Corn Mill, Brownsmills, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Mills
At the head of Oyster Haven, about 1.8 kilometres north-east of Kinsale, a four-storey corn mill with attic stands roadside in a state that is remarkable less for its ruin than for what it still contains.
Quite a lot of the working machinery has survived inside, including early twentieth-century grinding equipment on the ground floor, a separator on the first floor, and a network of hoppers, chutes, a cupped elevator, and a sack hoist. Mills of this kind rarely hold onto their fittings; the hardware tends to be stripped out and sold off long before the walls come down.
The building itself measures roughly 13.6 metres east to west and just over 5 metres north to south, with gabled ends. Along the eastern gable, a wheel-pit some 2.2 metres wide and approximately 3 metres deep once housed either a high breastshot or overshot waterwheel, both types being driven by water delivered at or near the top of the wheel rather than underneath it, which generates considerably more power. The headrace, the channel that brought water to the wheel, sat about 3 metres above ground level, which supports that reading of the wheel type. The wheel itself is gone, but the arched tail race, the underground channel that carried water away after it had done its work, remains in place beneath the structure. The machinery inside was driven by a line shaft, a horizontal shaft running the length of the building with pulleys transferring motion to individual machines at each floor. Among the surviving equipment is a Blackstone Mill fitted with 30-inch French burr stones, a Bentall Grinding Mill, and a Huntley, Cronson and Hammond Separator. An attached two-storey structure added to the northern elevation contains a grain drying kiln at its southern end, complete with a central furnace at ground level measuring 1.77 by 1.39 metres and ceramic drying tiles on the floor above. Grain drying kilns were used to reduce moisture content before milling, which was especially important in the damp Irish climate.