The 19th-century structure that survives today sits on ground that was already associated with milling centuries before it was built, and the name Stephenstown is no accident. It points directly to a mill recorded on historical surveys as the 'mill of Stephen', suggesting that the identity of this place was shaped, and remembered, by a single individual long before the current stonework went up.

The earliest documentary evidence for a mill on this site comes from two mid-17th-century surveys conducted in the 1650s. The Down Survey, carried out between 1655 and 1656, was a vast cartographic project commissioned by the Cromwellian administration to map forfeited Irish lands in remarkable detail. The Civil Survey, compiled around the same period, adds a textual layer to that picture. Both sources refer to the mill, and the Civil Survey identifies the proprietor at that time as Elizabeth Finglas. That a woman held proprietorship of a working mill in 1650s Ireland is a detail worth pausing on; it points to a figure of some local consequence, even if the historical record has not preserved much more about her. The research behind the site record was compiled by Geraldine Stout and later updated by Christine Baker.

The mill sits on Tanner's Lane, a name that hints at another layer of industrial activity in the area, since tanning, the process of treating animal hides into leather, was typically located near running water for practical reasons. That combination of milling and tanning in a single small locality suggests this stretch of water was genuinely useful to the communities that settled around it. The 19th-century building that now occupies the site is the physical survivor of all that activity, though visitors should approach with modest expectations of signage or formal access; this is a site that rewards those who come equipped with curiosity and a reasonable sense of the surrounding landscape rather than those expecting a curated experience.