Roe Mills, 165 Roemill Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 9EX

Roe Mills

Roemill Road, Limavady, County Londonderry

This site represents an interesting and historically significant industrial complex along the River Roe with a recorded history spanning approximately 750 years, though nothing now remains of the original buildings.

The current occupants of the site are two rendered and tiled houses of approximately square plan. No traces of the former mill buildings survive on initial inspection. However, the millrace, which travelled from O'Cahan's rock to the south, remains reasonably complete, and the sluice gate at its head is recorded separately as HB02/13/009A.

The site is considered by some sources to be the location of the 'Mills of the Roo', one of two mills recorded in 1333 as part of the Norman 'manor of the Roo'. In 1611, Sir Thomas Philips, knight, erected a water mill at Limavady, drawing water a mile through a sluice or pond measuring 12 feet broad and 5 feet deep. The present mill stream originates near a weir called Phillips Weir (HB02/13/009B), and some sources suggest that Philips renovated existing medieval workings rather than creating entirely new ones. A mill at Callasan (Coolessan) is recorded in the Civil Survey of 1654-6. By 1788, Thomas Connolly reminded his tenants that their lease terms bound them to grind their corn at the manor mill, the Roe Mill.

According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1833-5, the Roe Mill distillery was established in 1821 by William Moody Esquire, replacing a bleach mill that had previously occupied the premises. The distillery wheel measured 16 feet in diameter and 2½ feet broad. Associated buildings included the Kings warehouse, malthouse, mill, grain storeroom, engine house, copper house, and still house. A corn mill, also established in 1821, was double-geared with two pairs of stones for grinding malt for the distillery and two pairs for grinding corn for local use. Its breast wheel measured 16 feet in diameter and 6 feet broad, fed from a cistern with sheet iron buckets and metal axle and shafts.

The distillery remained operational in 1852, when its owners Carne and Poulson sent a sample of malt whiskey to the Derry Sentinel newspaper. By 1893 the complex had been converted to a flour mill, with one wheel replaced by a water turbine. A fire in 1895 destroyed a large portion of the buildings, and they were rebuilt with only the turbine retained. In 1926, the Limavady Electric Supply Company purchased the mill and converted it to hydro-electric power generation. A second turbine was installed in 1938. The Electricity Board for Northern Ireland acquired the company in 1946, and the plant continued operation until 1965. The buildings subsequently fell into dereliction and were demolished in the early 1980s, replaced by the two modern houses currently on the site.