Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB09/04/003

Address :
Wellbrook Beetling Mill, 20 Wellbrook Road Cookstown Co Tyrone BT80 9RY

Townland:
Corkhill

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Survey 2:
B+

Date of Listing:
01/10/1975 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Gallery/ Museum

Former Use
Mill

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
Yes

Vernacular:
Yes

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
124/01

IG Ref:
H7495 7914

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Owner Category

Heritage

Exterior Description And Setting

This is a detached two-storey mill building; ‘Beetling Mill’ built c. 1830. It is long and rectangular in plan with a single-storey lean-to to the rear Southwest. To the North is an adjoining single-storey pitched roof house, built c.1830. It has a single-storey pitched return to the rear West. This return is attached to the South gable of the mill building by a single-storey infill lean-to. There is a mill race located to the rear West, built up within a raised mound. This Mill Race leads to the Mill Wheel, located at the South gable. The Ballinderry River is located to the South. The front elevation is seven windows in width and fronts onto Wellbrook Road. The ground floor has square-headed windows with 6/6 timber sliding sash frames. There are square-headed doorways to the third bay and the end bay of the ground floor. The door to the third bay is a timber sheeted double door, whereas there is a single timber door to the end bay. The first floor has square-headed window openings with timber louvered vents set within. All window openings have cut-stone sills. The side North elevation has no openings; it is adjoining the single-storey cottage and return. The side South elevation also contains no openings. The mill wheel is located at this gable. The rear elevation has no openings to the ground floor. The first floor has square-headed window openings with timber louvered vents set within. All window openings have cut-stone sills. External walls are painted / white washed rubble stone. The roof is pitched with natural slate and cast-iron rainwater gods. Returns: Single-storey cottage: The adjoining single-storey cottage to the North fronts onto the Road. It has a doorway to the centre and a window flanking each side. The door is square-headed with a timber sheeted door and a rectangular overlight. The windows are square-headed with timber shutters. Windows are set on cut-stone sills. The side South elevation is gable ended, partially joining the front elevation of the Mill. There is a single square-headed opening to the gable. There is a chimney to the apex of the roof. The side North elevation has no openings. The rear West elevation has square-headed openings, obscured by timber shutters Walls are painted/ white washed coursed rubble stone, as previous. There are two rendered chimneys to the roof, one at each gable end. The roof is pitched with natural slate. Return of single-storey cottage: The return to the rear West is pitched with a gable-end to the rear. Windows and doors are square-headed. Windows are obscured by shutters. Doors are timber sheeted. Single-storey lean-to extension: The single-storey lean-to to the rear Southwest of the Mill building is rendered with a single square-headed timber door to the North. There is modern metal sheeting to the roof. Setting: The Mill buildings are located on the West side of Wellbrook Road. The Ballinderry River is located to the South. The Mill Race is located to the rear West, built up within a raised mound. This Mill Race leads to the Mill Wheel, located at the South gable. The Mill Race: The Mill Race is located to the Southwest of the Mill building. It begins approx. 200 metres to the West where the Ballinderry River forms a sluice to the North of the River Weir. The Mill Race travels along to another weir approx. 40 metres to the West of the Mill. As the ground slopes downwards, the Mill Race is raised and takes the form of a timber trough-like structure supported off brick piers. After the mill wheel the mill race divides; one portion travels onward under the Road to the East to re-join the River. There is a small single-arched stone bridge under the road supporting the Mill Race. There is also a cast-iron ‘sluice-gate’ located immediately after the Mill Wheel. A further portion heads north eastward to supply the mill at Wellbrook The Mill Wheel: The Mill wheel is 5 metres wide and 1.4 metres deep, made mainly of wood with a cast-iron shaft and surround. The cast-ironmongery bears the name of ‘Armagh Foundry’

