Former Flax Mill

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2 storey flax mill built of rubble stonework, gabled at each end, mill wheel at S gable with various additions in temporary construction and the whole roofed in corrugated iron.

The access laneway passes both sides of mill, on west side at first floor level and on the east at ground floor.

The west side is 4 narrow bays long with 3 shuttered openings on ground floor and 1 shuttered opening at first floor, presently closed with corrugated iron. Also at first floor there is a wide door access in 2 leaves and sheeted in corrugated iron. As the doorhead is several feet above general eaves line, rough ashlar walls are carried up to form the jambs of the door. Otherwise the walling is in coursed random rubble.

The south gable has a large diameter iron millwheel, approximately 3600 mm, with the remains of a wooden flume to deliver water onto it. There is an opening in the gable where the flume stops over the wheel, presumably an access to control the flow of water to it. There is another smaller square opening towards the SE corner of the gable. The mill race, now overgrown, flows parallel to the west side and then turns at right angles to deliver water onto the flume. The tail race flows past the S gable.

The east side has a low pitched lean to shed against the masonry wall and enclosed with ramshackle timber framing and corrugate iron. A single storey timber framed shed extends from the N gable, has a pitched roof. The walls are partly sheeted with timber boards and corrugated iron. The back or west side is built into the rising ground with a retaining wall built in roughly squared stone.

There is an additional open iron frame high structure projecting eastwards from the SE corner of the lean to and roofed with orrugated asbestos, its side are partly clad. There is a further small lean-to abuting it in the angle so formed.

The iron mill wheel remains in a rusty state, with buckets in various states of collapse.

Historical information

The 1832 O.S.S. shows a mill here with another, presumably mill building to the south i.e. on the other side of the tail race. There is no evidence on the ground of this building. The O.S. Memoirs notes as follows “On the same mill stream above the corn mill is the flax mill; they cannot work both at the same time. Ballyharigan flax mill: breast wheel 11 feet in diameter, breath of rim 2 feet 2 inches, fall of water 8 feet, inside wheel 6 inches feet 6 diameter , with 3 scutchers, segments or cogs of metal; situated about 1 perch above corn mill; proprietor William Osborne Esquire, who holds this as well as corn mill, in his own hands. Information obtained from John Gallagher, miller”. Mr Osborne referred to was the resident of Ballyharigan House, now called Atlmover House. Nearby lived his brother, Rev. Osborne. Scutching ceased in the early 1950s.

The present owner inherited the mill from his father.

Griffiths valuation of 1858 gives a valuation of £10 for miller’s house and flaxmill. The millers house no longer exists.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. Map Co Londonderry sheet no 24
2. Griffiths Valuation 1858
3. Owner 30-07-1999

Secondary Sources
1. O.S. Memoirs of Ireland. Parishes of Co Londonderry VII 1834-5 Vol. 25 p20

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

As a building this mill structure has little to recommend it but it has local interest as a piece of industrial archaeology in that the basis of the mill structure is retained, the mill wheel and the mill and tail races though these are much overgrown.