Former mill,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Former corn mill set on the E side of the Carrickmannon Road (across from No.105), c.3 miles E of Saintfield..

The building is T-shaped in plan and split level, with the W facade single storey, but the other elevations two storey. It is random-rubble built with sandstone quoins and a Bangor blue slated gabled roof.

The front (E) facade has three doorway openings, plus a store door and two small window openings. The windows are without frames and two of the doorways have dilapidated timber sheeted doors. The S gable has a ground floor doorway to the right and a small window opening (without frame) high in the gable.

To the left of centre at the rear is a large, single storey gabled return, now badly dilapidated with its gable now completely open, but with door and window openings now blocked. The mill wheel appears to have been to the S face of the return and appears to have cut into the W facade of the main building. The mill race itself travelled through the main building (from W to E) and can still be glimpsed.

The main rear facade has several doorway and window openings (without doors or frames) to the right side, but those to the left are blocked and much of the facade covered in ivy growth.

The N gable is blank.

This former mill is now used for housing sheep and to the N side the sloping ground has been concreted and walled off to form a kind of pen.

Historical information

This former corn mill is shown on the OS maps of 1834 and 1858-60. It is mentioned in the OS Memoirs of 1835 as belonging to a Hugh Dugan and having a metal breast wheel of 13 feet in diameter by 3 feet in breadth. The mill must have been at least partly rebuilt in the 1860s as the valuation returns of 1863 note that the building (which was now in the hands of William Dugan) was ‘unfinished’.

In the late 19th [?or early 20th] century the building was converted to a school house (known as ‘The Mill School’), by a lacal priest by the name of Fr. Sheils. This school was attended by local Catholic pupils who had been temporarily withdrawn by Fr. Shiels from that further along the Carrickmannon road to the north.

The building is now used as a shelter for farm animals.

Primary sources
1 PRONI OS map 1st ed. 1834, Down 16.
2 PRONI VAL1B/335, 1st valuation Killinchy parish 1835.
3 ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II’, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), pp. 91, 92.
4 PRONI OS map 1st rev. 1858-60, Down 16.
5 PRONI 2nd valuation Killinchy parish c.1863.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Large, mainly two storey, rubble-built corn mill of pre 1833 origin, now used as a farm outbuilding. All machinery appears to have been removed and some of the openings have been blocked.