Former beetling mill, Near 39 Cullycapple Road, Aghadowey, Coleraine, Co Londonderry, BT51 4AR

Former Beetling Mill

This two-storey beetling mill stands aligned north to south close to the west bank of the Agivey River, which originally powered it. The building comprises a main mill block and a single-storey annex at its northern end.

The main building is a two-storey, single-bay structure with walls of squared rubble basalt brought to courses. The first floor is largely of brick due to the large number of openings and features a projecting brick eaves course. The lower half of the ground floor wall is cement rendered. The roof is pitched with natural slate, though the middle section has been replaced with cement-fibre slates and the south end with corrugated metal. Rainwater goods are missing.

All window and door openings have flat brick heads and jambs with stone cills. The principal elevation faces east and contains a single-storey stone and brick entrance porch at its centre, topped with a replacement pitched natural slate roof and plain bargeboards. To the right of the porch, the ground floor has seven 4x5-paned window openings, now sheeted over. The first floor above has six wider openings with paired timber louvers, some also containing pairs of 4x4-paned windows above the louvers. To the left of the porch, the ground floor similarly has seven windows, mostly sheeted over, with three upper floor openings infilled with brick but otherwise matching those on the right. The south gable displays a blank segmental-headed recessed panel extending to first floor level, with a doorway at its bottom right that led into a saw mill, now entirely gone except for the ghost of its roof line.

The west (rear) elevation is abutted at its centre by a raised random rubble headrace intake entering at first floor level. Just where this headrace enters the mill is a small but very deep pit that apparently once housed a turbine. The west elevation, heavily overgrown, appears to have ground and first floor windows similar to the east elevation, along with a loading door featuring a cantilevered balcony at first floor level. Also present is what appears to be a mounting block, possibly for an auxiliary engine or other machinery. The north gable is abutted by the annex.

The annex is contemporary with the main section and is a single-storey, single-bay building with a pitched corrugated metal replacement roof. Its walls match the main mill's construction, including a brick eaves course but without cement render. The west elevation has four brick-trimmed window openings, one retaining its 3x3-paned timber frame. The north gable contains a doorway at left and a brick-infilled opening at right. The east elevation has three window openings, with a pair of 3x3-paned timber frames surviving only in the middle opening.

The setting includes a field access track running along the east side of the building, beyond which lies the river. To the south is an open yard, along the west side of which stands the shell of an earlier 19th-century mill, now reduced from two storeys to one and demolished at its southern end. This earlier mill is constructed of random rubble basalt with round-headed brick-trimmed openings. At the southeast are vestiges of a mid-19th-century mill-related building. The headrace runs along the west side, with the lane to the owner's house running west and north.