The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

Cultra has three water powered mills, this museum situated in eastern County Down covers an area of two hundred acres is arguably the best museum in Ireland, and many would say in the British Isles, dedicated to chronicling the Rural way of life. The Spade Mill at Cultra was transported to Cultra stone by stone from Coalisland County Tyrone. It was rebuilt by the museums team of builders, who were assisted and advised by Arnold Patterson, who's family had owned Patterson's Spade Mill in County Antrim.

In early times the local blacksmith made the spades and other farm implements used in his locality, this led to the development of many different spade types designed to suit the particular soil conditions of each area, in the west of the country where the soil contain a large percentage of stones the blade tended to be narrower In the eighteenth century with the expansion of agriculture and an improved transport network, several water powered spade mills were established across the country.

The Spade mill at Cultra came from the town land of Derry near Coalisland in County Tyrone, it was owned by the Patterson family who operated it for four generations up to the 1950's. It is powered by a waterwheel which drives a tilt hammer, the fan for blowing the forge and a large grinding stone. You will find more information on spade making on this page in the 1850's there were a total of three spade mills in County Tyrone and thirty-three in Ireland, Louth was top of the spade-mill league with seven.

In 1685 the Treaty of Nantes was revoked, this led to thousands of Huguenots leaving France, many of these settled in Ireland where they felt they would be free to practice their Protestant religion. With them they brought an intimate knowledge of the linen industry, and were instrumental in setting up an industry which endured in Ireland until the mid years of the twentieth century. During this time many mills associated with the linen industry grew up along the rivers and streams of Ulster.

One such was Gorticashel town land, Gortin, County Tyrone which is now rebuilt at Cultra, it is a scutch mill, scotching is a term applied the process of removing the fibres from the flax stalks. The flax plants were pulled rather than cut, cutting resulted in shorter fibres.They were then immersed in a lint hole or flax dam to rot the stalks, after a period of six to eight weeks in the dam the flax was removed and dried, it was then transported to a scutch mill where the stalks were first crushed in a pair of toothed rollers. Another operator took the fibres and held them against a set of rotating blades, which beat the unwanted material from the fibres.

Because of the bulk of the crop before the fibres were removed it was desirable that the Scutch mill was as close as possible to where the flax was grown. Scutching took place mostly in the autum usually starting in Sepember or October. It was a dangerous occupation, the workers were of necessity in close proximity to moving machinery, and the dust produced must have left many workers with long term lung problems.

See also the Linen Industry in Ireland.

Since man forsook the hunter gatherer way of life and began to settle in groups growing crops and rearing livestock, he has ought to find ways of grimding his grain into flour for cooking amd for his animals. For thousands of years this was accomplished with much drudgery using the mortar and pestle or a saddle quern, the latter was a saddle shaped stone on which the grain was placed another stone was used rolling or dragging it across the grain to crush it.

A later development was the rotary quern, this was an oval shaped stone with a conical hole in it's center, in the outer edge of the stone was another hole in which a wooden handle was placed. The quern stone was placed on top of another round flat stone, grain was put in the center hole and the handle used to rotate the top stone back and forth, the crushed grain emerged at the side as flour, this was the forerunner of many water powered mills which sprung up all over Ireland. Possibly the first water powered mill in eastern County Down was built in 619 AD by the monks at Nendrum on the north western shores of Strangford Lough, it was a tidal mill and may have been the first such mill in Europe.

The first reference to water power in Ireland is attributed to King Cormac MacArt, who reigned from A.D. 254 to 277, who sent for a skilled man from 'Over the wide sea' to build him a mill. His purpose to save a favourite maid servant the drudgery of grinding at the quern. Cormac's mill was constructed on the stream of Nith, which flowed from the well of Neamhuach at Tara. This is generally accepted to be the first mill built in Ireland, it is thought the millwright was supplied by the King of Scotland.

The corn mill at Cultra came from Straid near Ballymena in County Antrin, it was owned by the Weir family who had been millers in the area since the 17th century. The mill building you see at Cultra was origionally built in 1852 as with all the other buildings in the museum, it was rebuilt on its present location exactly as when it was first constructed. The wheel is made from cast iron with steel or iron buckets, it is an overshot wheel the most efficient at converting the available water flow into useable power. The wheel is (5.5 Metes) eighteen feet in diameter, around the time this mill was built in 1852 there were 138 other corn mills in County Antrim and a total of 1,622 in Ireland. See distribution of mills in Ireland.