Water mills of this kind, typically horizontal-wheeled or vertical-wheeled structures built to grind grain, were once a common feature of the Irish rural landscape, their placement dictated entirely by the availability of a reliable watercourse. In Connaught, many such mills served small agricultural communities from the medieval period onwards, and a good number fell into disuse during the nineteenth century as larger commercial operations displaced local milling. That a structure in Teeranea has been recognised as a monument at all suggests something of it remains, whether standing masonry, earthwork traces, or the remnant of a mill race, the channel cut to direct water onto the wheel.