Millvale Road, Newry, BT35 7LP

Millvale Road, Newry

This is a large and impressive five and a half storey flour mill of around the 1840s, constructed in random rubble field stone with dressed granite quoins. The building is gable-ended and set with its front gable facing east north-east towards Millvale Road, roughly 3 kilometres north-west of Newry town centre. The pitched roof is covered with natural slate and brick skews, though the roof structure has partially collapsed. Walls are largely obscured by overgrowth, particularly on the south, west and north facades. The front east gable contains centrally positioned flat-headed door openings at ground and first floor levels, with three small flat-headed window openings at the top floor and gable apex. A dressed granite chimneystack is positioned centrally at the gable top. The northern facade has a number of regularly arranged window openings, now all bricked up. The mill race approaches from the west, terminating in a series of sluice gates and a pair of circular metal ducts for final water delivery. The waterwheel pit survives on the north side, though the wheel itself has been removed. A cast-iron gate adjacent to the front facade gives access to what may have been a side yard, now overgrown. Remnants of the mill race survive at the western side.

The site has considerable historical significance. Ordnance Survey maps of 1835 show various buildings on the site, including a log wood and starch manufactory and a flax mill operated by John Bell, all of which were one to one and a half storey. By 1860, the present flour mill appeared on revised maps alongside appendages to the north-east and south-west. The 1862 valuation confirms the mill's dimensions as 17 yards by 11 by 5 storeys, containing four pairs of French bur stones, three sets of elevators, one set of screens and two sets of fans. It operated 24 hours daily for nine months yearly, with reduced hours for three months, though water scarcity occasionally interrupted work for three months per year. The flax mill to the north contained 12 stocks and one set of rollers, operating about four months yearly. In 1866, the entire complex was acquired by John Grubb Richardson, owner of the large spinning mill at nearby Bessbrook. In 1885, Richardson converted or rebuilt a building north of the main mill as a turbine house containing a 62 horsepower turbine to generate current for the hydro-electric tramway connecting Bessbrook and Newry. This tramway, the second of its kind in Ireland, transported coal and flax from Newry Quays to Bessbrook mill and carried mill workers, achieving nearly 98,000 passengers in its first full year of operation. The tramway continued until January 1948 and was subsequently dismantled. The turbine house building survived and appears on the 1956 Ordnance Survey map but was demolished prior to around 1980. The flour mill continued working until sometime between 1929 and 1935, when it was recorded as disused. It has not been in long-term use since then.

The building has been unoccupied for a considerable time, with its detailing and fabric having suffered substantially as a result of neglect and overgrowth. Adjacent to the site, to the south and west, are recent housing developments. Other structures that once occupied the site have been cleared away. Despite its significance as one of the few surviving 19th-century flour mills and one of the largest, and the historical importance of the hydro-electric turbine house that once stood nearby, there is now insufficient architectural interest remaining in the mill itself to merit heritage listing.