Former flax mill complex

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Large disused factory complex, originally a flax mill then a tannery, set within the small village of Shrigley, less than a mile NW of Killyleagh.

This former factory was abandoned some years ago and is in an advanced state of decay, with many of the buildings merely shells. Some of the surviving buildings date from 1845 [or perhaps even 1824], but all were completely renovated and extended in the mid 1900s and now appear largely bland and modern. In more recent times some of the smaller original buildings have been demolished, especially to the NW corner, which used to be the original entrance. In their positions and elsewhere some large (mainly single storey) modern warehouses and offices have been added to the site, and the main entrance has been shifted to the W, opening unto the Shrigley Road.

The most prominent of the original flax spinning mill ensemble is a large five storey building to the NE of the site. This is roughly rectangular in plan with its [presumably flat] roof hidden behind a parapet. It has various off shoots and is attached to much smaller two storey buildings to all sides, with a five storey off shoot to the N corner. Its façade is cement rendered with many windows to each floor, now either with badly dilapidated modern frames or without frames at all.

Attached to the SW façade of this large building is a smaller two storey L shaped building with a flat roof and rubble façade, brick dressings to openings, rendered brick quoins and rendered parapet. There are various large window openings at all sides to both floors with a mixture of badly dilapidated sash and more modern frames to some window openings, whilst others have lost their frames altogether or have been filled in with breeze block.

To the N of the large five storey building is a three storey block, whose cement render façade and window frames (what is left of them) largely replicate the large building. Attached to the NW of this block is a two storey building whose SE façade (which was all that could be seen of it) is in rubble with brick dressings to openings. This façade faces into a narrow ‘courtyard’, with the five storey building to the SE. To the SW end of the courtyard is a gateway in rubble with and elliptical arch dressed with rendered brick.

Set on a hill to the N of the complex is a tall, square plan chimney in brick with a rendered base.

Historical information

Elements of this factory complex began life as a cotton spinning mill, built in 1824 by a Belfast entrepreneur named John Martin. At the time the mill was considered one of the largest in both Ireland and Scotland and consisted of a six storey mill measuring 132ft by 46 with machinery driven partly by water and partly by steam. By 1836 factory inspectors were able to report that the mill had the largest number power looms in Ireland. Worker’s houses were built to the north of the site and in 1837 the OS memoir writers noted that 350 were employed by Martin and that it was ‘probably owing to the number of persons that find employment at the factory that there are so few vagrants about Killyleagh’. By the late 1830s this thriving settlement had grown into the small village of Shrigley, the name reflecting the close trading connections with the centre of the British cotton industry, Manchester

In 1845 an accidental fire destroyed most of the mill, but Martin built a new factory on the site, this time for the spinning of flax, an industry which had begun to replace cotton throughout Ireland. Like its predecessor this mill also thrived and in 1871 a grateful workforce erected a monument to Martin, just to the north of the gates of the mill itself. Martin himself died in 1876.

In 1930 the flax spinning mill closed. The complex lay idle until 1939 when it was taken over by a group of refugees from mainland Europe who converted it to a leather tanning and dying factory. The ‘United Chrometanners’ remained in business at Shrigley until the 1970s. During this period the face of the complex was greatly altered, with older buildings modernised and adapted, and new extensions added. Some of the older structures, including the gate lodges and house grouping clustered around the original entrance to the north (part of which may have dated from the 1820s), were demolished.

At present much of the complex lies derelict. Some modern buildings to the west of the former mill are still occupied by several businesses

Between 1968 and 1972 all of the former mill workers’ houses were demolished also and a new modern estate built further to the west.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS/1/3/24 OS map, 1st ed. 1834, Co. Down 24. [This map shows Martin’s original mill and the workers’ houses.]
2 PRONI VAL/1B/336 p.33 First valuation, Killyleagh, 1837. [Valuation of Martin’s original mill and the workers’ houses.]
3 PRONI OS/6/3/24/2 OS map, 1st rev., 1859, Co. Down 24.
4 PRONI Second valuation, Killyleagh, 1861. [In print in PRONI search room and Linen Hall Library.]
5 Linen Hall Library ‘Belfast News-Letter’ 29th December 1870.
6 PRONI D.1978/1 Legal papers relating to the Martin family, c.1878.
7 PRONI D.1255/17/3 & 5 Memorandum and articles of association, correspondence, copy deeds and briefs etc. all relating to the Shrigley flax mill, c.1900-20.

Secondary sources
1 E.R.R. Green ‘The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down’ (Belfast HMSO 1963), pp.10-11, 31.
2 C.E.B. Brett ‘Historic Buildings, Groups of Buildings, Areas of Architectural Importance in the Towns and Villages of East Down’ (UAHS Belfast 1973), pp.42-3.
3 J.A.K. Dean ‘The Gate Lodges of Ulster, A Gazetteer’ (UAHS Belfast 1994), p.96.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Large flax-spinning complex of 1845, converted to a leather tanning factory after 1939, but since abandoned and now derelict. Originally this site was home to a cotton factory, built in 1824 by John Martin of Belfast, but largely destroyed in a fire twenty years later. Elements of the flax spinning factory which replaced it still remain, most notably, a large five storey block to the west of the site and some of the smaller buildings immediately around it, albeit most of them in a plain modernised form with cement render facades and modern windows.