Windmill, Hardygregan, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Kilns
Most windmills that survive in Ireland do so as hollow shells, stripped of their workings long ago.
The conical tower at Hardygregan in County Wexford is a different case: its machinery is reportedly still intact, sitting quietly inside a structure that stands roughly eight metres tall across three or four storeys. That combination of complete interior and modest exterior is unusual enough, but the mill's history adds a further layer of oddity. A windmill was already marked as operational on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, yet local tradition holds that the building as it stands was constructed in 1883, suggesting the current tower replaced an earlier one on the same elevated ground.
The 1883 structure eventually moved with the times in a rather pragmatic way: at some point it was adapted to run on a diesel engine, and continued working in that form until 1964. The shift from wind to diesel power was not uncommon in Irish mills during the twentieth century, where keeping a mill commercially viable mattered more than preserving its original mechanism. Attached to the tower is a complete corn drying kiln, a low stone structure used to dry harvested grain before milling, reducing moisture content so the grain could be ground or stored without spoiling. The presence of both the kiln and the intact milling machinery makes this a relatively complete picture of small-scale agricultural processing. The tower itself has probably been reduced in height at some point, so what survives is not quite the original form, but it sits on a rise in the rolling landscape around Hardygregan, which would have made it well-suited to catching wind in the first place.