Corn mills and their kilns were once common features of the Irish countryside, built wherever a reliable water source could power a millwheel. The kiln, typically a small stone-built structure with a perforated drying floor above a fire chamber, was used to dry the grain before milling, a necessary step given Ireland's damp climate. Together, a mill and kiln represented a significant local investment, usually serving an entire townland or cluster of farms.

Beyond the fact of its existence at Gardenblake, the specific history of this particular mill, its construction date, the family or landlord who built it, and the period during which it last operated, remains to be fully documented. What can be said is that corn mills of this type were most active during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, before industrial milling and the devastation of the Famine reshaped rural economies across Connacht. Many were abandoned in the decades following the 1840s, and their stone fabric was often robbed for other building work or simply left to collapse into the landscape. The survival of a site identifiable as both mill and kiln at Gardenblake suggests enough structural evidence remains to distinguish the two functions, which is itself of some interest.