There is a growing demand to extend the visiting season of Newmills Corn and Flax Mill outside Letterkenny.
Glenswilly-based Fianna Fail Councillor Donal ‘Mandy’ Kelly raised the issue at this week’s meeting of the Letterkenny-Milford Municipal District, saying an extended calendar would provide an opportunity for schoolchildren and other visitors to fully appreciate and learn from the rich history that the heritage site has to offer.
Councillor Kelly asked that Donegal County Council speak to the Office of Public Works (OPW) to seek an extension of the opening season from 2024.
“It is my opinion and the opinion of the general public that the current visiting season is far too short,” Councillor Kelly said.
“The opening times at the minute go from June 18-October 2. The season is far too short. This facility should be opened from the springtime right through to the end of October, if not into November.”
Earlier this year, Minister for OPW Patrick O’Donovan visited the amenity. Officials were told that in order to source further funding more footfall was needed.
Councillor Kelly said: “For us to do that, the most obvious thing to do is to extend the opening period. We need to contact the OPW again and express these concerns.
“This is the oldest building in Newmills and one of the few working mill wheels in the country.”
A delegation from Rudolstadt in Germany – a town twinned with Letterkenny – recently visited the Newmills Corn and Flax Mill during a visit to the area.
Councillor Kelly said: “We should look at having a coffee shop and a memorabilia shop at the site too. It’s a lovely facility on the banks of the Swilly. I would love to see it promoted and used in the best possible way.”
The Letterkenny-Milford MD Mayor Councillor Kevin Bradley said he was brought up in Letterkenny and had ‘never been inside the door of it’ until recently.
“It’s an embarrassment to say I was reared in this town and never stepped a foot in it. It’s not us who should be embarrassed, it’s the OPW,” said Cllr Bradley.
“It is an absolutely brilliant place and it’s great to have it on our doorstep,” he said. “The OPW should be getting people in there all year round.”
Seamus Canning, Area Manager for Housing and Corporate Services, told the meeting that the Minister had been contacted and that a ‘substantive response’ should be forthcoming soon.
Newmills Corn and Flax Mill reopened in June this year having been closed for the duration of 2022.
The heritage site offers a first-hand look at the technology that powered the Industrial Revolution.
The site has welcomed around 3,000 visitors per annum.
The oldest surviving building at Newmills is 400 years old and there have been mills at Newmills since the early nineteenth century.
In Victorian times, a flax mill lay at the core of the complex, providing crucial supplies to the linen industry, the backbone of Ulster’s economy at the time. A corn mill ground barley, oats and imported maize.
Newmills steadily expanded to include a public house, a scutcher’s cottage and a forge. By the early 1900s Newmills was also exporting food – the earliest supplies of butter, bacon and eggs for Sir Thomas Lipton’s nascent grocery empire in Glasgow came from there.