Wind Mill, Coolnagun, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Kilns

Wind Mill, Coolnagun, Co. Westmeath

On the edge of Coolnagun bog in County Westmeath, a small circular tower of undressed limestone sits in boggy ground beside a narrow drain, its walls still reaching roughly four metres in height despite an uncertain amount having been lost from the top.

What makes it quietly odd is the fireplace. Windmills are working machines, not places where people warm themselves, yet tucked into the northeast wall above the ground-floor window is a small hearth, less than a metre wide and just over half a metre deep. Someone, at some point, expected to be comfortable inside this tower, which raises questions the stonework alone cannot answer.

When surveyors recorded the structure in 1980, they found a building that repays close attention even in its ruined state. The plan is circular, with an internal diameter of about 3.1 metres and walls roughly 0.8 metres thick, plus a solid rectangular projection on the southeast. The north-facing doorway narrows slightly from the base upward, as do the two ground-floor window openings, both of which have internal splays to admit as much light as possible into the dim interior. A third window on the upper level, facing west-southwest, is wider than the others but has lost its stone stop, the small corbel or ledge that would have supported a wooden shutter or frame. The whole structure is built from small blocks of undressed limestone laid in regular courses with flat packing stones and a rough mortar, a functional rather than ornate piece of construction. Evidence of two floors survives, though the original height of the tower remains unknown. Windmills of this tower-mill type, where the machinery sat inside a fixed stone body and only the cap carrying the sails rotated, were once a familiar enough feature of the Irish midlands, where flat boggy terrain offered reliable wind but little fast-flowing water to drive a millstone.

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