Whilst on holiday in Ireland, David Winter visited the Bunratty Folk Park in County Clare. There he saw a most unusual water mill, with its wheel lying horizontally in the water and a great wooden drive shaft attached directly to the upper mill-stone inside the thatched building. This novel idea caught his imagination and Irish Water Mill is his interpretation of such a mill. Small horizontal flour mills were common throughout Ireland for more than a thousand years -- until the 19th century. Larger farms would have their but here is a mill that would have been used communally by farmers with modest holdings of land. They would harvest their wheat and oats, then bring the grain to the mill to be ground into flour, a portion of which would be left with the miller as payment.
   The interior was quite basic; a large wooden hopper hung from the roof, feeding grain between the two stones below, and the rest was mainly storage space. Submerged under the water was a set of planks which adjusted the distance between the mill-stones by raising or lowering the water-wheel.