Corn Mill House

This 19th Century Corn Mill was one of 11 Mills along the Ballymartin River, Co-Antrim, N.Ireland. Fast forward to Present day and only two are left, Patterson’s Spade mill which has been restored by the National Trust and the Corn Mill located 250mts down-stream.

The popularity of Mills within this area were to to be the birth and death of this particular industrial building, it was built in the Boom of industry in Ireland in the mid 1800’s when Linen and flour were in high demand. As this mill was located towards the end of this particular stretch of River, by the time the water had passed through the Mills further upstream there was little flow left to power this Mill, which led to a mill pond being created to power the mill for only 3 months of the year. The mill was last used for making flour in 1909 after a fire broke out in the kiln, causing one side of the Mill to collapse. Since then the Mill has had a number of uses ranging from offices to a water powered DC electric generator for the farms milking parlour and in recent years, a shelter for the farm animals. Since then, the stone Mill race and tail race have been filled in to make the site safe; the scars of both can still be seen on the fields.

We are fortunate enough to own the land on which the Mill stands, and as a child, my wife used to play hide and seek inside with her sister. Thirty years onwards and it had become more derelict and upkeep was a struggle due to her fathers poor health. We originally came up with the idea of restoration and change of use back in 2014, and had approached a local architect who put some design ideas together. While the design was a high standard and very modern, it left little identity of the original building, something which we were uncomfortable with. We felt this design could win some some awards and was a way of showcasing the architects ideas but inevitably it would never feel quite like it was our home. We had this design costed by a quantity surveyor and the build cost was more than double our budget! This disheartened us, we paid the architect for his time but decided to part ways as we felt that he was taking us down a direction we were uncomfortable with. My wife and I had lengthy discussions on whether we should save this building or just buy an already built property, we worried about how long this process might take, would there still be a building left to save if a decision wasn’t made in the near future, would we be able to afford this project after the scare of the original Quantity Surveyor’s Report… but we felt that this building was talking to us. We would look out from our parents farm house and see the Mill staring back, standing proud and isolated in the field, nature slowly trying to reclaim this building as ivy climbed up the stone walls. We would walk our dogs past it daily and couldnt stand to watch it crumble into the earth, I had such a strong emotional connection and feelings of heritage that we decided that no matter what, we would try to save this Corn Mill!

We approached the local planning office and asked them to carry out a site visit. They visited and informed us that they would be comfortable with a proposed build on the site in accordance with CTY4 and PPS21 - planning in the countryside. There were a number of suggestions made by the planning office on how we should go about a design, some of which included screening in the form of a woodland belt and that the walls which had collapsed should be rebuilt using the existing stone, sourced on-site.

While watching a well known self-build TV show we were made aware of another local architect company called 2020, we had seen first hand how they were able to use sustainable building techniques to restore an old building and also add to it with a more modern vernacular extension, all while staying sensitive to the heritage and style of the original building and doing so at a reasonable cost. It was at this point we knew that 2020 were the right choice for helping our vision become a reality. The next step was to research the history of the Mill, which we did by visiting the public records office where we found out information on previous owners, the value of the property, it’s use and dates of operation. This helped us to understand the history of the Mill and why it became disused. Our next steps were to visit Corn Mills that had been restored and as National Trust members we had access to a number of Mills throughout Northern Ireland. This gave us an insight into how the Mill worked, layout of the rooms and how the inside of the industrial building would have felt. This enabled us to build a picture of this Mills former identity, something which we wanted to keep and try to recreate as parts of the Mill had collapsed over the years.

Once we had built a picture of what we wanted in our minds and also on vision boards (Pinterest), we took these ideas to our architect. 2020 were able to create a design and suggest ammendments and modifications where they felt it was appropriate, a design which we felt met the brief and more.

We had a structual survey carried out on the building which documented that all walls which were still standing could be kept and those which were beyond repair would need to be rebuilt. We subsequently submitted our design to the planning office and awaited consultations. These took approximately two months and included feedback from the Roads Service, Environment Agency, Rivers Agency and the Historical Monuments Unit, all without any objections. But we were faced with another set of conditions on our proposed build, including proactive measures of flood defense and raising our minimum floor level (being located close to the river). But the most unexpected condition was that we would need a schedule of works submitted by an industrial and historical archaeologist before any ground works commenced. We had been informed that the Corn Mill we intend to restore was actually an Historical Monument of industrial Heritage! This meant that any proposed design or work to be carried out on the building would need sign-off from the Historical Monuments Unit (HMU), while we had checked to see if it was a listed building we had overlooked the Historical Monuments register. A meeting was scheduled with the HMU to understand what this status meant and if there was any particular requirements we would need to meet. The HMU were very helpful and delighted that we were going to save and restore this building, they listened to our rationale and design ideas and were content with the proposal. They even provided additional support and information via their photographic archives which gave us an early photograph of the Mill, this enabled us to see the building as it stood with its original openings.

The next stage was to get approval from the local planning office, several months passed with no update or progress on the application. We were checking the portal daily in anticipation, our architect was enquiring on a twice monthly basis and finally after 6 months we heard back, the case officer dealing with the application had concerns on the structural integrity of some of the existing walls. We arranged for a face to face meeting with the planning office along with our architect and local MLA, during this meeting we addressed a number of concerns and issues, the end result requiring more involvement from the structural engineering company. We ended up having to hire a planning consultancy to help with our case, this along with numerous emails and phonecalls to local MLA's finally got our application approved... 18months later!

The final design of the Mill is two fold, a sympathetic restoration of the existing building and a modern vernacular extension, with a ‘clear’ divide between the old and the new with an addition of a glass box entrance.