Wellbrook Beetling Mill, 20 Wellbrook Road, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 9RY

Wellbrook Beetling Mill is an exceptionally complete and well-preserved linen beetling mill complex, built around 1830, located in Corkhill townland on the west side of Wellbrook Road, south-west of the main Wellbrook complex near Cookstown, County Tyrone. Now in use as a gallery and museum, it is a rare surviving example of its type and offers an outstanding historical insight into the former workings of an industrial linen mill. The picturesque setting is also well preserved. The mill shares a group value with the adjoining bridge to the south. The mill race, mill wheel, and all other remaining artefacts enhance the historic and rarity qualities of the building.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The mill itself is a detached two-storey building, long and rectangular in plan, with a single-storey lean-to to the rear south-west. External walls are painted or whitewashed rubble stone. The roof is pitched, finished in natural slate, with cast-iron rainwater goods.

The front elevation faces Wellbrook Road and is seven bays wide. At ground floor level, the window openings are square-headed and fitted with 6-over-6 timber sliding sash frames. There are square-headed doorways in the third bay and the end bay: the third-bay door is a timber-sheeted double door, and the end bay has a single timber door. At first floor level, the square-headed openings are fitted with timber louvred vents. All window openings throughout have cut-stone sills.

The north side elevation has no openings, as it adjoins the single-storey cottage and its return. The south side elevation also has no openings; the mill wheel is located at this gable. The rear elevation has no openings at ground floor level, but the first floor has square-headed openings with timber louvred vents and cut-stone sills, matching the front elevation.

ADJOINING COTTAGE

To the north of the mill is an adjoining single-storey cottage, also built around 1830, which fronts onto Wellbrook Road. Its front elevation has a central doorway flanked by a window on each side. The doorway is square-headed with a timber-sheeted door and a rectangular overlight above. The windows are square-headed with timber shutters, set on cut-stone sills. The south side elevation is gable-ended, partially joining the front elevation of the mill, and has a single square-headed opening. There is a chimney at the apex of the roof. The north side elevation has no openings. The rear west elevation has square-headed openings obscured by timber shutters. Walls are painted or whitewashed coursed rubble stone, consistent with the mill building. There are two rendered chimneys, one at each gable end, and the roof is pitched with natural slate.

The cottage has a single-storey pitched return to the rear west, gable-ended to the rear, with square-headed windows and doors; the windows are obscured by shutters and the doors are timber-sheeted. This return is attached to the south gable of the mill building by a single-storey infill lean-to.

LEAN-TO EXTENSION

The single-storey lean-to to the rear south-west of the mill building is rendered, with a single square-headed timber door to the north. The roof is covered in modern metal sheeting.

MILL RACE AND MILL WHEEL

The mill race is located to the south-west of the mill building. It begins approximately 200 metres to the west, where the Ballinderry River forms a sluice to the north of a river weir. The mill race travels to a further weir approximately 40 metres to the west of the mill. As the ground slopes downward, the mill race is raised and takes the form of a timber trough-like structure supported on brick piers. After passing the mill wheel, the mill race divides: one portion continues under Wellbrook Road to the east to rejoin the river, passing through a small single-arched stone bridge beneath the road; a further portion heads north-eastward to supply the mill at Wellbrook. A cast-iron sluice gate is located immediately after the mill wheel.

The mill wheel is situated at the south gable of the mill building. It is 5 metres wide and 1.4 metres deep, constructed mainly of wood with a cast-iron shaft and surround. The cast-ironwork bears the name of the Armagh Foundry.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The history of bleaching at Wellbrook began in 1764, likely encouraged by the Act of Parliament of that year, which gave landowners greater freedom to grant leases in perpetuity to bleachers. In January 1764, Hugh Faulkiner discussed possible bleachgreen sites with the landlord William Stewart of Killymoon Castle. A suitable ten-acre site at Wellbrook was identified in April and purchased at the end of that year. A grant application in the same year was made to the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture by Hugh Faulkner, a linen draper — that is, a merchant who travelled from market to market buying unbleached cloth from country people — and Samuel Faulkner, a land agent based in Dublin who had available capital. In their petition they stated that, having no bleachgreen of their own, they had been obliged to send their linens to be bleached by others at considerable distance and expense. They proposed to lay out a ten-acre green capable of bleaching seven to eight thousand pieces of linen annually, and to erect thereon a bleaching mill comprising two wash mills, four pairs of rubbing boards, two beetling engines, a buck house, and a boiling house, with a drying loft above the wash mills and beetling engines capable of holding five hundred pieces of linen.

