Many ancient mills have been restored to their former glory and now function as working mills, writes Mary Mulvihill.
Mills were the power generating stations of old, harnessing rivers, wind and even tides to drive millstones and heavy equipment. Mills were also the factories and industrial plants of their day since, in those pre-electric times, power could not be transmitted far and had to be used on-site.
Time was when every parish had at least a small flour mill, which out of season might have been turned to other purposes, such as grinding bones to make bonemeal fertiliser. The only trace of most of these is a place name - witness the hundreds of Milltowns scattered across Ireland, and place names incorporating the element Mullin (a mill). Several old mills do survive as ruins, however, and happily some others have been renovated, a few even to working order.
Milling, strictly speaking, means grinding or crushing, but over time the word came to be used for any process carried out in a mill-like building. For Irish mills, that amounts to an almost endless list: everything from milling flour and crushing bones, to polishing marble, scutching flax, fulling wool, sawing wood, grinding mustard, beetling damask, hammering metal, churning butter, spinning cotton, weaving wool, making starch, extracting oil from rape seed . . . And that's not counting the many other industrial uses for windmills and waterwheels, such as draining mine shafts, pumping water supplies and powering breweries and distilleries.
The first Irish mill, according to legend, was built on a river at Tara around AD 250 by the high king Cormac mac Airt, and designed by a Scottish millwright (possibly the first, and certainly not the last time that a Scottish engineer played a role in Ireland's industrial development).
Amazingly, Ireland today boasts two historically important 7th-century mills: the world's oldest recorded tidal mill, built in AD 617 on Mahee Island in Strangford Lough; and the oldest recorded twin-flume mill (also tidal), built at Little Island, County Cork in AD 630. Both have been dated by tree-ring dating of timbers from the sites. For industrial archaeologist Colin Rynne in UCC, the finds show that Ireland, though located on the edge of Europe, was no technological backwater.
The mill at Mahee Island was the first of three built on the site over a period of 200 years by monks from nearby Nendrum monastery. The main feature is a wall on the shore, behind which is a pond that filled at high tide; water stored there was later released down a small narrow channel or flume to turn a horizontal waterwheel, and hence a pair of millstones. The Little Island site had two flumes and two horizontal waterwheels driving two pairs of millstones.
Medieval monks and royals had it easy, however: most other households had to grind their grain the hard, backbreaking quern-stone way. Traditionally, this was women's work, reserved for wives, bonds women and female slaves - Brian Boru/, for instance, made "quern maids" of his Norse women captives.
Building even a small mill was costly: mill races (canals), sluices, waterwheels, gearing and millstones, not to mention the mill building, all cost money, and then there was the problem of frequent flooding. The mill owners' club was therefore a select one: high kings, monasteries, wealthy landlords and, with the Industrial Revolution, wealthy businessmen and eventually large corporations.
To offset the costs, tenants were often forced to grind their grain at the landlord's mill. This feudal arrangement, sometimes called the milling soke, or "suit to the mill", meant both miller and landlord had a guaranteed source of income, and the practice continued on some Irish estates into the 1700s.
Most Irish mills were water powered, not least because waterwheels are more efficient than windmills: a large waterwheel could generate up to 50horsepower, for instance, compared with at most 5horsepower for a large windmill. Both wind and water mills are at the mercy of the weather, of course, and waterwheels can't work in a drought or freezing conditions. But at least water can be stored in a pond, and the flow controlled by sluices, not something that's easily done with wind. Nevertheless, windmills were a useful adjunct to watermills, especially along Ireland's east coast, where they were less likely to be damaged by Atlantic gales. Ireland's first recorded windmill was built in 1281 by the Anglo-Normans, near Old Ross in County Wexford. This post mill was a wooden building that had to be turned into the wind; the stone "tower mill", with a revolving cap, came later (the first Irish one was built in the 1630s at Warren in County Roscommon).
