Windmill Stump

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small windmill stump set on a hill to the S of the Belfast Road, c.1.5 miles NW of Newtownards. The stump is constructed in rubble with remains of render and coping to parapet. There is a ground level doorway opening to the SE and a window opening directly above. The stump measures roughly 6.5m in height by 3.75m in diameter. This stump was converted to a small holiday dwelling in the mid twentieth century but has been abandoned in recent years and is now derelict.

A short distance to the NW of this windmill is a dolmen-like grouping of large stones. It is uncertain whether this grouping is a natural formation or man made.

Historical information

This windmill is shown on the OS Maps of 1833/4 and 1858-60. On the later map it is referred to as a ‘flax windmill’. It may have been the ‘windmill for flax’ in Ballyrogan townland referred to in the OS memoirs of c.1833. The owner believes that this mill was once used for pumping water and was at the centre of a dispute between the Bradshaw family and Lord Londonderry concerning water rights, sometime during the 1790s or early 1800s. This seems dubious, however, because the aforesaid dispute is likely to have concerned Bradshaw’s flax mill at Kiltonga (Milecross Td.) and not this mill which never appears to have been a Bradshaw possession.
In the mid twentieth century this stump was converted to a small dwelling. It is now a derelict shell.
On the 1833/4 OS Map a windmill stump is shown a short distance to the E of this windmill.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL 1B/322 p.41 1st valuation, Parish of Newtownards, townland of Ballyrogan, c.1833. [The valuation records state that the land on which this windmill stood belonged to a Hugh Millican, though there is no mention of the mill itself.]
2 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st edition 1833/4, Co. Down sheet 5.
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 110.
4 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st revision 1858-60, Co. Down sheet 5.
5 PRONI 2nd (‘Griffith’s’) valuation, Parish of Newtownards, townland of Ballyrogan, 1863.
6 PRONI D.654/LE17 Londonderry Papers- leases concerning Ballyrogan townland c.1750-?.

Secondary sources.
1 E.R.R. Green 'The industrial archaeology of County Down' (HMSO 1963), p.52.
2 F.J. Bigger 'Four shots from Down' (?Belfast ?c.1910). [This book contains anecdotal tales of the Bradshaw family of Milecross Lodge, including the dispute with Lord Londonderry concerning water rights.]
3 Peter Car 'The most unpretending of places- a history of Dundonald' (Dundonald 1987), pp.31, 99.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Small rubble-constructed windmill stump of probable early nineteenth century origin, now derelict.