Flax Store and Weigh Room, Gilford Mill, Ann Street, Gilford, Craigavon, Co Down, BT63 6HX

Flax Store and Weigh Room, Gilford Mill

This building comprises two structures forming part of one of the largest flax spinning mill complexes still surviving in Ireland: a long three-storey former flax store and a small single-storey former weighing room. The complex as a whole is of national importance, and both buildings have considerable group value with the adjoining village of Gilford, a significant portion of whose housing was built by the mill's operators, Dunbar, McMaster & Co.

The flax store is a three-storey building aligned north to south along the eastern side of the block. Early prints and drawings show it was originally two storeys; it was heightened to its present three storeys sometime between 1903 and 1910. Its proportions and regularly fenestrated rubble stonework reflect its mid-19th century origins, while the use of concrete on its roof reflects the early 20th century expansion. The walls are of random rubble blackstone with stepped vee-jointed granite quoins to the west elevation and moulded cement-rendered eaves. All openings have flat concrete heads and brick jambs, with flush concrete cills. The flat concrete roof sits behind a low concrete blocking course, with roof gutters and cast-iron downpipes.

The west elevation is ten openings wide. To the ground floor there are three doorways, one of which is fitted with a pair of sliding timber doors, and the ground floor windows are sheeted over. Each of the two upper floors has three double-leaf sheeted timber loading doors. All windows throughout have 4x4-paned metal frames with 2x2-paned opening panels. Rising from the centre of the west elevation is a small single-storey addition, probably built to house a goods hoist motor. This addition has a flat roof, cement-rendered walls, casement windows to its west and south elevations, and a door opening onto the roof to the east. The north gable is heavily overgrown and no openings were visible. The east elevation has windows to all floors, detailed in the same manner as the west side. The south gable has no openings. Two small satellite television dishes have been attached to the building. Although now abandoned, it survives in fair condition.

The weigh house is a small single-storey, single-bay building aligned north to south at the south-western end of the block. It is probably of early 20th century date, built after 1910. It has a pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles, oversailing timber eaves, and timber bargeboards with a drop finial at the south end. The rainwater goods are missing. The walls are of red brick. There is a sheeted-over doorway to the south gable and a 2x2-paned timber window with a concrete cill to the west elevation. Set into the ground along its west side is a large cast-metal drive-on weighbridge.

This block sits at the eastern end of the mill premises, behind Bann Street. To its west is a multi-storey mill block. To its north, separated from the premises by a post and wire fence, is a landscaped public park. In the yard immediately to the west of the main building there formerly stood a two-storey rubble masonry yarn preparing department and a Belfast-roofed rubble masonry store; both have been demolished and no traces survive.

Historical Background

The mill complex has its origins in a lease dated 12 February 1835, when Hugh Dunbar, a linen thread and cloth manufacturer from Huntly near Banbridge, leased a corn and tuck mill a short distance to the east of the present complex from Hugh and Eliza Law. Dunbar had formed a partnership with William Stewart with the intention of erecting a flax spinning mill at the north-western end of Gilford, for which they needed control of the water supply belonging to the existing mill. Construction of the new complex began in 1836 and involved the erection of a five-storey flax spinning mill on the right bank of the River Bann, a handloom weaving factory on the opposite bank, and workers' housing. The five-storey spinning mill and a 22-foot diameter by 20-foot wide iron breastshot waterwheel of approximately 90 horsepower are both explicitly recorded in the 1837 Ordnance Survey Memoir. The wheel may well have been designed by the eminent English millwright William Fairbairn. Part of the mill may have become operational in 1838, but the complex was not officially opened until November 1841.

William Stewart died in 1837 and was replaced by Robert Thompson, who was subsequently bought out by Dunbar. Dunbar then formed a new partnership with J. W. McMaster of Armagh, and James Dickson became a third partner in 1839. By 1843, flax spinning and bleaching were being carried on under the name Dunbar, Dickson & Co, and thread production under Dunbar, McMaster & Co. Dunbar died in 1847, and the enterprise was eventually acquired outright by the McMasters. The business was incorporated as a limited liability company in 1886 under the ownership of H. Dunbar McMaster, son of J. W. McMaster, and his six brothers.

By 1846, the factory was described as the largest, or certainly one of the largest, flax spinning factories in Ireland. A large-scale map of 1860 shows the complex had largely taken its present size and form by that date. Two chimneys are shown, indicating the use of steam power alongside water power. Writing in 1874, J. Smyth describes four condensing steam engines working in tandem with the waterwheel. Coal for the steam boilers would probably have been off-loaded from the Newry Canal at Madden Bridge, approximately one and a half miles south-west of the village. From 1859 onwards, when the Banbridge Junction Railway Company opened the Scarva to Banbridge line, there was also a railway halt at Lawrencetown.

The 1861 Valuation Book describes the premises as "Gilford flax spinning mill, thread manufactory and yard", with a rateable valuation of £840, and lists the operators as John Walsh McMaster, James Dickson, Benjamin Dickson, William Spolten and William Robert Massaroan. A fire in 1869 caused £40,000 worth of damage to buildings, some of which were subsequently rebuilt. By 1888 the mill had over 1,500 employees, many living in company houses nearby, and water and steam power drove 16,000 spindles for spinning yarn and a further 4,000 for twisting spun yarn into thread, which was exported throughout the world. By 1891 the site was described as one of the largest thread manufactories in the United Kingdom, with a weekly production of 75,000 miles of yarn and thread, both bleached and unbleached.

A valuation revision entry of 1902 records that a portion of the mill had been burnt and was in the course of being rebuilt. A footprint broadly similar to that of today is shown on the large-scale town map of 1903. The site's valuation rose from £843 to £893 in 1907, and then to £1,070 in 1910, indicating substantial additions during this period, including the raising of the multi-storey mill buildings — among them the flax store under review — by a further storey. Sometime after 1903, the waterwheel was replaced by a water turbine and an electricity generating house was erected beside the turbine house; valuation notebooks indicate this occurred around 1913 or shortly afterwards.

Yarn and thread production continued until approximately 1986, when the mill closed. Part of the site was subsequently used for small-scale industrial units and a coal yard. Ambitious plans for conversion into an apartment, leisure and shopping complex were drawn up in the 2000s but came to nothing, and the site now lies unoccupied.