The Orry Mill was started to share our love of crafting and colour with the local community. The shop was to be more than a retail outlet, a place to visit and spend time in, to leave having learned something new, or to have found something that inspired you just a little bit.

The shop was started midway through 2018 by Tilde Olsen and her husband Stephen McBride.

Tilde is originally from Denmark where she attended Steiner School with a focus on Arts and Crafts learning to knit and various crafts. Taught to knit and crochet by her mother and grandmother, Tilde maintained her craft and designs and teaches knitting and crochet.  Tilde has BA in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art. 

Stephen is a full-time IT Consultant and supports the operations of the shop.  Before working in IT, Stephen ran his own Production and Post Production Broadcast Audio company and worked on commercials, TV shows and feature films.  Stephen grew up in the village of Eaglesham and has a strong connection to the history and importance of crafting and textiles to Glasgow.  

 

 

We wanted to have a shop that was full of colour, where you would be surrounded by quality vibrant yarn, yet also be a calming, inspiring and tactile place and to provide support and advice to expand your crafting.

The wider benefits of crafting for relaxation or to develop your creativity are well known.  There is a wealth of published papers that demonstrate taking time to craft is beneficial to your health. It creates ‘head-space’ to reflect, focus and quiet the busy mind in our unsettled times.

These deliberate pauses we carve out for ourselves can be nurturing for body and mind and if we can help to encourage and support creating the time, space, and tools to do that, then that would make us very happy indeed.

We believe that crafting can be a deeply personal, solo activity but at the same time a social community activity, and we would like to create the space to switch between the two.

Our focus is on natural fibres and sustainable products and we review our stock all the time to curate, in our view, the loveliest yarns and tools to support your craft.  It is a changing world and yarn and accessories come in a huge variety of materials and its difficult for them to all to be 100% truly environmentally friendly and affordable and available to all, but we do strive to make that our focus when stocking our materials.

Over time we will be doing our best to move our range towards truly sustainable and ethical for producers and the environment.

Let us know what you think.

Email us: info@theorrymill.co.uk

 

The name ‘The Orry Mill’ refers to the open space in Eaglesham known as ‘The Orry’ (Old Scots for 'area') in which there are the remains of a cotton mill.

The mill and the village were designed by Lord Alexander Eglinton, but built by his brother Archibald. The Eglinton family were responsible for a series of cotton mills and key agricultural developments throughout the late 18th and early 19th

Century.  

The area of Busby, Eaglesham, Clarkston and Newton Mearns are south of the city of Glasgow in Scotland.  As small villages they all had water powered cotton mills, and this drove the development of these villages, the buildings, geography and layout as we see it now.

The Village was built around the mill in the shape of the letter 'A' after the the Eglinton brothers Alexander and Archibald.