The story of the Cornmill
Coalisland grew up around coal. Seams found near the town in the late eighteenth century turned it into a busy mining centre, and to move the coal and the goods that followed it, a canal was cut to link the town to Lough Neagh. By the early twentieth century the canal basin was the commercial heart of the place.
In 1911 Robert Stewarts and Sons, who already ran a flour mill on the Dungannon road, built a new and larger mill in the canal basin. Designed by the architect Thomas Henry and operated alongside the Lagan Navigation Company's waterway, Stewarts Mill used the canal to ship ground corn to markets across the country.
The water trade did not last. From the 1930s lorries took over the haulage, the canal beside the mill was abandoned in 1954, and competition from Belfast and cheaper imports finished the milling business. The building survived where the industry did not.
The mill was restored around 1990 and reopened in 1993 by Mary Robinson, President of Ireland, as a heritage and community centre. It now holds Coalisland Library, the permanent exhibition on coal mining, pipe and spade making, and the meeting rooms where the town's music sessions and folk festival are held — the largest standing reminder of the industries that gave Coalisland its name.