Kingsmill Farm, 62 Ballynargan Road, Stewartstown, Co Tyrone BT71 5NF

Kingsmill Farm is a single-storey, four-bay thatched house with attics, located about four miles north of Stewartstown on the Stewartstown to Coagh road. The house sits up a short lane with its western gable facing the road, and is accompanied by contiguous single and two-storey slated outbuildings. A date stone on the front elevation records 1743 as the year of construction. As one of very few thatched buildings that can be dated with precision, its continuing existence is of considerable importance.

The house is approached through square pillars with pyramidal cappings leading to a broad street that passes in front of the building and its outbuildings. The structure is finished with whitened plaster and has a thatched roof between parapet gables. Four plain chimneystacks are positioned, one above each of the internal hearths and one on either gable, with no pots. The main north-facing elevation features a timber-sheeted door with a horizontal four-light glazed panel, flanked to the left by three 6/6 vertically sliding sashed windows and to the right by a pair of similar windows positioned on either side of a secondary entrance door matching the main entrance. The window framing is exposed, there are no horns, and the sills are of traditional depths.

At the rear, a modern kitchen extension with a lean-to metal roof is flanked to the left by a 5x10 casement and a 3x6 casement, and to the right by two 3x6 casements and a plain top-opening window lighting the bathroom. The kitchen extension has three pairs of 2/2 sashed windows, all with sash stops, and 15-pane verandah doors. The roof is of metal sheeting, the gutter is of extruded aluminium, and the downpipe is plastic.

The contiguous outbuildings are two storeys and constructed of rubble sandstone with a harled finish that has laminated in several areas. The roofs are in slate. Originally animal houses with hay lofts, they now serve as stores and are in need of repair, with serious bowing to the front yard in one area.

According to family tradition, the house was built by James McReynold, the eldest son of John McReynold who migrated from Scotland in 1690. The family had connections to the United Irishmen—one family member, Elizabeth McReynolds, married a brother of Henry Joy McCracken, and according to the current owner, United Irishmen met in the second bay of the roof in 1798.

The building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833/34 as part of the corn mill complex known as King's Mill. The contemporary valuation records it as an old thatched building (quality letter 2C+) occupied by William McReynolds, measuring 51½ feet by 22½ feet by 10 feet, with outbuildings and sheds of various dimensions and a rateable value of £5-17-0. The nearby corn mill is noted in contemporary Ordnance Survey Memoirs as being well supplied with water, featuring a breast wheel of 13 feet 8 inches diameter by 3 feet breadth.

The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1858 marks the complex as 'Kingsmill', indicating that some adjoining outbuildings had been rebuilt by this point, their positioning being markedly different. The 1859 valuation records the resident as Thomas McReynolds with a rateable value of £5-10-0, and notes that the corn mill had one pair of stones and worked seven months in the year—three and a half months at 10 hours a day and three and a half months at 5 hours daily. Nearby were houses for mill workers named Kennedy Doogan, Patrick Leonard, and Thomas Cowan.

By 1864, capitalising on the linen industry boom during the American Civil War, Thomas McReynolds had added a flax mill to the site. In 1866 a new house for a caretaker was added, raising the rateable value of the whole complex to £23. This rose further to £23-10-0 in 1883. In 1884 the corn mill, which may not have been operating for some years, was demolished, and the rateable value fell to £17-10-0. It fell again to £15 in 1902 after Thomas Alexander McReynolds (who had acquired the freehold in 1895) demolished the kiln. The flax mill appears to have been worked until at least 1929.

Care has been taken to maintain the appearance of the structure from the front and sides, together with the roof from the rear. Minor alterations have been carried out to the interior, but the layout of the original two dwellings remains discernable. A restoration scheme carried out in 1981 included the rebuilding of chimneys and replacement of external doors and windows. The re-thatching was undertaken by Gerry Agnew of Ahoghill using wheat straw.