A grist mill is one that grinds grain into flour or meal, typically powered by a millwheel turned by running water, and this one sat in a place called Scotsland, a quietly unremarkable-sounding locality that turns out to have a surprisingly long paper trail behind it.

The mill's history stretches back at least to 1623, when a water mill at Duncormick was recorded and may at that time have been a possession of the Meiler family. It reappears in the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, a mid-seventeenth-century inventory of landholding and property compiled in the aftermath of the Cromwellian wars, and again in the terrier accompanying the Down Survey parish map of 1656 to 1658. The Down Survey was the first large-scale systematic mapping of Ireland, directed by William Petty, and the terrier was a written commentary that accompanied each parish map, recording features of local importance. That a working mill appears in both surveys within a few years of each other suggests it was a functioning and economically significant presence in the area. Whether the 1839 grist mill occupies the same ground as the structure recorded in the 1620s is uncertain; the location of the earlier building is not established, though it may have stood close to the village of Duncormick itself.