43 Newcastle Road, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4ND

43 Newcastle Road, Kilkeel

A three-storey cornmill with one-storey annex, aligned east-west on the west side of Newcastle Road. The buildings are of local interest as a former corn mill.

The corn mill is three storeys high and six openings wide, with a pitched natural slate roof topped with clay ridge tiles and cement verges. Half-round plastic gutters run along the front only. The walls are constructed of roughly squared granite rubble, coursed and snecked, with a projecting masonry eaves course.

The principal elevation faces south onto the road. The ground floor contains five openings: the first and second from the left are 2x4 metal-framed casement windows, the third is a metal-sheeted double-leaf sliding door with a brick segmental relieving arch over it, and the remaining two are metal-sheeted single sliding doors. All openings have stepped brick surrounds and heads, and the windows have no cills.

The first floor has six regularly spaced openings, all 2x4 metal-framed casement windows except the second from the left, which has been elongated to form a doorway. This doorway is metal-sheeted and accessed by a cantilevered concrete platform reached by a flight of metal stairs falling to the left at the corner of the building.

The second floor also contains six openings in line with those below. The second, fourth and sixth from the left are metal-sheeted loading doors set in elongated window openings. The second and sixth have projecting metal brackets over them with hooks for pulleys. A one-piece granite runner stone, 1.32 metres in diameter and 20–35 centimetres thick, lies against the wall at the left side of the building.

An electric light is affixed to the left corner of the building at second floor level, and a floodlight is attached to the left side.

The left gable is plain except for a 2x4 metal casement at first floor level and another at the apex. The rear elevation is largely obscured at ground floor by a concrete wall of a modern silage pit. A 2/3 metal casement is visible towards the right end of the first floor, and three 2x4 metal casements are present at second floor level, all dressed as the front façade.

The right gable is abutted by a one-storey annex. The exposed section is blank except for a brick-infilled window opening, partly obscured by the apex of the annex roof.

No evidence of watercourses survives. Farm outbuildings are located to the west and a silage pit to the north.

The annex has a roof as the mill but with a brick verge to the exposed gable, and no gutters. Its walls are constructed as the mill but with a projecting brick eaves course. The south elevation steps slightly inward from the façade of the mill and is slightly angled to it. A small door at the left side is now infilled with concrete blocks. At the centre is a large metal-sheeted double-leaf sliding door, with a small window opening to its right, also infilled with concrete blocks. A one-piece granite runner stone, 1.38 metres in diameter and 23–33 centimetres thick, stands against the right-hand side of the wall. The left gable is abutted by the mill and the rear gable by the silage pit wall. The right gable has a top-opening timber window in the apex. The ghost of a smaller one-storey pitched roof building, now gone, is also visible on the right-hand side.

Historical context

A corn mill and flax mills are shown on the 1834 Ordnance Survey 6-inch map. An 1835 valuation describes the corn mill as 43 feet 6 inches by 19 feet by 8 feet, and the flax mill (46 feet by 19 feet by 8 feet) as out of repair. Both belonged to James Wamsley. The 1861 valuation notes the corn mill as 60 feet by 27 feet and three storeys high, indicating a mid-19th-century rebuild. At this date it contained a shelling and grinding stone and was powered by a waterwheel 16 feet in diameter and 4 feet 6 inches wide. The flax mill (69 feet by 18 feet and one storey, possibly also a rebuild) was also in operation and contained six stocks and a set of rollers, all powered by a wheel 13 feet by 4 feet 6 inches. Valuation revision books from 1898 onwards note the complex as 'at rest'.