Unlike the Low Countries or parts of England, Ireland never developed a strong tradition of wind-powered milling, and the towers or stumps that do remain tend to attract little attention beyond a passing curiosity. The presence of one at Derryhiveny, in County Galway, is worth noting precisely because of that scarcity.

Derryhiveny is perhaps best known for its castle, a late tower house with an attached bawn, built in 1643 by Donal O'Madden, one of the last such structures raised in Ireland before the upheavals of the Cromwellian period effectively ended that tradition of fortified domestic building. That a windmill also stood in this locality suggests a working agricultural and milling economy operating alongside the more heavily documented military and aristocratic architecture of the area. Windmills in an Irish context were typically of the tower mill variety, a fixed stone cylinder with a rotating cap and sails, and their construction required both capital and a reliable exposure to prevailing winds. The east Galway plain, relatively open and flat, is not an unlikely setting for one.