Threshing Mill, Near 55 East Road, Carrick East, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 ONW

Threshing Mill, East Road, Carrick East

A substantial group of stone farm buildings arranged around a courtyard that opens onto Dremont Road opposite its junction with East Road. The buildings are well constructed and continue to form the working nucleus of a modern farm.

The main building runs perpendicular to Dremont Road and is a storey-and-a-half structure that rises to two storeys in its central section before dropping back to storey-and-a-half height. It is six structural bays long in total. The lower section nearest the road comprises two bays with a chimney on its gable, two doors opening into the farmyard, and a small four-pane sash window. Window and door openings are lined with brick. The walls are rubble stone with butter pointing, and cut sandstone quoins mark the exposed corners. The roof is natural slate with a roof light. The higher central section, three bays long, is symmetrical about large barn doors at first and second floor levels. Small four-pane sash windows flank the barn doors at each level. Openings are trimmed in brick, and the natural slate roof is supported by brick chimneys with butter-pointed rubble stone. Stone quoins at exposed corners do not descend to ground level where they meet the lower building. A final shed section, a single bay wide with a tin roof and single garage door, is separated from the main building by a construction joint. The blank gables of the main building show the line of brick encasement to the chimney flues. To the rear, the lower building has two small windows, while the taller block's symmetry is disrupted by a blocked window and door at ground level and two small windows flanking an off-centre door at upper level. The smaller rear section is blank to the rear and east gable.

Perpendicular to the main building is a single-storey stone barn with natural slate roof, constructed in similar stone and brick. It features four circular ventilator windows equally spaced along its facade. A modern barn and stone wall enclose the farmyard to the south. Further south in a field is a chambered grave.

Ornamentation of quoins and brickwork follows strictly practical principles; the quoins were not structurally required and do not extend to the base of the wall. The buildings contain a large intact threshing machine, now an unusual find of considerable historical and archaeological interest.

Ordnance Survey maps from 1830 show buildings on this site, though their arrangement suggests they are not the present structures. A long building nearer the road, probably a thatched cottage, stood until demolished in the 1950s after the occupants moved to a new home built in 1958. The farmyard layout evolved from the 1830s onwards, with the perpendicular barns first appearing on the 1924 map. The quality and scale of construction is unusual for the area and, combined with the presence of a former school building now used as a barn, suggests these buildings may have been erected by the Marquis of Waterford as a threshing mill for his tenants. The present occupants have farmed the buildings for approximately 60 years, since the late 1930s.