In the fields to the west of Durrow Abbey House in County Offaly, a Victorian clergyman sketched what he cautiously called the "probable site of mill," suggesting a structure that had vanished so completely that even its location could only be inferred.

The drawing was made in 1899 by Reverend Sterling de Courcy Williams, whose published work placed this tentative identification at pages 223 and 232 of his account. The phrasing matters: "probable site" is the language of a careful observer working from traces rather than standing remains, perhaps from earthworks, crop marks, or local memory still alive at the end of the nineteenth century. The mill itself, if it stood where Williams suspected, is thought to pre-date 1700, which would place it in an era when water mills, typically built to grind grain using the mechanical force of a diverted stream, were essential features of any substantial estate or monastic settlement. Durrow had a long ecclesiastical history, and a mill in this vicinity would have served a working community whose needs were thoroughly practical.