Former mill, Carrickmannon Road, Carrickmannan, Saintfield, Co. Down, BT23 6JN

Former Corn Mill, Carrickmannon Road, Carrickmannan, Saintfield

A large, mainly two-storey rubble-built corn mill of pre-1833 origin, now used as a farm outbuilding. The building is set on the east side of Carrickmannon Road, approximately three miles east of Saintfield, across from No. 105.

The mill is T-shaped in plan and split level, with the west facade single storey while the other elevations are two storey. It is constructed of random rubble with sandstone quoins and a Bangor blue slated gabled roof. The front east facade has three doorway openings, plus a store door and two small window openings, all now without frames. Two of the doorways retain dilapidated timber sheeted doors. The south gable has a ground floor doorway to the right and a small window opening high in the gable, also without frame. To the left of centre at the rear is a large single-storey gabled return, now badly dilapidated with its gable completely open. The mill wheel appears to have been positioned on the south face of this return and appears to have cut into the west facade of the main building. The mill race travelled through the main building from west to east and can still be glimpsed. The main rear facade has several doorway and window openings to the right side, all without doors or frames, though those to the left are blocked and much of the facade is covered in ivy growth. The north gable is blank.

All machinery has been removed and some openings have been blocked. The building is now used for housing sheep, with the sloping ground to the north concreted and walled off to form a pen.

The mill is shown on Ordnance Survey maps of 1834 and 1858-60. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 record it as belonging to Hugh Dugan and equipped with a metal breast wheel of 13 feet in diameter by 3 feet in breadth. The building must have been at least partly rebuilt in the 1860s, as the valuation returns of 1863 note that it was "unfinished" and had passed into the hands of William Dugan. In the late 19th or early 20th century the building was converted to a school house known as "The Mill School" by a local priest named Fr. Shiels. The school was attended by local Catholic pupils who had been temporarily withdrawn by Fr. Shiels from another school further along Carrickmannon Road to the north. The building is now used as a shelter for farm animals.