Yet that is more or less what happened at Burgage More in County Wicklow in January 2006, when water levels dropped far enough to expose a stretch of shoreline that had kept a former mill quietly submerged. Along with the millstone, the receding water revealed two large, squared timber beams protruding from the ground, each roughly 0.9 metres long and cut with enough precision to suggest they once formed the sides of a wheel pit, the channel into which a water wheel would have turned. Around them, a cluster of small upright timber stakes, no more than 26 centimetres high, appear to have served as supports for the timber facing of the wheel pit or the tail race, the outflow channel that carried water away after it had done its work.

The site sits on relatively flat ground at the base of a steep slope forming part of the foothills of Lugnagun, and before any reservoir altered the landscape it would have occupied a natural shelf above the floodplains of the River Liffey. That position makes considerable sense for a mill: a slight elevation above a river's floodplain, with access to moving water and, presumably, to a mill race. A low, linear ridge runs eastward from the site and may well represent the course of that race, though it was not investigated at the time of discovery. The combination of structural timbers, stakes, and a millstone points to a water mill of some kind, though without further excavation or dating the age and precise character of the structure remain open questions.