Little Street Mill

LITTLE STREET MILL, MACCLESFIELD

A former integrated silk mill comprising the mill building itself, dye-house, manager's house, workers' housing, workshops and warehouse, all arranged around a central mill yard. Built in 1804 according to map and documentary evidence supplied by the East Cheshire Textile Mill Survey, the complex was extended in 1909 (marked by a datestone) and further modified in the late 20th century to the west. The buildings are constructed in brick using English garden wall bond, with mostly Welsh slate roofs.

The site is planned with the mill and houses forming the two long sides of the mill yard, connected along the north end by the 1909 stable, warehouse and entrance range, which provides access onto King Edward Street.

The mill itself is a three-storey structure of seven-window width. On the east elevation facing the yard, the original windows are all fitted with brick cambered arches. The second-floor windows retain their original timber frames with either 36 or 40 panes. The first floor has eight windows and a taking-in door, the windows featuring renewed two-light casements with glazing bars. The ground floor has five original window openings with renewed casements, one large 20th-century plate-glass window, and large double doors. An early addition to the extreme left (south-east), a stair turret, sits beneath a graduated slate roof. A 19th-century building of uncertain origin stands to the west, possibly an engine house; original horse-powered and early steam engine houses were replaced by the 1909 range. The west elevation of the mill is externally obscured by late 19th-century extensions, though fenestration survives largely intact.

The 1909 range was built for Wood and Son, victuallers. It is two storeys and seven windows wide, with brick cambered window arches and a loading door at first-floor level, served by large wooden doors with engineering brick jambs. Engineering brick has been used to form rounded corners.

The domestic ranges facing Little Street include the manager's house, which is three storeys with double-depth plan and rear central stairs. Workshop accommodation occupies the upper floor with two large three-light windows beneath flat arches fitted with 20th-century casements. The first floor has two similar large three-light casements in original cambered arched openings, and the ground floor has matching windows flanking a central pegged doorway with a recessed panelled door. End chimney stacks are present.

An adjacent range is two storeys high, featuring one large 16-pane sash window to the first floor, a 20th-century window and half-glazed door below. The mill yard elevation preserves some early features including a tall window serving the stairs and a pegged door surround, along with two 20th-century windows inserted into early openings.

The interior of the mill shows what are apparently inserted cast-iron columns on the ground floor, while the first floor retains square wooden posts. Open-tread stairs serve the first and second floors to the south-east and north-east. The roof is a king post structure.

The manager's house interior contains a staircase with ramped rail, turned newels and stick balusters. Its roof features queen posts, an upper king post and back purlins. The garret door could only be unblocked from within the house.

To the south stands a stone-flagged dye-house, which was not inspected.

This represents a good early example of an integrated factory site where all silk-manufacturing processes were conducted on one site and where the manager and some workers also lived. The mill was originally horse-powered according to documentary evidence, though no structural evidence for this survives.