Orpin's Mill, Orpinsmill Road, Dunamoy, Doagh, Ballyclare, Co Antrim, BT39 0SX

Orpin's Mill is a plain, sturdy corn mill of around 1840, built in roughly squared basalt rubble with hipped slate roofs. It stands on a hillside approximately 3 miles north-west of Ballyclare in the small rural settlement that takes its name from the mill — Orpinsmill — in the townland of Dunamoy. The mill is now vacant, with its openings largely bricked up and its water wheel removed, but it survives as an unusually laid-out example of the many small mills that once operated throughout the Province. A short terrace of rubble-built two-storey houses, also dating from the 1840s and likely built for mill workers and their families, stands immediately to the south along the road.

The building is arranged on an H-plan, consisting of two substantial two-storey hipped-roof blocks connected by a two-storey link section that is now roofless. The front elevation faces north-east. The southern block is the larger of the two and remains fully two storeys on all sides, owing to the relatively level ground at its end. Attached to its eastern side is a single-storey roofless projection that originally housed the water wheel. The northern block is built into a steeply rising hillside and consequently appears single-storey when viewed from the north.

All walling is in roughly squared basalt rubble, not uniform in character, and the differing coursing patterns across the building hint at its evolution over time. The regularity of the openings and the coursing of the southern block in particular suggest it was originally single-storey and may be later in date than the rest of the structure.

The front (north-east) elevation is asymmetrical. The eastern face of the southern block has a relatively large, recent-looking flat-arched vehicle doorway on the ground floor, fitted with a metal-sheeted door, metal lintel, and cement-rendered jambs. Above, on the first floor, are two small windows, both filled in with breeze block — the method used throughout the building for blocked openings. The linking section is set well back from the faces of the two main blocks; its eastern face has a blocked ground-floor window to the right and a smaller blocked window roughly at first-floor centre. The eastern face of the northern block has a single small blocked first-floor window, with the remains of a timber two-pane frame still in place. The inner face of the southern block (facing into the recess formed by the set-back link) is blank, though the outline of a former ground-floor window can be made out. The equivalent inner face of the northern block has a largely blocked first-floor window.

The southern elevation belongs entirely to the southern block, including the tall single-storey water wheel projection at its eastern end. At ground floor are a blocked window to the far left, a pedestrian doorway with a metal-sheeted door, and two further blocked windows. The first floor has four blocked windows, all regularly spaced. The water wheel projection retains the remains of a high-level window opening.

The northern face of the northern block, which reads as single-storey from this side, has three roughly evenly spaced blocked openings: the outer two were small windows, while the central one appears to have been a doorway.

The rear (west) elevation broadly mirrors the front, with the two projecting blocks and recessed link, though the southern block projects further to the west than the northern block and again includes the water wheel projection, which covers almost the entire ground-floor level of the western face. The western face of the northern block, which is part single- and part two-storey due to the sloping ground, has no openings. The inner southern face of the northern block (facing into the rear recess) has a blocked first-floor window. The western face of the linking section has a blocked ground-floor window to the left, with a large section of walling missing to the right where there may have been a further opening; at first-floor centre are the remains of another window, the stonework around it substantially fallen away. The inner northern face of the southern block has a blocked first-floor window to the right. The water wheel projection on the western face of the southern block has a pedestrian doorway to the far right on its western face; its short northern face has lost most of its walling. Above the projection, at first-floor level on the western face of the southern block, are two blocked window openings.

Both main blocks have plain eaves courses. The roofs of both the northern and southern blocks are hipped and slated, though considerable sections of slate are missing, particularly on the northern block. The linking section and the water wheel projection are both roofless. There are no rainwater goods.

The history of the site can be traced through a series of documentary sources. A smaller building of a different plan is shown on this general site on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832, with some further buildings on the opposite, eastern side of the road. The valuation returns of around 1836 record those eastern buildings as a long but modest single- or one-and-a-half-storey house with a single-storey outbuilding in the hands of a Hugh Duncan, but make no mention of structures to the west. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the previous year, however, do record a corn mill within the townland of Dunamoy, described as being propelled by an overshot water wheel of 15 feet in diameter and 2 feet 6 inches broad, with a kiln attached; it is possible this earlier mill had ceased working by 1836, which would explain its absence from the valuations.

The present building appears on the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1857 and is recorded in the valuation of 1860 as a two-storey slated corn mill with a two-storey kiln and a single-storey wheel house. At that time the property was in the possession of Charles Langtry, rated at £30, with its quality grading suggesting a construction date of around 1840 or perhaps a few years earlier. It was equipped with three pairs of stones for the shelling and grinding of hard corn, a wheel measuring 22 feet by 4 feet, and worked twelve hours a day for six months of the year. The row of houses to the south is also recorded at this date. Charles Langtry died in 1863 or 1864; a John Gilmore is recorded as occupant in 1864, followed by a James A. Wiley the following year, and a John Fleming in 1866. Fleming vacated the premises at some point before 1890, after which the lease passed to a John Lewis, whose descendants are believed to have worked the mill until around 1980, though the actual closure date may have been somewhat earlier. According to a local resident, the property was subsequently sold to the nearby Springvale bleachworks, who acquired it solely for its water rights and later sold the building on. All machinery is believed to have been removed in the 1980s.

A valuer's description from 1934 records: "A fairly substantial corn mill getting its motive power from a 24-foot diameter water wheel by 4 feet. The mill works for 5 to 6 months each year — long hours when working (equivalent to 8 months in normal hours). The quantity of material dealt with is stated to be about 400–500 tons per annum. Equipment — one pair of shellers 2hp, 2 pair of grinders 6hp, 1 bruising machine 3hp, 1 pair of small emery stones say 4hp."

It has been noted that the Langtrys may have been a milling family of some standing in the region, similar to the Magiltons of County Down; a John Langtree was recorded as working the Manor Mill in Newtownards in the 1830s.