Windmills were never common in Ireland; the country's rain-heavy, variable winds and the ready availability of water-powered mills meant that tower mills, the kind built from stone with a rotating cap to face the sails into the wind, were constructed in relatively small numbers and concentrated in particular coastal or elevated areas. Finding one in County Galway, even in fragmentary condition, marks the spot as something worth pausing over.

The details of who built the Newtowneyre mill, and when, remain obscure. What the ruined structure itself suggests is a community that once found the site sufficiently exposed and reliably windy to make the considerable investment of construction worthwhile. Tower windmills in Ireland were typically built during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, often to process grain on larger estates or to serve local milling needs where a suitable stream was absent. The particular social and agricultural circumstances that brought this one into being, and the circumstances that eventually left it to fall into ruin, are questions the stones alone cannot fully answer.