Old Windmill, Whitemill, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Kilns
Beneath a patch of grass in a modern housing estate on Whitemill Road, Co. Wexford, there may lie the remains of a windmill that was already old enough to be labelled as such on an Ordnance Survey map drawn in 1839.
The circular feature marked on that early OS six-inch edition at Whitemill South is all that cartography offers by way of a physical trace, and today even that much has vanished from view, absorbed into the unremarkable green space of a residential development.
The site has a considerably longer paper trail than its current appearance suggests. The Down Survey, a remarkably ambitious mid-seventeenth-century land mapping project carried out between 1656 and 1658 under the direction of William Petty, recorded a windmill on a barony and parish map of St. Peter's parish. The precise location given in that survey is listed under Newtown and a place called Carrow Parkes, a townland name that no longer appears on modern maps but which is thought to correspond to the area now known as Whitemill. The place-name Whitemill itself is suggestive: whitened or lime-washed mill towers were a practical feature in Ireland, making them visible landmarks across open country, and the name may preserve a memory of exactly that. The mill stood on a broad hill, with the Bishop's Water stream running roughly south-west to north-east some 170 metres to the south, a positioning consistent with the exposed, elevated sites typically chosen to catch prevailing winds.
Nothing of the structure is visible today. The grassed-over space within the housing estate gives no outward indication of what may lie beneath it, and the site rewards historical curiosity more than a physical visit.