Behind that layering of names is a structure whose origins may reach considerably further back than any of them suggest, with the possibility that medieval fabric is incorporated into what stands today.

The earliest documentary trace comes from the Down Survey of 1655 to 1656, a vast Cromwellian land mapping project that recorded, among other things, a mill in Graige parish in the barony of Gowran, with Sir Edward Butler listed as proprietor in 1640. The O'Learys, writing in 1924, placed the mill's origins still earlier, arguing that it occupies the site of the abbey mill belonging to Duiske Abbey, the Cistercian foundation that gave the town much of its medieval character. Cistercian monasteries were typically self-sufficient operations, and milling was central to that, so an abbey mill on the Douske River would have been a practical necessity rather than an incidental feature. The millrace, a channel cut to direct water onto the mill wheel, still runs from the north side of Mill Street before turning to rejoin the Douske, tracing a path that may follow the same logic as a medieval water management scheme.

The mill sits on the north side of Mill Street, at the southern end of that millrace where it loops back to the river. The physical proximity to the abbey ruins and the continuity of water management across several centuries makes this an easy place to overlook precisely because it looks, from the outside, like a functional post-medieval building rather than a site carrying centuries of layered use.