Lusky Mill

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Ruined remains of a large corn mill of 1823, set amidst largely wooded surrounds, to the NE of Lusky Road, roughly 1.5 miles W of the village of Killinchy.

The mill building is T-shaped and consists of two storeys with the long front facade facing N and the upright of the T extending to the S to the mill race. The building is largely overgrown and badly dilapidated but its rubble facade can still be glimpsed and to the front there are several window and door openings which have brick dressings. Some of the windows still have the remnants of their Georgian paned sash frames. Above one of the doorways there is said to be an inscribed date stone, but this was obscured by rampant plant growth. Above the doorway to the left is a small foot bridge leading to higher ground a few yards to the N.

The rear portion of the mill is largely hidden by trees. The mill race to the S appears to have been blocked and recently altered with breeze block construction in evidence. There appear to be remnants of the wheel itself.

To the S of the corn mill a scutch mill was constructed in 1864, but little could be discerned of this bar an ivy covered chimney stack.
To the NW of the mill complex is a small single storey house (?or office) with a hipped roof and sheeted timber door and two windows to front. To the W of this is a modern house which actually spans the River Blackwater.

The mill pond is to the N.

Historical information

Lusky mill was constructed in 1823 by David Gordon, the owner of near by Florida Manor, on the site of a much older mill. The mill is shown on the 1834 OS map (along with the house/office to the NW) and noted in the OS Memoirs of 1837 as in possession of a James McKeown and having a breast wheel of 14 feet in diameter and 6 feet in breadth. The same arrangement is marked on the revised OS map of 1859-60, but in 1864 a scutch mill was built to the west by the Shaw family, who appear to acquired the whole complex by this date. In c.1910 the Shaws sold both mills to William George Harris (of Maghera), whose family worked the scutch mill until it ceased operations in 1942 and the corn mill until its closure in 1950. The complex has been abandoned since this time, though a modern house now stands (over the River Blackwater itself) to the north.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS maps 1st ed. 1834, Co. Down 16.
2 PRONI VAL 1B/320 1st valuation, Kilmood parish, Kilmood td., c.1835.
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 96.
4 PRONI OS maps 1st rev. 1859-60, Co. Down 16.
5 PRONI 2nd valuation, Kilmood parish, Kilmood td., 1861.

Secondary sources
1 E.R.R. Green 'The industrial archaeology of Co. Down' (HMSO 1963), p.45.
2 'Mourne Observer'- 2nd January 1970, ‘Lusky Mills’.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Derelict ruins of a two storey, T-shaped corn mill of 1823, with much of building still standing and much of the internal machinery still in evidence.