The 18th-century structure that appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map is likely not the first mill to have stood on this ground. An early 17th-century map of the area already shows a mill positioned on the Silver River at or near Ballynacarrig, raising the possibility that the later building was constructed on the footprint of something considerably older.

The connection between the two structures was noted by the architectural historian Rolf Loeber, whose survey of early Irish buildings and their cartographic traces identified this site as one where continuity of use across centuries may be read into the landscape itself. Mills were expensive and strategically important pieces of infrastructure, requiring a reliable water source, a suitable gradient, and proximity to the grain-growing community they served. Once a site had been developed, it made practical sense to rebuild in the same place when the original structure wore out or was destroyed. The Silver River would have provided the necessary flow to drive a millwheel, and the same logic that guided whoever chose the spot in the early 1600s would have guided those who rebuilt it later.