons, Verdant was used to re-cycle large amounts of jute waste produced as a by-product of the industry, to cure rabbit skins and to deal in scrap metal.

Dundee Heritage Trust bought the site in 1991 and the majority of the site opened as a museum in 1996. The High Mill was stunningly restored and opened to the public in 2015.