Wind Mill, Correal, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Kilns
On the summit of a broad hill in County Roscommon, a small stone tower carries a date carved into its doorway that most people walking past would never think to read.
Scratched onto the north side of the door jamb are the letters and numerals "SEP 1818 IN", a quiet signature left by whoever built or completed this three-storey windmill more than two centuries ago. It is modest in scale, with an external base diameter of 6.4 metres and a height of just 6 metres, tapering upward in the manner typical of Irish tower windmills, where the narrowing profile helped concentrate the force channelled down through the machinery to the millstones below.
By the time the Ordnance Survey produced its six-inch map in 1837, the mill was recorded as still in use, which suggests it had a working life of at least two decades after its construction. The internal arrangement follows a logical three-floor plan. The ground floor has a single window and two beam-holes in the wall, the sockets that once held timbers for bracing the milling machinery in place. The first floor retains a rebate, a ledge cut into the masonry to support the floor structure, and has three plain windows to let in light for working. The second floor was carried on joists set directly into the wall, with one window above. How much longer the mill functioned after 1837 is not recorded, but the structure itself survived long enough to be conserved in the 1990s, which accounts for the relative completeness visible today.