Architects

Not Known

Historical Information

This mill in Corkhill, south west of the main complex at Wellbrook, was built around 1830, through it may have replaced an earlier structure. A plan of the Wellbrook bleachgreen, surveyed for Hugh Faulkiner in 1766 (PRONI T/1617/5/1) shows the area of this particular mill to have been marginal ground at that time, belonging to one Moses Black. The history of bleaching at Wellbrook began in 1764, probably encouraged by the Act of Parliament of that year, which gave land owners more freedom to give leases in perpetuity to bleachers. Hugh Faulkiner discussed possible bleachgreen sites in the area with the landlord, William Stewart of Killymoon Castle, in January 1764 and a suitable site (Wellbrook) was found in April of that year of ten acres. This was purchased at that the end of that year. A grant application insame year (1794) was made to the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture by Hugh Faulkner, a linen draper (the term used for merchants who travelled from market to market buying unbleached cloth from the country people) and Samuel Faulkner, who was a land agent in Dublin and had available capital. In this petition they stated: 'That yoiur memorialsists ever since their settlement in this county, have bought and manufactured large quantities of brown linens, and bleached and finished them for market; but, having no bleach green of their own, were obliged to send them to be bleached by others, at a considerable distance from their settlement. Your memorialists finding great inconveniences and expence attending this method, they are induced to make a bleach green at Wellbrook, to accommodate the manufacture which they carry on there, having a great command of water, with the liberty of a very large turf bog adjoining, and every other natural convenience requisite to improve the manufacture. Your memorialists have, therefore, laid out a green, containing ten acres, which will enable them to bleach from seven to eight thousand pieces of linen annually; and will erect theron a bleaching mill, to consist of two wash mills, four pair of rubbing boards, two beetling engines, a buck house and boiling house; and over the wash mills and beetling engines, your memorialists will make a drying loft, to contain five hundred pieces of linen'. The first bleachworks were establishedby the Faulkners in 1765 on the Kildress River just to the north of the present National Trust owned mill in Corkhill townland. The beetles here were started for the first time in October 1765 and work seems to have been completed when the frames were erected in the drying loft in September 1767. The fortunes of the business got into difficulties during the 1770s, during the decline of the linen industry, and the Wellbrook complex was let to John Greer in 1794. Samuel Faulkner died at sea in late 1795 on his way to the Isle of Man, while Hugh Faullkner moved down to the County Carlow (Castletown), where he died in 1801. The mill building in Corkhill townland, which has been in National Trust ownership since 1969, matches the ‘mill’ shown on the OS map of 1833-34, and all others thereafter. The official National Trust guide, (published in 1996), states incorrectly that ‘ the ‘two-storey building and cottage visitors can see today…were built by J. Faulkner in 1768’. However, Green (1972) states that while Samuel Faulkner acquired the Corkhill properrty in 1783, the present building is no older than about 1830. There were at one time no fewer than six beetling mills on the Wellbrook property. The cottage is not shown on the first edition OS map of 1833-34, and the contemporary valuation records indicate that the property -(the 'new mill') then a bleach mill- was regarded as relatively newly-built at that point (quality letter ‘1A’); the valuers actually refer to it as a ‘new concern’; thus it probably dates from c.1830, possibly replacing an earlier structure. The dimensions of the building are recorded in the same valuation as 44½ft x 21 x 16, with a thatched ‘return’ of 8 x 9 x 5½, and the rateable value, £4-14-0. The present building is 61 feet long and it is not known when the extension was made. At this date the mill was in the hands of James Gunning, a linen draper, who lived at ‘Wellbrook’, the large two-storey house, situated less than half a kilometre to the north-east. This house was built by the aforementioned Faulkners between 1767 and 1779, alongside a bleaching establishment (built in 1764-65 see above), which this mill and several others in the district served. After Hugh Faulkner’s death in 1801, Wellbrook and the whole milling concern passed to his daughter’s husband, William Martin, who, in 1805, sold house and business to James Irwin for £1,425. Irwin carried on the bleaching business until his death in 1833, when it was leased by his widow to the aforementioned James Gunning, a brother