Old Manor Mill, Mill Street, Newtownards, Co Down, BT23 4LN

The Old Manor Mill is a rubble-built former mill complex originally constructed in 1816 by the Marquis of Londonderry, now converted to use as a general merchant's store. The complex is situated on the west side of a relatively recently constructed roundabout in Newtownards.

The complex forms a largely T-shaped two-storey structure comprising an original mill building to the north, a former kiln house to the east, associated walls and outbuildings, and a free-standing chimney dating to around the 1860s. The main mill building displays a full-height gabled projection to its south-facing front facade, containing a steel-framed window opening to the first floor, a store opening below (recently inserted), and a doorway at ground floor level. Within a small roundel recess at the gable apex are the words 'Old Manor Mill 1622', though this refers to an earlier manor mill on the site; the present buildings date from 1816. Another first-floor window opening to the left of the gabled projection is now boarded. The entire south facade is finished in rough cast render. A large rectangular two-storey store of twentieth-century construction is now attached to the right-hand side of the front facade, with modern window frames and pedestrian and sliding store doors to its west facade; the roof is corrugated iron. Evidence of small blocked openings on the original east courtyard wall suggests an earlier structure may have occupied this location.

To the rear of the main building is a large lean-to-like projection, now largely clad or constructed in corrugated iron. To the east of the mill building, set at right angles, stands the former kiln house, a two-storey gabled structure. An upper-level corrugated iron-clad link, probably used for connecting machinery, stretches between the east gable of the mill building and the kiln house. Many original openings on the east facade of the kiln house are blocked, with a new large opening inserted at ground floor level, and parts of the south gable patched in brick. A large corrugated iron store of recent construction is attached to the entire west facade. At the north-east corner of the complex stands a free-standing square chimney built in rubble with a brick top, bound with wrought iron angles and cross bars.

A single-storey lean-to-like store section is built into the south courtyard wall, its exterior patched and heightened in brick and breeze block. The west side of this wall features the entrance to the complex with modern metal gates.

Historically, the mill belonged to John Lanktree in the early nineteenth century and is documented in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of around 1832-34 as operating with a 17-foot-diameter, 8-foot-wide breast wheel with a 5-foot head of water. Valuation records of the same period indicate Lanktree paid £100 per annum for the mill, ten acres of land, and a flax scutching mill, the latter situated just to the south on the opposite side of Mill Street (now demolished). The mill appears in the configuration shown on Ordnance Survey maps of 1833-34 and 1858-60. The complex was converted to steam power after around 1860 and subsequently to electricity during the twentieth century. Milling machinery remained in use until the mid-1960s.

The original buildings retain some internal machinery, though much appears to be twentieth-century. In recent times the complex has been extensively altered and adapted for its modern merchant's store use, with numerous modern structures, grain silos, and equipment added to the site, which has significantly obscured the original structures and given the complex an untidy appearance.