Ardmore Flour Mill, Ardmore, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49 OPD

Ardmore Flour Mill

A reasonably well preserved group of stone buildings forming an approximately square courtyard southwest of Ardmore Lodge. The imposing and dramatic character of the complex results from its location at the base of a slope on the edge of a flood plain in open countryside. Alterations carried out in the 1870s created a strong architectural form, and the mill remains of local interest as evidence of former industry.

The group comprises a main mill building, a two-storey projecting structure, a single-storey shed, and a cottage, with a large mill pond to the northeast.

The main mill building occupies the northeast side of the courtyard. It is three storeys high, eight bays wide, constructed in rubble stone with brick trims to the windows. Two bays are obscured by a two-storey mill projecting to the southeast, which is built in brick. All windows are of similar size with segmental heads and centre pivot metal windows containing eighteen small panes. The roof is corrugated metal with a central cast iron downpipe. Two doors to the courtyard at ground level are positioned at the northwest and southeast ends; the northwest door has been broken open between two windows and features an exposed I-beam lintel, while the southeast door has a segmental brick lintel matching the windows. A third door is located at first floor near the centre in a former window position.

The two-storey building projecting to the southeast has cut sandstone ashlar quoins and trims to the openings with rubble between. All openings have segmental heads. At ground floor are five door openings to the courtyard irregularly spaced and two windows, with misaligned heads due to a small slope across the facade. At first floor are two door openings and four circular brick-trimmed window openings, two of which at ground level are blocked up. The roof is slated with cast iron rainwater goods. The rear elevation is not in ashlar work as the courtyard facing; it is rubble stone with brick surrounds to six ground floor openings and a vertical joint where it abuts the main mill. Three window openings are visible on the rear.

The southwest side of the courtyard is enclosed by a single-storey rubble stone shed with corrugated metal roof, four structural bays long and open to the yard, currently used as a garage. The northwest side is enclosed by a gate and a whitewashed single-storey brick cottage with slate roof and two brick chimneys, with a tarred corrugated roof over an aligning shed.

Six pane sash windows are arranged irregularly throughout. The mill pond to the northeast, now dry, has banked sides aligning with the first floor of the main mill. A decayed timber and concrete sluice is connected to the northwest end of the building. A timber bridge with a vaulted brick arch below provides access to a door at first floor on the southeast end. A concrete sluice is located at the pond entrance. The mill race, which runs southeast to just beyond Ardmore Bridge, is intact for its whole length.

The cottage features two four-pane sashes in its southwest gable and a long porch with lean-to roof on the northwest side facing the path to Ardmore Lodge.

The mill is indicated on the 1831 map as a corn mill with a mill pond in its present location and two parallel buildings shown. The Ordnance Survey memoirs describe the site as "There is a flour mill in the townland of Ardmore the property of Robert Macrory Esq. It was established in 1822. It is worked by water power from the Castle River, with a water wheel 34 feet in diameter and of 20 horse power, the supply of water very good." According to Patrick Macrory's "Days that are gone", Robert Macrory held a lease in Castledawson flour mills in 1817 before leaving in 1822 to start at Ardmore as a flour miller milling wheat. The building may have been used as a corn mill prior to Macrory's ownership.

The 1848 map shows the buildings unchanged, though the mill pond had increased to three times its former size to feed a new corn mill near Ardmore Lodge. By the 1904-6 Ordnance Map, the present arrangement is shown with four buildings around a courtyard. The longer building had been demolished and the shorter building extended by the two brick bays noted in the description, work probably occurring in the mid-1870s. The owner of Grain Mills informed that his mill wheel and equipment came from Ardmore at that time, when the wheel was replaced by a turbine.

The railway, which opened in 1883, destroyed the mill's profitability by bringing in cheap flour from elsewhere. The mill closed in 1900. The turbine was removed in 1980. Stones from Ardmore Castle, recorded in the 1830s and owned by Macrory, are now gone and may well have been employed in extending the mill pond and flour mill later in the century.