of the founder of the firm of John Gunning and Son in nearby Cookstown In terms of ownership, the link between the smaller mill and the house at Wellbrook was to remain until the National Trust took over the former in 1969. Sometime between 1834 and 1857 the adjacent cottage was erected. James Gunning quitted Wellbrook in or around 1852, after he and business partner, James Moore, acquired much of the Killymoon estate, and, the second valuation of 1858 records that the ‘mill and office’ back in the hands of the Irwins, with Caroline Irwin noted as the leaseholder, and a Captain R.J. Henry the immediate lessor. Caroline Irwin does not appear to have continued to operate this mill and her others in the vicinity. Consequently the main mill and house at Wellbrook fell into disrepair, and the low rateable value of £2-10-0 strongly suggests that this mill suffered a similar fate. By 1863, however, the rateable value had leapt up to £16, a consequence of the boom the Irish linen industry caused by the American Civil War, which in turn may have prompted the upgrading of the building and machinery. It was probably Thomas Adair, (a well-established linen manufacturer from Greenvale, just south of Cookstown), who took on the lease c.1860, who was responsible for any changes to the mill. Adair held on to the property until 1866, when the lease was acquired by, James Leeper, the head of the weaving firm of John Gunning & Co. Leeper briefly let the mill to a Hugh Adair (undoubtedly a relative of Thomas) in 1877-78, but was directly in control of it himself again in 1879. In 1886, William Leeper succeeded James and the cottage is recorded for the first time as a dwelling, sub-let to a David Barnes. In 1916, William Leeper acquired the freehold of both house and mill, with the property sold to Mr. S.J. Henderson of Coleraine in 1959. McCutcheon says that the mill remained in operation until 1961, as does the information board at the site, ‘having been worked by three generations of the Black family’. The cottage appears to have continued in use for some years after this, with valuations noting a William Mullan in residence up until 1968, the year in which both it and the mill were given to the Trust. References- Primary sources 1 PRONI MIC/21, T/1617 Faulkner Papers, 1699-1839 2 ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland...vol.20’ ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB, 1993), p.60 3 PRONI VAL/1A/6/29 OS map, Co Tyrone sheet 29, with valuation
references, 1833-34(-c.38) 4 PRONI VAL/1B/624 First valuation, Kildress parish, 1834 5 PRONI VAL/2A/6/29C OS map, Co Tyrone sheet 29, with valuation references, 1857(-58) 6 PRONI VAL/2B/6/23C Second valuation, Kildress parish, 1858 7 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14A Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1860-63 8 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14B Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1864-80 9 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14C Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1881 10 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14D Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1882-96 11 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14E Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1897-1912 12 PRONI VAL/12B/37/14F Annual valuation revision book, Oaklands ED, 1912-29 13 PRONI VAL/3C/7/6 First general revaluation of Northern Ireland, Oaklands ED, 1936-57 14 PRONI VAL/4B/6/8 Second general revaluation of Northern Ireland, Oaklands ED, 1957-72 15. The Faulkner Papers (Castletown Castle, Co. Carlow). Consulted by E.R.R. Green (1972) Secondary sources 1 Monahan, Amy, “An eighteenth century family linen business: the Faulkners of Wellbrook, Cookstown”, in ‘Ulster Folklife’ vol.9 (1963) 2 Rowan, A.J., ‘North west Ulster’ (London, 1979), p.328 3 McCutcheon, W.A., 'The industrial archaeology of Northern Ireland' (Belfast, HMSO, 1980), pp.234, 253, 263 4 ‘Mid-Ulster houses’ (The National Trust, 1996), pp.31-32 5. Green, E.R. R. 'Restoring a beetling mill. Wellbrook, Co. Tyrone'. Country Life, August 24th, 1972, pp476-477.

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation D. Plan Form J. Setting K. Group value

Historic Interest

X. Local Interest Z. Rarity Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

This is an exceptionally complete and well-composed Mill complex. It has been very-well preserved and provides an excellent historical insight into the former workings of an industrial linen mill. The picturesque setting is also well preserved. The Mill Race, Mill Wheel and all other remaining artefacts enhance the historic and rarity qualities of the building, and add to value of the grouping. It is a now rare example of the genre. It shares a group value with the adjoining bridge HB09/04/004.

General Comments

Date of Survey

22 January 2008