Water mill - vertical-wheeled

The National Monuments Service's description

The site of a medieval watermill known as the 'Moate Mill' located in the S quadrant of the historic town of Mullingar (WM019-089----). This mill was located on the banks of the River Brosna in close proximity to the present site of Westmeath County Council Offices. The mill known in the 17th century as 'the moate mylle' (Orpen 1911, ii, 86) belonged to Thomas Petit and was located SE of the Anglo-Norman motte castle (WM019-089005-) and immediately S of the fording point (WM019-089014-) over the River Brosna. In 1612 Thomas Petyt [Petit] of Irishtown was granted 'the Moate Mill on the S side of Mollingar' (Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I, 233). The 1641 Survey of Mullingar recorded the existence of ‘the tan house (WM019-089049-), lying and being from the frank garden (WM019-089027-) of the said town on the north, the river (Brosna) leading to the motte mill on the east’ (Andrews and Davies 1992, 15). In 1667 the confirmation of a land grant to Sir Arthur Forbes under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation described the monument as 'Mount Mill with a parcell of pasture belonging to it' (NLI p 1895).
In 1682 Sir Henry Piers recorded that ‘the name of the town if Englished, imports the short mill; indeed in my time, here hath been an over-shaft mill (WM019-089006-) of the least wheel that ever I saw, which with buckets and all was not eight foot (2.4m) in diameter, but now it is converted into a breast mill. There are also in this town on the same water [River Brosna], two other mills (WM019-089033-; WM019-089038-)(Vallancey 1786, 77). Richards map of Mullingar dating from 1691 places the mill immediately S of the fording point and to the SE of the motte castle (WM019-089005-) standing on the S bank of the River Brosna (Andrews and Davies 1992, 2). This watermill may have been built on the site of an early Christian horizontal watermill (Ibid.). This mill was probably located in the triangular shaped field depicted on the 25-inch OS map which is formed by a mill race running off the River Brosna.

See attached image of watermill shown on Richards Map of 1691, standing on the River Brosna with motte and possible bailey castle to N - taken from Irish Historic Towns Atlas of Mullingar (Andrews and Davies 1992, Map 4).

Compiled and revised by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of revised upload: 27 July 2015

References

Andrews, J.H. and Davies, K.M. 1992 Mullingar. Irish Historic Towns Atlas, No. 5. Dublin. Royal Irish Academy.

Vallancey, C. (ed.) 1786 Collectanea de rebus hibernicis, Volume 1. Dublin. Luke White.

NLI, p 1895 – National Library of Ireland, microfilm copy of the abstracts of grants under the acts of settlement and explanation, 1666-1684. Dublin. National Library of Ireland.

Bradley, J., Halpin, A., and King, H. 1985 Urban archaeological survey - county Westmeath. Unpublished report commissioned by the Office of Public Works, Dublin.

Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I - Irish patent rolls of James I: facsimile of the Irish record commissioners' calendar prepared prior to 1830, with foreword by M.C. Griffith (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1966)

Walsh, P. 1957 The Placenames of Westmeath. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Orpen, G.H. 1911-20 Ireland under the Normans (1169-1216), 4 vols. Oxford. Clarendon Press.