What makes this small annotation quietly arresting is the possibility that it marks a site of continuous, or near-continuous, industrial use stretching back more than five centuries before that map was ever drawn.

The earliest firm reference to a watermill at this location comes from a legal document dated 1303 to 1304, recorded in the Plea Roll of 32 Edward I. The case involved a woman named Sibilla, widow of Maurice son of Thomas, who was pursuing a claim for dower, the portion of her late husband's estate to which a widow was legally entitled under medieval English law. Her claim named Nicholas son of Maurice as the defendant and sought one third of a house, a watermill, over a thousand acres of land, and a fishery on the river Feale, all situated in Lystothyl, the medieval rendering of Listowel. She also claimed rights in lands at a place recorded as Viale de Kyllesshene, identified as Beale in north Kerry. The document was published by the historian G. H. Orpen in the mid-1920s and remains a rare glimpse into the Anglo-Norman settlement of north Kerry at a granular, human level. The mill itself is listed alongside the fishery and the castle as components of a substantial manorial holding, suggesting it was a working part of the local economy rather than a minor outbuilding.

Whether the mill recorded on the 1841 map was a direct descendant of the one Sibilla fought over in court, or a later structure built on the same favourable ground beside the river, is not certain. What the two documents together suggest is that this particular spot, close to the castle and the Feale, was recognised as a practical site for milling across a very long stretch of time.