Site of old mill, near Old Mill Court, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT23 4JG

Site of Old Mill, near Old Mill Court, Newtownards

This site, to the south of Mill Street and now occupied by modern housing forming Old Mill Court, once contained a two-storey flour mill. The building was constructed in 1816 by the Marquis of Londonderry and demolished around 1980–85.

The mill was built of rubble stone with a slated gabled roof and partly covered in rough cast. It featured a gabled extension to the front and a glass house extension to the rear. The ground floor contained a large carriage arch with the date '1600' inscribed on its keystone. The north-east side had four first-floor window openings. The ground floor featured a sheeted door with a half-door, a window with horizontal astragals, and a coach doorway with an elliptical arch head and dressed stone surround with keystone. The front gable of the older building measured approximately 25 feet wide. The corrugated iron roof covered a brick gable containing a large sliding door, with stone steps leading up to the first floor from within the front extension.

The mill was built of Scrabo stone rubble, with some rough cast on the south-east gable and cream wash on the north-east side. Before demolition, the building was in fair to poor condition and served as a joiner's shop and store.

The mill was associated with the nearby Newtownards Manor Mill, which still stands on the opposite side of Mill Street. Although the original 17th-century manor mill occupied this general site, the demolished building itself was constructed in 1816. The plan of the building appears on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1833–34, and it is recorded in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs (circa 1832–34) as belonging to John Lanktree. The mill possessed a water wheel 17 feet in diameter with a breadth of 8 feet, a breast wheel configuration, and a fall of water of 5 feet. Valuation records from the same period note that Lanktree paid £100 per annum for the mill and ten acres of land, as well as a flax scutching mill. The building is marked 'Flour mill' on the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1858–60. When milling ceased is uncertain. The property latterly served as a joiner's store before its demolition in the early 1980s to make way for new housing development.