Flax Store and Weigh Room

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

This extensive former flax spinning mill and thread works is situated on the right bank of the Upper Bann, at the NW end of Gilford village, and has been sub-divided into five discrete units (/20A-E).
HB17/01/020C, at the E end of the premises, comprises (1) a long three-storey former flax store, and (2) a small single-storey former weighing room. Although both are abandoned, they survive in fair condition.

1. Flax store
A three-storey building aligned N-S along the E side of the block. Old prints and drawings show a two-storey building originally; it was heightened to its present three storeys in the period 1903-10.
Flat concrete roof behind low concrete blocking course. Roof gutters and cast-iron down pipes. Walls are of random rubble blackstone with stepped vee-jointed granite quoins to W elevation, and moulded cement-rendered eaves. All openings have flat concrete heads and brick jambs. The windows have flush concrete cills and are sheeted over to the ground floor.
The W elevation is 10 openings wide. There are three doorways to the GF (one a pair of sliding timber doors) and three double-leaf sheeted timber loading doors to each of the upper floors. All windows have 4x4-paned metal frames (with 2x2-paned opening panels). Rising from the centre of this elevation is a small single-storey addition (probably for a goods hoist motor). This addition has a flat roof, cement-rendered walls, casement windows to its W and S elevations, and door out on to the roof at E.
The N gable is heavily overgrown, but no openings were discernible.
The E elevation has windows to all floors, detailed as the W side.
The S gable is devoid of openings. Two small satellite TV dishes have been attached.

Roof: Concrete
Rainwater goods: Cast-iron down pipes
Walls: Random rubble blackstone
Windows: 4x4 metal

2. Weigh house
A small single-storey, single-bay building aligned N-S at the SW end of the block. It is probably of earlier 1900s date (but post-1910).
Pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles, oversailing timber eaves, and timber bargeboards with drop finial at S end. Rainwater goods missing. Red brick walls.
Sheeted-over doorway to S gable and 2x2-paned timber window to W elevation (concrete cill).
Set into the ground along its W side is a large cast-metal drive-on weighbridge.

Roof: Pitched natural slate
Rainwater goods: Missing
Walls: Brick
Windows: 2x2 timber

Setting
This block is located at the E end of the premises, behind Bann Street. To its W is a multi-storey mill block, HB17/01/020B. To its north, separated from the premises by a post and wire fence, is a landscaped public park. In the yard immediately west of the main building was a two-storey rubble masonry yarn preparing department and a Belfast-roofed rubble masonry store. Both buildings have been demolished and no traces survive.

Historical information

On 12 February 1835, Hugh Dunbar , a linen thread and cloth manufacturer of Huntly, near Banbridge, leased a corn and tuck mill a short distance E of the present complex in perpetuity from Hugh and Eliza Law. Dunbar had formed a partnership with William Stewart with the intention of erecting a flax spinning mill at the north-west end of Gilford. For this, they needed control of the water supply belonging to the corn/tuck mill.

Work on the new complex began in 1836 and entailed the erection of a five-storey flax spinning mill on the right bank of the river, a handloom weaving factory on the opposite bank and houses for the workers. The five-storey spinning mill and a 22ft diameter x 20ft wide iron breastshot waterwheel of c.90hp output are both explicitly noted in the 1837 Ordnance Survey Memoir. The wheel may well have been designed by the eminent English millwright William Fairbairn. Part of the mill may have become operational in 1838, but the complex was not officially opened until November 184l.

William Stewart died in 1837 and he was replaced by Robert Thompson. Dunbar soon bought his new partner out and then formed another partnership with J.W. McMaster of Armagh. James Dickson became a third partner in 1839. In 1843, the flax spinning and bleaching operations were being carried on by Dunbar, Dickson & Co, and thread production by Dunbar, McMaster & Co. Dunbar died in 1847 and the enterprise was eventually acquired outright by the McMasters. The business was incorporated as a limited liability company in 1886 under the ownership of H. Dunbar McMaster (son of J.W.) and his six brothers.

By 1846, the factory was described as “the largest, or certainly one of the largest, of the flax-spinning factories in Ireland”.
A large scale map of 1860 shows that the complex had largely taken its present size and form. Two chimneys are shown, indicating the use of steam power as well as water. Further details of these engines are given by J. Smyth in 1874, when he describes them as four condensing steam engines working in tandem with the waterwheel. Coal for the steam boilers would probably have been off-loaded from the Newry Canal at Madden Bridge, some 1½ miles south-west of the village. From 1859 onwards, when the Banbridge Junction Railway Co opened the Scarva-Banbridge line, there was also a railway halt at Lawrencetown.

