Windmills are rare survivals in Ireland, far less common than in Britain or the Low Countries, and their presence in the west of the country is rarer still. Most Irish windmills date from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, when landlords and improving tenants introduced them to grind grain on estates where water-powered mills were impractical or simply absent. What remains at Ballyshingadaun, whether a roofless tower, a stump of masonry, or something more intact, is not yet publicly detailed.

The record of this structure exists, but the available source material for it remains thin. Windmill towers in Ireland were typically built as squat, thick-walled cylinders of stone, designed to carry a rotating cap and sails above the grinding machinery within. In Mayo, as elsewhere along the western seaboard, the Atlantic wind was an obvious resource, yet the maintenance demands of a working windmill and the relative abundance of fast-running streams meant that watermills often outlasted them in practical use. Many windmill towers were eventually converted into stores, dwellings, or simply left to consolidate into ruin. Without further detail on this particular site, it is not possible to say which fate met the one at Ballyshingadaun, or when it was built and by whom.