That uncertainty is not a gap in the record so much as the record itself, and it gives the site an odd distinction: a place defined almost entirely by what remains unlocated.

In 1612, a man named Thomas Petyt, also recorded as Petit, of Irishtown was granted a watermill in Templanstown under the Calendar of Patent Rolls of Ireland for the reign of James I. The grant is documented; the ground it refers to is not. What complicates matters further is that the mill shown on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837 may itself have been built on the site of a much earlier, medieval mill, suggesting a continuity of use across centuries at a location that has since slipped out of the historical record. Watermills of this period were typically built to harness a fast-moving stream, using a millrace or weir to direct water onto a wheel that drove the grinding stones inside, and their placement was dictated entirely by the local geography of water flow. That the 1837 mill could be a successor to a medieval predecessor is plausible; that neither has been firmly placed on the ground is the genuine puzzle here.