Mullee's Corn Mill in Kilbride
We will stay with the name Mullee for this partof the story and refer to Patrick as Paddy, the name by which his customers would have known him. Paddy inherited this place in the 1830’s, from his father Darby Mullee, listed in the Tithe Applotment register as a farmer, with Mill and a holding of 18 acres, 17 of which were graded as being first class and for which he paid an amount of 15s – 6p, to the Protestant rector of the District of Kilbride. This land was along by the road opposite the school and stretched from the cross-roads, where the Mill was situated, up to and including the area where the new cemetery was established.
Darby probably died around the time that Paddy got married to Jane Dowling, in 1834. Darby could readily have used the Irish version of his name, Diarmuid Molloy at any time, if he so wished. The reason for using the anglicised version of the name remains a mystery. Darby’s brother Patrick had left from the Corn Mill in Kilbride to seek his own fortune and in so doing had taken on the tenancy of a fine farm of land at Newtown Great in Co. Kildare, owned by the Downshire - Blessington Estates. His story will be told separately.
Having such a facility as The Corn Mill was a valuable asset and Darby would have provided a service to farmers and others over a wide area. The Miller had a high social standing in his local community, because he controlled one of its most important services and because he regularly met almost everyone in the neighbourhood.
Early Mills were almost always built and supported by farming communities and typically a percentage of each farmer’s grain, called “a miller's toll” was set aside for the miller, in lieu of wages. Although Grist Mill can refer to any mill that grinds grain, the term historically was used to refer to a local mill where farmers brought their own grain and received the flour from it, minus the “miller's toll”.
This Mill was designed and operated by this enterprising family, probably as far back as the early 1700’s. It required the establishment of a Mill Race which was diverted from the Lisheen river in the area of Glen Heste, clearly shown on the map as a Weir, where there is evidence of the existence of a reservoir and it then proceeded at the rear of the village, for a distance of at least a mile, along hedgerows, across fields and under two roads, to a point adjacent to the cross roads, where Mullee’s Corn Mill was situated. The route it took can still be clearly identified. Passing under the road again, it was then used to revolve the large wooden wheel and operate the equipment that turned the millstone to grind the corn.
Latest research has revealed that the Mill Race passed through the land that was leased from the Kilbride Estate, shown as section No. 8 on map dated 1837, by James Molloy who was by all accounts another brother of Darby, who owned and operated the Mill.
As James Mullee he paid £2 –5 –1p in Tithes to the Protestant Church in 1823. A James Molloy was in possession of this land in 1864 when he paid £48 –10 - 0 in the Griffith valuations. No record of any James Molloy/ Mullee has been found anywhere after that, nor are there any known descendents that can be traced back to this holding. It later passed into the Olligan/ Halligan family. A large portion of it is now owned by the Ennis family and another portion by James Blake.
In the Mill Race the passage of water was controlled by sluice gates, allowing for maintenance, and some measure of flood control. The old map, drawn up in 1837, shows a reference to a weir on the river and this controlled the level of water in the reservoir, giving a constant supply to the mill. The ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have used the technology. In the first century B.C. the Greek Epigrammatist, Antipater of Thessalonica, made the first clear reference to the waterwheel. He praised it for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labour.
The water then returned to the Lisheen river, adjacent to the Mill in what was known as a tail race, before it joined with the river Liffey close to Ballyward Bridge. The Liffey proceeded on its circuitous route to enter the sea at the point where the city of Dublin is built.
Everything associated with this enterprise was hard work and done in a very dusty atmosphere. The Mill, with its wheel and the house the families were born and reared in, are long since gone. It is noted in the valuation records of 1887 “The Mill was all down”
Now replaced by a modern bungalow with security gates. Bits and pieces of old buildings and walls can still be detected around the place.
The photo, not of the Mullee Mill, gives an indication of exactly what it looked like. The other photos show how the mill race was constructed, from the exit point on the river and the mounds surviving of the reservoir, the bridge construction under the roads is the same today as when it was built, the route across the fields where water still lies, as the rushes show, is used as a watering facility for the many cattle in the fields.
Along some of the way a wall was built to protect from any potential landslides and when it crossed under the road at the mill, it was carried on a wooden chanel to turn the wheel from the top. There was ample room, with the drop in the ground level, to allow this to happen. It can be looked at today as having been a major undertaking for those involved at the time.
What happened to bring all this to an end could be difficult to explain. The most likely reason was that the family just died out. Also there was the fact that landlords and their agents often imposed severe restrictions on inheritance rights and if they were not satisfied with any arrangements being made they would take back the property and re-let it to someone else. The landlord of the Kilbride Estate was The Rev. Ogle W. Moore, having come into its ownership in the 1830’s,when he came to live in Kilbride. He was the local rector of Blessington and Cloughleagh parishes. It is known that he resided in the house that later became Glen Heste Hotel.
The question was often posed as to how Henry Quinn from Ballinahown met his wife Eliza Mullee in Kilbride. Now we think we know. Henry was probably a regular visitor to the Mill, bringing his own corn and perhaps that of his cousins for milling. At the age of 35 and a man of property and good standing, he was seen by Paddy as an ideal candidate to take the hand of his daughter in marriage. They were married on the 30th of August 1866, in the church where only the Bell Tower remains to the present day.
They had eight children, five daughters and three sons. Mary Ann (1867), Jane (1869), Elizabeth (1872), Bridget (1876), John (1874), Patrick (1879), Kate (1882), James (1885). Elizabeth, Jane, Bridget and Kate were nuns.
When Paddy died, his wife Jane was brought by her daughter Eliza to care for her in Ballinahown. Paddy’s sons, Darby (see headstone No.2) and Jeremiah had gone from the drudgery of working a Corn Mill for a living, to set up their own homes in Kilteel, close to family connections, on the fertile lands of County Kildare. In an area stretching from Kilteel to as far south as Punchestown, the Mullee and or Molloy family members had leased over 700 acres of land between them. Very little of that is still in the family. Each facet of the story will tell what became of their lands. Whether as tenants of the land, or the eventual owners of it and how it slipped away from them.
Another son Michael, when he saw the Mill coming to an end decided to emigrate and he travelled to the U.S.A. and the State of Illinois where there was plenty of work for anyone with a farming background.
He may have used the name Mullee when living in Kilbride, but by the time he arrived in America he had firmly changed it to Molloy and his many descendants there had never heard of the name Mullee. His great grand daughter Corinne Biersdorff came to Ireland to try and find out something about his family here and because of the name problem she had to make a second trip to finally satisfy herself of his background, place of birth and any other details she could get about him. See more about him in his own story
In the year that Michael was born, 1845, the potato crop failed and triggered off what was to become the devastating famine that lasted in Ireland for several years. It is suggested that Wicklow, along with the east of the country generally, was relatively untouched by the Great Famine of the 1840’s. Nonetheless a report from the engineer in charge of the Board of Works relief operations in Wicklow during 1846 and 1847, points to a subsistence crises that was real and frightening. The extent of this is partly hidden by the massive migration that had begun. Alternative food, other than the potato, had to be found and it was the Corn Mills that played their part in providing the stable food, until the potato crops returned to normal.