Christie's Mill, Beside 8 Crockan Road, Artigarvan, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 0HZ

Christie's Mill is a water-powered cornmill of late-1850s date, located beside Crockan Road at Artigarvan, on the townland boundary between Fyfin and Knockanbrack. It is of considerable architectural and historical interest, representing a rare surviving example of an intact small-scale rural milling complex in Ulster. The complex comprises three conjoined structures: a three-storey, single-bay corn mill; a two-storey, single-bay store abutting the mill to the east; and a two-storey, single-bay grain-drying kiln to the south, now roofless and in a ruinous condition.

ARCHITECTURAL INTEREST

The mill's plain utilitarian character is typical of small-scale rural industrial buildings of its period. Its plan form reflects the functional relationship between the mill, kiln and store, all three of which were essential to its operation. The arrangement of machinery across the floors makes deliberate use of gravity to assist the milling process. The use of hand-made brick dressings around the openings and the lineshaft arrangement of the gears and millstones are characteristic of mid- to late-19th-century mill construction. Unusually, the mill employs a lineshaft gearing arrangement rather than the more common great-spurwheel system, which adds to its technical and historical significance.

CORN MILL (Building 1)

The mill is aligned north–south along the east side of the public road. It has a pitched natural slate roof with surviving vestiges of half-round metal gutters. The walls are of random rubble masonry with traces of render and are heavily overgrown with ivy on the south and west elevations. All openings have hand-made brick jambs and heads.

Unless noted otherwise, all windows have 3×3-paned timber frames set within shallow segmental heads, but without cills.

The west elevation is heavily overgrown, though two window openings are visible internally at ground-floor and second-floor levels. At first-floor level there is a loading door to the right and a window to the left.

The north gable contains the waterwheel (described separately below), whose axle passes through into the ground floor of the mill. At first-floor level there is a window to the left and a doorway to the right giving access to the top of the waterwheel. The second floor is lit by a single central window. There are also two small openings of unknown function in the apex of the gable, to the left.

The east elevation is partially abutted by the store to the right and centre. The main entrance doorway into the mill occupies the exposed section of wall at ground-floor level to the left. There is a 2×3-paned window at first-floor level and a 2×2-paned window at second-floor level. Notably, the second-floor window is partly obscured by the roofline of the store, indicating that the store was added after the mill, though probably very soon afterwards.

The south gable is abutted at ground- and first-floor levels by the kiln. There are doorways through the party wall at both ground- and first-floor levels to the right; the first-floor doorway has been infilled. The entire wall above first-floor level, including the gable apex, has been rebuilt in alternating courses of concrete blocks and bricks, with the outer face rendered in cement. This rebuilt section is approximately 12 inches thinner than the original masonry wall below.

WATERWHEEL (Building 1a)

The waterwheel is of the high breast-shot type, measuring 16 feet in diameter by 5 feet wide. Its axle, hubs and rims are of cast iron. Each rim is made up of eight segments bolted together, and each segment is marked with the maker's name: "James Stevenson / Strabane Foundry / Strabane". The arms (two sets of eight), angled buckets (48 in total) and soleplate are of timber, now in a deteriorated condition. Remnants of the iron mechanism used to raise and lower the sluice gate at the end of the launder survive in place; this mechanism was operated from inside the mill at first-floor level. The wheel sits in a stone-lined pit and was originally fed from the west by a timber launder, now long gone, which was carried atop a rubble stone bank. The mill pond survives to the west, though overgrown, along with the open channel that brought water to the launder. After passing through the wheel, water returned to the Glenmornan River via an open tailrace, now largely infilled.

STORE (Building 2)

The store is a two-storey, single-bay building abutting the east elevation of the mill and aligned east–west. Its roof, walls and openings follow the same construction as the mill.

The north elevation has a doorway at ground-floor level to the right, a window in the middle, and a window to the left that has been infilled with brick. At first-floor level there is a loading door in the middle and a window to the right. The east gable is largely blank except for a first-floor window. The south elevation has a door at each end at ground-floor level, with a window between them, and two windows at first-floor level. The roof is natural slate with half-round metal gutters, and the walls are of random rubble masonry with 3×3 timber-framed windows.

