The mill shown on the 1837 six-inch OS map may itself occupy the footprint of a medieval mill, one that had been associated with Archerstown Castle and its owner, William Golding.

In 1647, with the Irish Confederate Wars grinding on, a collective fine of £15 was levied on a group of mills across County Westmeath. The levy was intended to pay Captain Ignatius Nugent of the Irish Confederate Army, the Catholic alliance that controlled much of Ireland during that turbulent decade. Golding's mill at Archerstown was assessed at four shillings and eightpence, a modest share of the total but enough to fix the site in the historical record. The Irish Confederates, who governed from Kilkenny between 1642 and 1649, taxed productive properties like mills to fund their military operations, so the entry tells us both that the mill was functioning and that it was considered worth squeezing for revenue. Whether the nineteenth-century mill was a direct continuation of that earlier structure, rebuilt on the same foundations or simply placed where the water and topography had always made milling practical, is not something the surviving evidence can settle.