Scutching Mill, Nr Kingsmill Bridge, Dungannon, BT71 5NF

Scutching Mill, near Kingsmill Bridge, Dungannon

This is a detached rubble stone and brick two-storey 19th century scutching mill, built around 1857. It stands alone in a field to the east of the junction between Coagh Road and Ballynargan Road, immediately to the east of Cookstown, with Kingsmill Bridge located to the northwest.

The building is long and rectangular in plan. The front west elevation is predominantly rubble stonework on the left side with a brick section to the right, featuring a regular arrangement of square-headed doors and windows with brick surrounds. An elliptical-headed opening with brick voussoirs is partially obscured at ground floor level. The south elevation is gable-ended with a large empty square-headed door to the ground floor and a square-headed window to the first floor. The north elevation is gable-ended and largely obscured by overgrown foliage, though a door opening is visible at ground floor level. The rear east elevation has an irregular assortment of square-headed and elliptical-headed openings, with brick surrounds and voussoirs respectively, many now obscured by ivy and trees. The external walls are snecked and rubble stone with brick dressings to openings and brick quoins at the north end, with a brick section to the south. The natural slate roof has completely fallen in.

A tall brick chimney stands approximately 50 metres to the south within the field. It is a four-sided structure approximately 8 to 10 metres in height, with a vertical brick base surmounted by a two-brick string course. Above the string course, the chimney tapers towards the top, with all four elevations matching. Small segmental-headed hearth openings appear on the ground floor east and west elevations. The bricks to the top of the chimney have partially fallen.

The building is now ruinous and derelict, though it remains a picturesque reminder of later 19th-century rural industrial technology, with the survival of the chimney and ancillary features of particular interest.

The mill does not appear on the 1853–57 Ordnance Survey map, but a 'flax and corn mill kiln' is recorded in the 1860 valuation revision, dating construction to 1857–60. The owner at that time was Thomas McReynolds, who in 1866 added a new house for a caretaker. By 1884 the corn mill was reported as 'all down', though the flax mill appears to have remained in use in some capacity until the 1950s. McReynolds acquired the freehold in 1895, and the property remained with his descendants until at least 1957.