Whether the nineteenth-century mill was built directly over the earlier one, or whether the original water-mill stood somewhere else within the townland entirely, remains an open question. That ambiguity is part of what makes the site quietly interesting: a working industrial building that may, or may not, carry the footprint of something far older beneath it.

The documentary trail begins in the early seventeenth century. In 1612, Robert Dillon of Cannorstown Castle was granted 'a mill and 1 plowland' in the townland of Cannorstown under the Jacobean patent rolls. Nine years later, in 1621, Dillon surrendered his lands to the Crown, with the water-mill listed explicitly among them. That same year, the entire Cannorstown estate, comprising the castle, its bawn (a walled or fortified enclosure attached to a tower house), a stone hall, an orchard, the water-mill, and a carucate of land, was granted to Sir William Parsons. The mill, in other words, was considered significant enough to name separately in each transaction, suggesting it was a productive and valued part of the holding rather than a minor outbuilding. Whether Parsons retained it, rebuilt it, or let it fall into disuse is not recorded, but by the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in the 1830s, a corn mill was clearly present and operating on or very near the same spot.