Glenoak Mills

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

An industrial site containing a number of buildings built variously of stone, brickwork, and rendered finishes, mostly in an altered condition, but some derelict and some refurbished. Almost all are of an industrial type except for a small domestic property, a rendered house of recently refurbished appearance, with a modern canopy added over the door. A number of original window openings and doorways have been blocked up in various buildings, while other windows have been replaced but not to the original pattern; corrugated sheeting has been used to replace slated roof coverings in places.

SETTING: The site stands near the northern edge of the village, on a site bordering the Crumlin River, downslope from Glen Oak House, and is reached directly off the main road.

Historical information

Originally established in 1765, built as flour and corn mills, by Rowland Heyland, and said to have been the nucleus which caused the origin of the town of Crumlin; they were the most extensive and complete flour mills in Ireland at the time and were the first to be built in Ulster; they were said to have given encouragement locally for the growth of grain; extensive stores were added soon after, built by the government. The flour mills were 5 storeys high, propelled by 3 waterwheels, and were built near Glen Oak House; the corn mill was built “about 100 yards away”, near the bridge, and was propelled by one water wheel. By the 1830s they had been taken over by Messrs Macauley & Son. From 1861 the lease was held by James Hunter, a flour miller with property also in Dunmurry and Antrim, until his bankruptcy in 1871; in 1872 Henry P. Rhodes took over as tenant, until the mills were burnt down in a fire in 1884. In 1886 the Ulster Woollen Company took over the property under Thomas Tait Scott, building a number of factory sheds for the purpose. During the 1970s the property was owned by Silentnight Ltd of Colne in Lancashire, following which it was taken over by the present owner.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1832-3, Co Antrim 59.
2. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 21: Parishes of County Antrim VII, 1832-8 (Belfast, 1993), pp 65-6, and 68.
3. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 35: Parishes of County Antrim XIII, 1833, 1835, 1838 (Belfast, 1996), pp 14, 48.
4. S. Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (London, 1837), p 439.
5. G.H. Bassett, The Book of Antrim (Dublin, 1888), pp 246-7.
Secondary Sources
1. C. Watson, The Story of the United Parishes of Glenavy, Crumlin, and Tullyrusk (Belfast, 1892), pp 48-9.
2. IHR 1342 and 7342.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is an industrial complex which is of some historical interest and significance to the locality and the development of the village, with its origins in the mid-18th century, but few if any significant vestiges of that period appear to remain, and successive changes, alterations and replacements have rendered the site little more than a miscellaneous collection of buildings for which no special architectural claims can be made.