Bellavista Mill, Tallaght Road, Dublin, Co. Dublin

It reads, at first glance, as a house, but the proportions are wrong for that purpose; a tower-like bulk and a mixture of walling materials hint at a working past that has been quietly absorbed into a residence.

That impression is correct. What stands here today began, around 1810, as a two-storey mill building, later raised and converted into a detached three-storey gable-ended house with an incorporated tower. The lower storey is built of uncoursed squared limestone, roughly dressed blocks laid without regular horizontal courses, a practical and economical method of construction well suited to an industrial structure that needed solidity rather than display. Above this, brick takes over, marking the point where the building was extended upward during its transformation from mill to dwelling. Many of the original openings have been blocked, enlarged, or otherwise altered to suit domestic life, and timber casement windows now run throughout in place of whatever fittings the mill once had. A single-storey kitchen extension with a pediment, a triangular gable feature borrowed from classical architecture, was added to the west, while a full-height chimney was built onto the exterior at a later date, and the whole is finished with a pitched slate roof. Little else survives to show what kind of complex this mill originally belonged to, but its scale suggests it was once part of something considerably larger than the single building now standing.

Seen from a distance, the structure still carries the presence of its industrial origins, an unusual survival that continues to catch the eye of anyone passing along the road below.