The first bleachworks were established by the Faulkners in 1765 on the Kildress River, just to the north of the present mill in Corkhill townland. The beetles were started for the first time in October 1765, and work appears to have been completed when the frames were erected in the drying loft in September 1767. A plan of the Wellbrook bleachgreen surveyed for Hugh Faulkiner in 1766 (held in PRONI as T/1617/5/1) shows that the area of the Corkhill mill was marginal ground at that time, belonging to one Moses Black.

The business encountered difficulties during the 1770s, during a period of decline in the linen industry, and the Wellbrook complex was let to John Greer in 1794. Samuel Faulkner died at sea in late 1795 while travelling to the Isle of Man, and Hugh Faulkner moved to County Carlow, where he died in 1801. After his death, Wellbrook and the whole milling concern passed to his daughter's husband, William Martin, who in 1805 sold the house and business to James Irwin for £1,425. Irwin carried on the bleaching business until his death in 1833, when it was leased by his widow to James Gunning, a linen draper and brother of the founder of the firm of John Gunning and Son in nearby Cookstown. The large two-storey house at Wellbrook, situated less than half a kilometre to the north-east, was built by the Faulkners between 1767 and 1779.

The present mill building in Corkhill matches the mill shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34 and on all subsequent maps. Although the official National Trust guide published in 1996 states that the two-storey building and cottage were built by J. Faulkner in 1768, E.R.R. Green (1972) establishes that while Samuel Faulkner acquired the Corkhill property in 1783, the present building is no older than around 1830. Contemporary valuation records describe the property — then a bleach mill — as relatively newly built, referring to it as a "new concern" and assigning it a quality letter of 1A. The dimensions recorded in the first valuation are 44½ feet by 21 feet by 16 feet, with a thatched return of 8 by 9 by 5½ feet, and a rateable value of £4-14-0. The present building is 61 feet long; it is not known when the extension was made. The cottage does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34, and was erected sometime between 1834 and 1857.

James Gunning left Wellbrook in or around 1852 after he and his business partner James Moore acquired much of the Killymoon estate. The second valuation of 1858 records the mill and office back in the hands of the Irwins, with Caroline Irwin noted as leaseholder and a Captain R.J. Henry as the immediate lessor. Caroline Irwin does not appear to have continued operating the mill, and the low rateable value of £2-10-0 suggests it fell into a similar state of disrepair as the main mill and house at Wellbrook. By 1863, however, the rateable value had risen sharply to £16, a consequence of the boom in the Irish linen industry caused by the American Civil War, which may have prompted the upgrading of the building and its machinery. It was probably Thomas Adair, a well-established linen manufacturer from Greenvale just south of Cookstown, who took on the lease around 1860 and was responsible for any changes made to the mill at that time.

Adair held the property until 1866, when the lease was acquired by James Leeper, head of the weaving firm of John Gunning and Co. Leeper briefly let the mill to Hugh Adair — undoubtedly a relative of Thomas — in 1877–78, but was again directly in control by 1879. In 1886, William Leeper succeeded James, and the cottage is recorded for the first time as a dwelling, sub-let to a David Barnes. In 1916, William Leeper acquired the freehold of both the house and the mill. The property was sold to Mr S.J. Henderson of Coleraine in 1959. The mill is recorded as having remained in operation until 1961, having been worked by three generations of the Black family. The cottage appears to have continued in occupation for some years after the mill closed, with valuations noting a William Mullan in residence until 1968, the year in which both the mill and cottage were given to the National Trust. The National Trust has owned the mill building in Corkhill townland since 1969. There were at one time no fewer than six beetling mills on the Wellbrook property. The link between this smaller mill and the house at Wellbrook was maintained continuously until the National Trust took over in 1969.