The 1861 Valuation Book describes the premises as “Gilford flax spinning mill, thread manufactory and yard”, all with a rateable valuation of £840. Its operators are given as John Walsh McMaster, James Dickson, Benjamin Dickson, William Spolten and William Robert Massaroan.

A fire in 1869 caused £40,000 worth of damage to buildings and some were subsequently rebuilt.
By 1888, the mill had over 1500 employees, many of whom lived in company houses nearby. Water and steam power drove 16,000 spindles for spinning yarn and a further 4000 for twisting the spun yarn into thread which was exported throughout the world.

The site was described in 1891 as one of the largest thread manufactories in the UK, with a weekly production of 75,000 miles of yard and thread, both bleached and unbleached.

The 1902 Valuation revision entry notes that a portion of the mill had been burnt and was in the course of being rebuilt. A footprint broadly similar to that of today is shown on the 1903 large-scale town map.

In 1907, the site’s valuation rises from £843 to £893, and then to £1070 in 1910, indicating substantial additions. These included the raising of the multi-storey mill buildings, including the one under review, by a further storey. Sometime after 1903, the waterwheel was also replaced by the present water turbine and an electricity generating house erected beside the turbine house; the valuation note books indicate this happened c.1913 or shortly afterwards.

Yarn and thread production continued until c.1986 when the mill closed. Thereafter part of the site was used to house small-scale industrial units and a coal yard. Ambitious plans for the buildings’ conversion into an apartment, leisure and shopping complex were formulated in the 2000s but came to nothing and the site now lies unoccupied.

References – Primary sources:
1. PRONI D1769/8/1. Conveyance from Hugh and Eliza Law to Hugh Dunbar cited in 1885 document.
2. OS Memoirs for Tullylish Parish, 1837 revision. Reprinted as A. Day & P. McWilliams (eds), Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland: Parishes of County Down III, 1833-8, Mid-Down, p.147 (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1992).
3. National Archive, Dublin VO/MILL/5. Valuation Mill Books, Co Down (no date).
4. PRONI OS/6/3/26/1. First edition OS six-inch map, Co Down sheet 26 (1834)
5. PRONI OS/9/33/1/3. Town plan of Gilford, 1:1056 scale (1860).
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48E, p.66. Second Valuation Book for Tullylish Parish, Banbridge Union (1861).
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-H. Valuation revision books, 1864-1929.
8. PRONI OS/8/11/2/1. Town plan of Gilford, 1:1056 scale (1903).
9. PRONI VAL/12/A/3/7, p.46. Valuation noebook (1910).
10. PRONI OS//11/201/14/1. First edition Irish Gird 1:2500 map, sheet 201-14 (1972).

References – Secondary sources:
1, J. Smyth, On the Industrial Uses of the Upper River Bann (London: Taylor and Francis, 1875).
2. G.H. Bassett, The Book of Co Down, pp 262-263 (1888).
3. The Industries of Ireland, Part 1: Belfast and the Towns of the North, p.165 (London, 1891). Reprinted in 1986 as ‘Industries of the North One Hundred Years Ago’ by Friars Bush Press, Belfast.
4. E.R.R. Green, the Industrial Archaeology of Co Down, p.22, entry 30 (Belfast, HMSO, 1963).
5. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland, plates 83.4 and 87.2 (Belfast: HMSO, 1980).
6. M.P. Campbell, ‘Gilford and its mills’, in Banbridge & District Historical journal, vol.2 (1990).
7. Report on turbine by Mr Terry Maguire, Newmills Hydro, Co Antrim (March 1997).
8. F.W. Hamond, Mill Waterworks, Gilford Spinning Mill, Co Down (report prepared for Environment & Heritage Service, 24 November 1997).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A two-storey mid-19th century flax store raised to three floors in the early 20th C. HB17/01/020C, comprises a long three-storey former flax store, and a small single-storey former weighing room. This block and the other buildings and structures within this complex comprise one of the largest flax spinning mill concerns still surviving in the Province, and also one of the few to have also produced thread. Its proportions and regularly fenestrated rubble-stonework reflect its mid-19th century date of erection, whilst the use of concrete on its roof reflects its early 1900s expansion.

This mill complex was one of the largest in Ireland and of national importance. It also has considerable group value with the adjoining village, particularly given that so many of the houses in the latter were built by Dunbar, McMaster & Co.

General comments

This block was formerly included in HB17/01/020.