The golden era of Irish milling began, as elsewhere, in the late 1700s. There was more raw material then (improved cereal and flax yields, for instance, and greater sheep numbers) thanks to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions; demand for products also grew as the population expanded, and especially when the Napoleonic wars began; while greater mechanisation and improved designs meant bigger, better mills could be built.
This new generation of enormous, industrial-scale mill was initially water- and later steam-powered (windmills being limited by the size of their sails, which are limited by the height of the tower). They were also increasingly located in ports and cities, replacing the small rural mills of old.
Large flour mill complexes developed, with kilns to dry the grain (damp grain is difficult to grind), hoists to lift the grain to the top storey, winnowing fans and sieves to clean the grain and grade the flour, grain stores and flour warehouses, coal bunkers, and docking for the fleet of boats needed to transport the grain in and the flour out.
Numerous dedicated mill towns were built around this time, most associated with the cotton and linen industries, and several established by entrepreneurial Quaker families. They include Sion Mills (Tyrone), Bessbrook (Armagh), Emyvale (Monaghan), Prosperous (Kildare) and Portlaw (Waterford).
The 1851 census recorded 5,700 millers in Ireland, and amazingly 240,000 "mill folk" (8 per cent of the population), mostly weavers and spinners. There were some 6,000 recorded mill sites in Ireland then, but many were probably already derelict.
Today, nearly all of Ireland's flour is milled at just three mills, run by Odlums.
Some small mills gained a new lease of life in the late 1800s, generating electricity for their neighbourhood from water-powered turbines until the arrival of the ESB. Their modern equivalent is the new generation of hydroelectricity scheme and wind turbines, harnessing water and wind power to generate electricity . . . to do work that might once have been done at a mill.
Irish Flour Milling: a History 600-2000, edited by Andy Bielenberg, and published this week by the Lilliput Press
Milling around: the various means of manufacturing power
Visit: Skerries Mills, a wonderful milling complex in this north Co Dublin town, with a watermill and two windmills. Restored to working order in the 1990s by the council, and now grinding local grain which is baked on-site (Tel: 01-849 5208).
Ballycopeland windmill, Co Down: one of over 100 windmills in this county; and Ireland's last working windmill. Production ceased in 1915, now restored to working order (Tel: 048-9054 3033).
Ballincollig Gunpowder Mill, Cork: opened in 1794 for the Napoleonic Wars, this massive industrial complex was one of the biggest gunpowder plants in 19th-century Europe, with 7 kilometres of canals and 30 water-powered processes. Production ceased in 1903. Renovated in the 1980s and opened to the public, but sadly not last year, on account of increased insurance costs (Tel: 021-4874430).
Patterson's Spade Mill, Co Antrim: this metalworking mill, powered by a water turbine, is Ireland's last working spade mill. A real gem, it is the only place in the world where you can now buy a handcrafted spade. Run by the National Trust (Tel: 048-94433619).
Wellbrook Beetling Mill, Co Tyrone: heavy wooden hammers or "beetles" pound damask to give the fabric its characteristic sheen. This mill, with seven beetling engines powered by a large waterwheel, closed only in 1961. Recently restored by the National Trust (Tel: 04886751735).
Nendrum tidal mill, Mahee Island, Co Down: there is open access to this historic tidal mill and monastic site.
Blennerville Windmill, Tralee: restored to working order in the 1990s (Tel: 066-7121064).
Craanford Mill, Co Wexford: a small 17th-century domestic waterwheel in a farm (Tel: 055-28125).
Skerries is open all year, but most others are seasonal. For a more comprehensive list of mills open to the public, see the Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland website (www.steam-museum.ie/ihai), or enquire about mills in an area from the local tourist information centre. The Irish Linen Centre (Lisburn, Tel: 048-92663377) can provide details of linen mills open to the public.
Read: The Millers & the Mills of Ireland of about 1850, compiled and published by William Hogg.
Join: The Mills & Millers of Ireland Association, c/o Mentrim Mills, Drumcondra, County Meath.
The Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland, c/o An Taisce, Tailors Hall, Back Lane, Dublin 8.