KILN (Building 3)

The kiln is now a roofless and ruinous shell of random rubble masonry. It was an essential component of the mill, used to dry oats thoroughly before milling. The east elevation has partly collapsed, though a number of door and window openings remain visible, most of them infilled. These include the stoking end of the kiln's firehole, which was almost certainly sheltered by a small abutting structure recorded on Ordnance Survey maps from 1905 onwards. The south gable is blank except for an infilled ground-floor opening. Much of the west elevation has collapsed. The roof, gutters and windows are entirely missing.

INTERIOR

The interior is unaltered and there is no evidence that any of the gearing and machinery, all of which survives, is other than original. The disposition of the various pieces of machinery between floors reflects the different stages of the milling process and the use of gravity to aid production.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

A water-powered mill is shown on an Abercorn Estate map of 1777, captioned "New Mill", implying it was of relatively recent construction at that date. A corn mill is marked at this location on the 1833 Ordnance Survey map, likely the same building. However, it may have been a small or disused structure by that time, as the valuation book for Knockanbrack townland records that no building in the townland had a rateable valuation of £3 or more.

The 1854 Ordnance Survey map captions the complex as "Corn mill & Kiln" and shows it with the same footprint as in 1833. The 1857 valuation records Thomas Christie as tenant, holding under lease from the Marquis of Abercorn. The complex at that time comprised three conjoined buildings measuring (1) 22 feet × 40 feet × 9 feet 6 inches, (2) 10 feet × 13 feet × 5 feet, and (3) 11 feet × 12 feet × 5 feet. It was assigned quality letter 1C+, indicating that it was slated and in repair but not of recent construction. It contained a single pair of millstones measuring 4 feet 6 inches in diameter and worked for six months of the year. The waterwheel at that time measured 12 feet 6 inches in diameter by 2 feet 8 inches wide, with rims 9 inches deep, and the fall of water was 13 feet — suggesting an overshot feed onto the wheel. The rateable valuation was initially £4, subsequently updated to £5. The low valuation reflected the poor roads in the area and the wheel's susceptibility to backwatering.

The significant discrepancy between the 1857 measurements — a single-storey building measuring 22 feet × 40 feet × 9 feet 6 inches — and the mill as it now stands, which is three storeys and measures approximately 23 feet × 27 feet, indicates that the mill was entirely rebuilt in its present form sometime between 1857 and 1860. This rebuilding also accounts for the 25% increase in rateable valuation recorded in the 1857 valuation book, from £4 to £5. The fact that the rateable valuation remained unchanged at £5 from 1860 until 1928 indicates that no major alterations were made to the complex over that entire period, which is consistent with the survival of what appears to be all-original fabric and machinery.

Valuation revision books record Thomas Christie continuing to operate the mill until his death around 1881, after which it passed to John Christie, then to John and James Christie around 1897. James Christie is recorded as owner in 1914. The 1905 Ordnance Survey map shows the mill in its present form, still captioned "Corn mill", with a small addition to the east elevation of the southernmost building.

The mill appears to have continued in operation until sometime after the First World War. By 1928 it was recorded in the valuation as "at rest" and its rateable valuation was reduced to £2 10s 0d; it remained inoperative thereafter. Although James Grieve, a nephew of James Christie, took over the defunct mill in the mid-1930s, it has always been known as Christie's Mill. The 1951 Ordnance Survey map shows the mill and store roofs as intact, but records the kiln and its small abutting building as already roofless. The 1972 map shows a similar condition, except that the small building abutting the kiln had by then disappeared entirely.

SETTING

The mill complex is situated at a sharp bend in Crockan Road, which runs along its west side. It was formerly supplied with water from the Glenmornan River. The former two-storey mill house, now refurbished by its present owner, stands to the northwest of the complex, and a 1950s farm outbuilding lies to the north.