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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Maudlins stream and its mills
By Dan Walsh
THE MAUDLINS stream rises in Arnestown and flows into the River Barrow at Ferrymountgarrett Pill in Ballyanne. It is a small stream and its maximum length would be approximately four miles.
It is not a stream that carries a great volume of water - recorded gauges in the dry year of 1959 showed a flow of 850,000 gallons per day or approximately 35,500 gallons per hour, the equivalent of a 9 inch pipe!
The fall from Arnestown to Ballyanne is only 48 feet. Consequently, it is not an ideal stream for milling and any of the millers who worked the stream said the same thing. It was alright in the wet weather season from September to March, but it was hard trying from there on. Remember the capacity of any of these mills was limited, and therefore, grinding would continue for far longer periods than is now the case.
A farmer might bring his corn to be ground to the mill and take it away after grinding or he could reach agreement with the miller and have his corn stored at the mill and he drew on it as required.
The great corn stores in the Maudlins Village would have catered for this type of arrangement. The Maudlin millers kept going by co-operation and in the dry season one miller started his mill with the flow from the miller above him.
In turn he passed it on to the miller below him, thus to conserve water it would be necessary to work around the clock. It is commonly held that six mills were worked on this four mile long stream, and an ancient couplet appears to bear this out. "From Sylvie Roche's to Ballyanne, Six mills the Maudlins ran."
In fact, however, the stream ran considerably more. From my investigation (at this point I am unable to determine who the researcher was) the following mills were worked on this stream. I give the order from Arnestown down; 1. Howlett's Mill; 2. Roche's or Larkin’s Mill; 3. Hendrick's Mill; 4. Sutton's Mill, formerly Cheevers'; 5. Nowlan's Mill; 6. Dunphy's Mill; 7, Neville's Mill, and 8. Bishop's Mill.
I would also imagine that McNamy monastic establishment had a mill, as the old millrace supplying Nowlan's mill passes through the original site of the monastery.
Thus, in all, the Maudlins stream powered nine mills, if my last assumption is correct, but all, of course, were not working at one time.
The maximum number of mills working contemporaneously was seven, that is from Howlett's to the Barrow, there was a concentration of 2.3 mills per mile of stream and I think that is as heavy a concentration on mills as ever existed, anywhere in Ireland!
All were corn mills, but the career of Neville's mill was very varied indeed - it was a corn mill, a tuck mill, a hook mill and ended up as a milk-separating mill. The term 'hook mill' puzzled me a lot.
The laneway from Healysland to Bawnmore Bridge was referred to as the Hook Mill Lane. Personally I thought this a corruption of Tuck Mill, but two people later confirmed that, in fact, the mill made hooks - reaping and bill hooks for the farming area in the immediate neighbourhood.
While this is surprising, in this case it must be remembered that John Smeaton designed and constructed foundries, saw-mills, paper factories, fulling, furnace blasting - plants all worked by water wheels and these were erected in various English counties, but in this area such a variety of processes were never in evidence.
Pierre Hendrick had a foundry opposite the mill and it appears he devoted more time to the foundry than to the mill, consequently, his trade declined and he was evicted, not for debt, but for his nationalist affiliations during the land war, a fate that also met Thomas Dunphy.
Another Maudlins miller was evicted for similar activities. Dunphy was evicted the day before the murder of young Curtis on the Maudlins road in 1834. His furniture and chattels were on sale outside the mill on the date of the murder and all auctions were called by the local agent.
Dunphy engaged in extensive pig farming, in addition to his milling activities. He fled to America in 1884 and did not return to New Ross until the centenary celebrations of the 1798 Rebellion.
Dunphy was one of the first millers on the stream to try and turn over to steam power, and with that end in view, he erected a steam boiler and a large chimney beside the mill. The chimney actually was the major portion of an old chimney, which was taken from Cherry's Brewery in New Ross, but before Dunphy could use this for power he lost both his mill and his freedom.
No mill wheel turns in that stream, according to a source from 1959, and the following mills were in ruins: Hewlett’s, Handrick's, Cheevers', Nowlan's, Dunphy's and Bishop's. In 1959, Roche's and Neville's mills were both intact, but were not working. There was a song about the Maudlins mills, and while it is incomplete, we reproduce the surviving verse;
"Sylvester Roche of the Arnestown Lane,
Is the best miller in the Stream.
From him the water then does flow,
To Pierre Hendrick there below
Pierre Hendrick with his old gear,
Don't grind twenty barrels in a year.
And from the water then does go,
To Johnny Cheevers there below.
Johnny Cheevers is the earliest one,
He's up three hours before the sun.
And often to his men he'd say,
'Thanks be to God for the fine long Day'.
From him the water then flows on,
To Jimmy Nowland and his son.
Tom Dunphy was the honest man,
The way he'd grind for any one.
He loved ould Ireland, this cost him dear,
Now he's gone and the mill is bare.
But the water still does flow,
To Nappers Hook mill there below."
Apparently, there were six verses in the song, and the source for the above seems to be Thomas Leacy of the Irishtown, New Ross.
Neville's mill was formerly Napper's, and according to this account from half a century ago, was in an excellent state of preservation and is the next mill on the stream.
Finally, we come to an old Norman mill, Bishop's mill, and the Maudlin stream is tidal just to the point below the tail race of the mill at Bishop's Mill Bridge, so that was the limit of milling on the stream. The head race and mill pond to this mill were the finest on the stream.
Connor's house, out-offices and orchard, which adjoined the mill were all in ruins; the bridge was overgrown, the roadway to the mill has hardly passable. With Bishop's Mill we have come to the end of the line - the end of an era;
"But the waters still flow on wheelless to Ballyanne."
*I have failed to locate the source of this account of the Maudlins Stream. I do know that it was delivered as a paper, possibly in the early 1960’s, and the full text, badly typed and photocopied before that process became clear and efficient, was given to me by an old man from the Ballinaboola area.
That was about 30 years ago. I found it during a tidy up some months ago and tried to make sense of it because of the poor quality copy. This is the account of the Maudlins Stream, and hopefully, I will salvage more information on some old mills in the New Ross district in future editions.
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