Less remarked upon is the fact that the settlement was also home to a mill, a structure recorded as a monument in its own right and one that points to the working, practical life that existed alongside the ecclesiastical fame of the place.

Mills were a fundamental part of the Irish rural economy from early medieval times onward, harnessing river or stream flow to grind grain and, later, to power other industrial processes. Their remains, whether earthworks, millraces, or the stone shells of mill buildings, tend to survive in the landscape long after the machinery has rotted or been removed. Clonfert itself grew up around a monastery reputedly founded by St Brendan in the sixth century, and the surrounding area remained an important ecclesiastical and agricultural centre through the medieval period and beyond. A mill in such a location would have served the monastic community and the local population, fitting into a pattern seen across Ireland wherever religious houses and fertile land coincided near a reliable water source.