Flax Mill, Ballymagart Mill, Ballyardle Road, Kilkeel, Newry, Co. Down, BT34 4JX

Flax Mill, Ballymagart

This flax scutching mill at Ballymagart is typical of Ulster flax mills in its construction and size. Although now ruinous, it retains most of its machinery in the water-powered section and forms an integral part of a larger industrial complex in an attractive rural setting. A later gas-engine powered addition is also of architectural and historical interest.

The main building is a long single-storey structure with two bays, positioned to the west of a corn mill and facing south towards the yard. It is built of coursed roughly squared granite blocks with snecking. The principal facade has, in the left bay, a single blocked-up window and a pair of large corrugated metal doors to the right. The right bay contains four openings: the second from the left is a doorway, and the remainder are windows without glazing. The roof is segmental with painted corrugated metal, though it has collapsed at the right end. The right gable has also collapsed. The rear wall has two small boarded-over window openings to each bay.

To the left, abutting the left gable, is a later and slightly taller single-bay building with a corrugated metal pitched roof, brick verges and rubble masonry walls. A small granite shed abuts the back left corner of this addition.

The waterwheel, positioned at the right gable, measures 6.54 metres (21 feet 5 inches) in diameter by 1.45 metres (4 feet 9 inches) wide. It is high breast-shot fed from a concrete launder drawing water from the millpond behind the corn mill. The wheel has a cast-iron axle, hubs and rims, with 12 wooden arms and angled buckets. A segment wheel affixed to the arms drives the bull nut, from which a geared step leads to the axle entering the mill. The machinery is heavily overgrown.

Historical Development

A flax mill owned by Alexander McDonell operated in this location in the early 1830s but was destroyed by fire in 1837. It was rebuilt by the same year on the site of a former paper mill, using the waterwheel that later drove the corn mill. This second mill appears to have closed by 1853, likely following the construction of the corn mill in 1846.

The present flax mill dates from 1854 and initially contained 10 stocks, powered by the existing waterwheel. Around 1870, the mill passed to the Nicholson family, who retained ownership until the 1980s. The Nicholsons also owned a small water-powered scutch mill in the nearby Tullyframe townland. According to local tradition, that mill was destroyed by fire, and its surviving granite walls were dismantled and re-erected at the west end of the Ballymagart scutch mill, where additional scutching equipment was then installed. This equipment was driven by a small gas engine, now held in the collection of Ron Deering, Greyabbey, County Down. In the 1940s, the mill's capacity was augmented by the nearby Belgian flax scutching mill. The mill closed in the 1950s.

The building is of considerable industrial archaeological interest and forms part of a significant industrial grouping within the rural landscape.