Saw Mill at Holy Hill House, 78 Ballee Road, Artigarvan, Strabane, Co. Tyrone, BT82 0AA

Saw Mill at Holy Hill House, Artigarvan, Strabane, County Tyrone

This is a detached two-storey, three-bay saw mill dating from around 1840, located to the west of Holy Hill House within the Holy Hill demesne. The demesne has Plantation-era origins, and the saw mill represents one of the latest phases of improvement still surviving at the estate. It is rectangular on plan and built from random rubble stone set in lime mortar, with a pitched corrugated metal roof and timber bargeboards. Rainwater goods are no longer present.

All openings throughout the building are sheeted with tongue-and-groove boarding and have no sills, except where otherwise noted. The southwest gable, which serves as the entrance elevation, is largely covered with sheets of corrugated metal. It features a double-width corrugated-metal door with a simple metal canopy over it. The northwest elevation is asymmetrical: the first floor has three sheeted window openings, while the ground floor has a louvred window and an entrance door, both with rubble stone relieving arches over them. The northeast gable formerly housed the mill wheel, which is no longer present; a retaining wall is built against the rising ground to the northeast. The southeast elevation is partially built into a bank and has three openings at first-floor level, including a loading door and two small openings with their heads at eaves level. At ground floor on this elevation there is a multi-pane timber window with a relieving arch, partially concealed by the bank.

The building first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1856 and is captioned on both the 1854 and 1906 editions. The first known reference to a mill at Holy Hill appears in a letter of 1779, in which Mrs Elizabeth Sinclair wrote to the Earl of Abercorn discussing the possible use of water to power a mill at Holyhill. No further references are found until Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), which records in a marginal note: "Sawing mill 35x21x13 used only for farming purposes of Captain Sinclair. Wheel 18x2.6x0.10. Fall of water 10 or 20 ft overshot. Power applied at top." A note added at a later date describes this as a "thrashing mill."

The Holy Hill estate is believed to have been cultivated and improved, and the house enlarged, during the 1730s and 1760s under the ownership of John Sinclair, who held the estate from 1718 to 1770. His son George, who had been apprenticed as a linen merchant and owned the estate from 1770 to 1804, continued to cultivate it, and a mill was likely established after 1779. Under George's nephew James, a Justice of the Peace who owned the estate from 1804 to 1865, the estate was greatly developed and many estate buildings were erected, including the walled garden. In 1810, James Sinclair planted 1,412 spruce firs, 62 Scots firs, 78 silver and balm of Gilead firs, 1,520 larches, 1,230 ashes, 171 hornbeams, 273 birches, 870 alders, 1,041 beeches and 509 oaks. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs speak highly of James Sinclair as "the only resident proprietor" in the parish of Leckpatrick and praise his "skill in every department of agriculture," noting that "the woods of Holyhill yielded timber for [his tenants'] houses and farming implements and its nurseries provided quicks and trees for their gardens and fences." This suggests some form of saw mill may have been operating before the building's first recorded appearance, though no direct evidence has been found. James's son William, a former High Sheriff of County Donegal in 1854 who became Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone in 1876, also probably improved the estate until his death in 1896, after which it is considered unlikely that subsequent owners undertook new projects.

The saw mill sits in wooded surroundings within the Holy Hill demesne, which comprises lawns, mature parkland and farmland on undulating ground to the northeast of Strabane town. The wooded setting remains intact. The building is of good proportions, plainly detailed, and constructed throughout in traditional materials — rubble stone, timber and corrugated metal. It is a key ancillary structure within an important and well-preserved demesne, and holds group value with the other listed structures on the Holy Hill estate.