Weaving Shed Museum

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey nine bay former mill building in stone with brick trims around openings. Natural slate roof strap concrete coping.

Main entrance to museum on south west side of building across a bridge at first floor to a central semi-circular arch with door behind. Timber casement windows to four tall openings on each side. 12 panes. Similar arrangement of windows below, also with segmental heads but of much more normal proportion.

The north west gable facing the car park of the Roe Valley Country Park is blank but has a large cast iron water wheel placed against it. The wheel is an exhibit - there was never any millrace to this side of the building.

The north east elevation is to an enclosed maintenance yard.. Seven windows as described for the south west elevation are arranged regularly at first floor. To the basement two doors with roller shutters are interspersed between six smaller segmental head windows and a door. There is a large two and a half metre wide window at first floor above one of the doors. The other has a segmental hinged door above.

The south east elevation is also blank though the former millrace still passes to one side. A timber mill wheel sits near the race. This antique was a former exhibit removed for health and safety reasons.

The millrace is connected to a sluice gate to the south west of the building. This sluice is on a millrace travelling from Sam Moore’s Weir 400 metres to the south east on the River Roe. In front of the building is a reconstruction of a horse drawn oats or flax grinder and a scalloped pounding stone. The mill race once travelled on to the corn mill (see HB02/03/017) but was diverted to increase the head in the mill pond in the last century.

Historical information

Indicated on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1831 though not labelled as a mill. It probably one of the buildings associated with the bleaching of linen on Largy Green to the north west which ceased to work in 1831 according to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834-5. It may have been one of the three houses of the old bleach green according to the Memoirs (p.120) occupied for a linen manufactory established in 1833 but it is more likely that these were the three buildings adjacent to Roe green to the south (see HB02/03/012 & 013). This building is indicated as an ‘Old Beetling Mill’ in the 1848 Ordnance Survey Map a process used to ‘finish’ the linen and give it a shine using repeated impacts of wooden hammers on the cloth. The manufactory prepared yarn to be given out to local weavers, an earlier part of the process. Its name ‘The Weaving Shed’ suggests that it was used as a replacement for the cottage industry of weavers later in the century as mechanisation increased. The industry was reported to be derelict in 1857 and it is clear from the 1848 label that this building was disused ten years earlier. The building is reputed to have been used in the early experiments of John Edward Rritter with electricity in the 1880s and according to the wardens at the Roe Valley Country Park, he was responsible for the unusual style of windows in a renovation of 1901. This is not substantiated by the authoritative Electricity from the Red River, however, which names only the saw mill (now demolished) as the site of the electric works. The large scale 1907 map clearly shows a mill race emerging from the centre of the building, something which appears to be marked on the 1830 map and omitted in 1848. Any use to which the mill was put was probably discontinued in order to increase the head for electricity generation at Largy Power Station (HB02/03/008) during the early years of this century. It was ruinous and without roof in the present edition of the Ordnance Survey (1976).

Incorporated in the Roe Valley Country Park in 1976 the building was renovated by the D O E and converted into a museum in 1984.

References:

OSS 1830 & 1848
The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol. 25 P.120.
Electricity from the Red River NIE
Roe Valley Country Park Records
Industrial Archaeology Record Reference: 1680:6

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H+. Alterations enhancing the building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A former mill building interesting for its association with the once important linen industry off The River Roe. Building is well preserved and in good condition. However, conversion to a museum has obscured the location of the original mill wheel and race and all of the internal structure is new, reducing its historical importance. As architecture the building is pleasing and well proportioned.