Former Mill

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Cunningburn Mill is a group of houses picturesquely situated in a hollow roughly 1 mile NW of the Mount Stewart estate. Some of the houses are converted mill related buildings and almost all have been renovated/converted recently.

This is possibly the most interesting of the whole group as it is a rubble built former water powered corn mill dating from 1776. It is currently undergoing conversion to living accommodation. The former mill is ‘split level’ and is situated slightly to the SW of the thatched house.

The front NE facade has a doorway with stone dressings, but no proper door as yet. To the left of this are three window openings with recently installed timber casement windows. To the right of the doorway is a slightly larger opening set at a low level with stone dressings. This opening was probably once a small door but is now filled with a timber window with ‘Georgian’ panes. Above the window is an inscribed stone which states ‘AD 1776 W. HARRIS MILLER’. To the right of this window the earth has been excavated revealing more of the wall below the window level, in which there is a crudely fashioned (presumably unfinished) opening.

The NW gable is two storey with a casement window (similar to front) to the upper level. The lower level once held the water wheel and though this has been removed the arched opening for the axle remains. This gable merges with the side of a full height lean to extension (also built of rubble) which appears to be c.1860s and once house housed an engine. There is a large ‘unfinished opening to the ground level of the lean to.

The SE gable of the main building is blank.

The left half of the rear is taken up with the lean to former engine house, which has a large flat arched opening to the ground level of its SE face. The upper level of the right half of the original mill has two casement windows, as front. To the ground level is a large opening with a segmental arch head and stone dressings. The keystone is inscribed ‘1776 BT. BY. A. S.’. There is a small square opening to the right of the arch.

The gabled roof of the mill is in the process of being covered in Bangor blue slates and has a small brick chimney stack to the SE. There is a similar stack on the roof of the former engine house. The entire mill building is unrendered.

Historical information

The earliest information the writers have uncovered concerning this grouping is a map dated 1777 from the Londonderry Papers at PRONI. This map states that at this stage the lands of Cunningburn were part of the estate of Alexander Stewart, the then owner of the Mount Stewart estate and father of the future Marquis of Londonderry. The map shows the thatched cottage, the corn mill and what appears to be the kiln house. There is another house shown slightly to the NW of the kiln house, which may correspond to the site of a building which was demolished in fairly recent times or to the site of the present single storey building to the NW of the tall chimney, now used as a store. The corn mill had been built by Alexander Stewart the year before this map was drawn up, and, as the date stone implies was then under the supervision of miller W. Harris. Some distance to the north of the grouping at this stage there was a flax mill, which was also powered by the ‘Cunning Burn’, as was the corn mill.

The next map of the complex dates from 1829, it shows the same buildings as that of 1777, as does the first OS Map of 1834, however, by this date there was a windmill further to the NW and another corn mill to the south west of the townland, near the coast of Strangford Lough. By the 1830s we also know that possession of the corn mill and the flax mill further to the north of the townland had passed to one John Cooper and that the corn mill had a wheel 12 feet in diameter and 2.5 feet in breadth, and that the fall of water was 5 feet. It was also noted in the 1830s OS Memoirs, that ‘there is not a sufficiency of water in the summer season and the little there is said to be frequently cut off before it reaches the mills’. It was probably because of this insufficiency that the windmill to the NW had been built, wind power acting as an auxiliary to water power.

The revised OS Map of c.1858-60 shows the that the house on the opposite side of the lane from the thatched cottage had been built by this stage. Just to the south east of the kiln house there was another building at this stage also. This particular structure survived into fairly recent times and is remembered by older local residents as once serving as a shop. Interestingly the flax scutching mill and store (with the associated engine house and tall chimney) to the rear of the corn mill, had not been built by this time, thus dating this entire section to post c.1858. This section may date from the 1860s, a period when linen production increased, mainly due to the down turn in cotton production as a result of the American Civil War.

The flax mill ceased production in 1894 and the corn mill in c.1932 and during the Second World War the flow of water to the mill pond (directly behind [N] the thatched cottage), was halted. After this date much of the grouping served as animal houses and gradually fell into neglect. Much of the complex was purchased in the late 1980s and has been converted into dwelling houses. At this point (February 1998) only the former corn mill remains to be fully converted, but it is hoped that this will be completed soon.

References- Primary sources

1 PRONI Londonderry Papers D.654/M24/1 ‘A Map of several farms in the townland of Cunningburn, Parish of New-town Ards, County Down, part of the estate of Alexander Stewart Esq...by David Geddas..January 27 1777’.
2 PRONI Londonderry Papers D.654/M24/6 ‘Map of the lands and mills of Cunningburn...November 1829...by David Geddas’.
3 PRONI Londonderry Papers D.654/D24/1 Deed of partition concerning three mills in Cunningburn- John Cooper, Thomas Robson, William Cooper- 2 October 1830. [See also D.654/D24/2 Mortgage for £1,000, John Echlin and George Hamilton to Patrick Savage- 11 March 1763.]
4 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Down 11.
5 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 104.
6 PRONI VAL 1B/34 1st valuation, Newtownards c.1835.
7 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Revision, c.1860, Down 11.
8 PRONI 2nd valuation, Newtownards, c.1863.

Secondary sources
1 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', p.228.
2 Trevor McCavery 'Newtown- A history of Newtownards' (Dundonald, 1999), pp.41, 78,138.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
C. Ornamentation
H+. Alterations enhancing the building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Picturesque grouping of dwellings many of which are recently converted former structures associated with corn milling and flax scutching. All of these buildings have largely preserved their original exteriors, but their interiors have been altered although this has been carried out in sympathy with the original feel of the structures. The former corn mill of 1776 is undoubtedly the most noteworthy building in the whole group. The thatched cottage is probably the oldest building on the entire site, probably predating the mill building.