Former Flax Mill, Altmover Road, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4QD

Former Flax Mill

A two-storey flax mill built of rubble stonework with gabled ends, located at Altmover Road in the townland of Ballyharigan, Dungiven. The mill dates from the early 19th century (1800–1819) and retains significant elements of its original industrial structure, though the building itself has undergone considerable alteration and addition.

The main structure is constructed of coursed random rubble masonry, with rough ashlar walls carried up to form the jambs of a wide two-leaf door at first floor level on the west side. The west elevation is divided into four narrow bays, with three shuttered openings on the ground floor and one shuttered opening at first floor, both presently closed with corrugated iron. The entire roof is covered in corrugated iron.

Access to the mill is provided by laneway on both sides: the west side gives access at first floor level, while the east side provides ground floor access. The south gable contains the mill's most significant surviving feature: a large diameter iron millwheel, approximately 3600 millimetres, with the remains of a wooden flume for delivering water. An opening in the gable marks where the flume meets the wheel, presumably serving as access to control water flow, with a smaller square opening towards the south-east corner. The mill race, now much overgrown, runs parallel to the west side before turning at right angles to feed the flume. The tail race flows past the south gable.

Substantial later additions in temporary construction include a low-pitched lean-to shed against the east masonry wall, enclosed with ramshackle timber framing and corrugated iron; a single-storey timber-framed shed extending from the north gable with pitched roof, partly sheeted in timber boards and corrugated iron; and an open iron frame high structure projecting from the south-east corner of the lean-to, roofed with corrugated asbestos with partially clad sides, accompanied by a further small lean-to in the angle formed. The back or west side is built into rising ground with a retaining wall of roughly squared stone.

The millwheel remains in a heavily rusted state with buckets in various stages of collapse. The building retains considerable local interest as industrial archaeology, preserving the fundamental mill structure, millwheel, and mill and tail races, though these features are substantially overgrown.

Historical records confirm the mill's existence from at least 1832. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834–5 describe the Ballyharigan flax mill as equipped with a breast wheel eleven feet in diameter and a two-feet-two-inch rim width, operating under a fall of water of eight feet, with an inside wheel of six feet six inches diameter fitted with three scutchers and metal segments or cogs. The mill operated on the same stream as a corn mill upstream, and the two could not work simultaneously. The proprietor was William Osborne Esquire, resident of Ballyharigan House (now Atlmover House), who operated both mills. The miller providing information to the survey was John Gallagher. Griffiths Valuation of 1858 records a valuation of £10 for the miller's house and flaxmill together; the miller's house no longer survives. Scutching operations ceased in the early 1950s. The 1832 Ordnance Survey map indicates a second mill building to the south, across the tail race, but no evidence of this structure remains on the ground. The current owner inherited the mill from his father.