Yet that is precisely what happened at Bealick in the late nineteenth century, when a generator installed here in 1898 began supplying Macroom with electric light. The mill was grinding grain and would later cut timber, but it was also, for a time, a small power station serving the nearest town.

The four-storey building is a substantial thing, measuring roughly 14 by 20 metres, triple-gable-ended on two of its elevations and built in three distinct phases. Its roof was originally half-hipped, though asbestos sheeting has since replaced whatever covering came before. Inside, cast-iron columns stamped with the name of their maker, Perrotts of Cork, divide the floor spaces. The main waterwheel, a cast-iron suspension wheel just over six metres in diameter, sits in a wheel-pit along the north-eastern elevation; its shrouding carries the name McSwiney, presumably its manufacturer or installer. That wheel drove a pinion, which in turn powered a pit-wheel of just over three metres diameter, and from there two auxiliary shafts turned at least two pairs of millstones. The 1842 Ordnance Survey map shows the site already in operation as Bealick Mills, with a millrace feeding in from the east and also serving a tuck mill, a fulling mill used for finishing woven cloth, about 400 metres further along. By the 1901 map the millrace had been rerouted to approach from the north, and the surviving machinery is thought to date from the period 1887 to 1897. Two turbines were also installed on the north-eastern side of the mill: one, a downward axial flow turbine, remained in use and drove a generator; the other, now disused, was once geared to run the mill machinery itself on a belt and pulley system. Between 1903 and 1911 sawmills were added at the south-eastern end, and over time timber-cutting became the mill's principal activity rather than grain. The site also provided power to the Macroom Iron Foundry, which stood to the north.