Ruined windmill

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Ruined windmill tower of 1772-3 set on a hill top to the S of Windmill Lane, E of Ballynahinch town centre.

The tower is roofless and constructed in random fieldstone rubble. It measures roughly 8m in diameter, with walls over a metre thick. There are segmental headed door openings at ground level and four window openings, two at first floor level and two smaller openings at the level above this. The stonework at the top of the tower appears to have been restored in recent years, with other sections of rubble displaying signs of recent repair.

A circular ditch surrounds the windmill.

Historical information

This windmill appears to have been built in c.1773, as it was advertised in the Belfast News-Letter as ‘newly built’ in October of that year. It is shown on Taylor’s and Skinner’s map of 1777, the Rawdon estate map of 1782 and William Byer’s map of c.1790. In 1798 the area around the windmill was witness to the much fighting during the ‘Battle of Ballynahinch’, between Henry Munro’s United Irish forces and government troops (an event commemorated a painting executed by Thomas Robinson shortly afterwards). One of the insurgents, Hugh McCullough, was actually hanged from the sails of the mill itself.

The mill is shown on the OS map of 1834, but is not mentioned in the OS memoirs or the valuation records of the same year, suggesting it had been abandoned by this stage.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI D.1255 Title deeds, legal and testamentary papers, correspondence and Irish Land Commissioners Papers re the Ballynahinch Estate, 1630-1940.
2 Linen Hall Library ‘Belfast News-Letter’ 5 Oct. 1773
3 PRONI Taylor’s and Skinner’s Maps of the roads of Ireland (Dublin 1777), map
4 PRONI D.272/41 MS map of Ballynahinch by William Byers, c.1790
5 PRONI OS/1/3/22 OS map 1st ed., 1834, Co. Down 22.
6 PRONI VAL/1B/388A-B Valuation records, Magherdrool, 1834-1838.
7 PRONI VAL/1D/3/19 Valuation town plan, Ballynahinch, 1838.

Secondary sources
1 E.R.R. Green ‘The industrial archaeology of Co. Down (Belfast HMSO 1963), p.56
2 S. McCullough ‘Ballynahinch: centre of Down’ (Ballynahinch Chamber of Commerce 1968).
3 A.T.Q. Stewart ‘The summer soldiers’ (Belfast 1995), pp.211-229
4 Bill Wilsdon ‘The sites of the 1798 Rising in Antrim and Down’ (Belfast 1997) pp.164-169.
5 W.A. Maguire (ed.) ‘Up in arms: The 1798 Rebellion in Ireland’ (Ulster Museum Publication 1998), pp.244-249. [This book includes a reproduction of Thomas Robinson’s painting.]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Disused, rubble-built windmill stump of c.1773, the walls of which display signs of recent repair work.