Mill in Ballyine, County Limerick (LI028-118----)

In level pasture, on S side of stream which flows from west to east. Site discovered in 1959 by landowner and subsequently investigated by Michael Walsh of UCC (Walsh 1965). Uncovered were remains of 'a stone-built mill house and wheelrace for a vertical breastshot waterwheel' (Rynne 1998, 82). Also recovered were 'ten pivot stones, which would have formed the lower part of a footstep bearing upon which the pinion gear would have rotated' (ibid.), as well as 'eight gear pegs or teeth' and 's small section of the waterwheel's shroud' (ibid.). Immediately N of the mill, Walsh (ibid., fig. 1) identified a large silted-up roughly triangular depression (940 sq. m) as the remains of a mill-pond. This was fed by a V-shaped channel from another stream 800m away, as well as from the stream which borders it to the NE. Rynne dates the site to 'the high-medieval period' (ibid.), i.e. 12th/13th century, and regards it as 'the earliest known example of a breastshot mill in Ireland'. The recovery of two millstone fragments (Walsh ibid., 20-1) indicates that the site was a grain mill; Rynne (ibid.) compares Ballyine with a number of iron-working mills in England, and it may be of some significance that evidence for ironworking was discovered a short distance upstream from the mill (LI028-117---). Remains of a second mill were discovered by Walsh 200m down-stream (LI028-119---).