Wallsuches Bleach Works

This former bleaching and finishing works, later used by Arcon Engineering Company and North-West Water Authority, comprises a rare surviving complex of textile finishing buildings dating from the late 18th century through to the late 19th century. The site contains buildings with datestones of 1840, 1858 and 1873, all built for the firm of Thomas Ridgway and Company. The buildings are constructed of coursed gritstone rubble and coursed squared gritstone with brick additions, and have stone and slate roofs with quoins.

The site developed chronologically in four main phases, with the earlier buildings located on the north-west and central areas, and later development extending to the south-east.

Late 18th Century Buildings

The earliest access to the site follows the western route, passing the entrance to Wallsuches, an early 19th-century mansion. The road enters the bleachworks at a yard area between two ranges with agricultural characteristics, possibly 'grey sheds' where cloth was stored before processing began. On the north side stands a two-storey, seven-bay range with four blocked flat arches supported by wooden lintels, monolithic stone corners and jambs. The upper storey is possibly a rebuild. A bay at the far left extends northwards as a long range. The building on the south side of the yard has the appearance of a barn with a central cart entrance and end byre doors, with similar monolithic jamb stones to the centre. It has 20th-century additions and alterations.

A cobbled pathway rises to the east and passes between two more late 18th-century or early 19th-century buildings. On the left stands a range of five storeys with a blocked loading door on the top floor to the left, and widely-spaced small windows, many of them blocked. It has shallow eaves and blocked windows on the left return. This is the only surviving building which could be the 'Gingham House' built by Thomas Ridgway. A two-storey L-shaped block to the right of this is now a house, with large 20th-century windows inserted.

Backing onto the south side of this pathway is a three-storey, four-plus-one bay range with a central tall round arch rising through two storeys on the south side and a clock in a gablet above the eaves. The roofless right bay also has a round arch and is currently being rebuilt. The coursed gritstone rubble, quoins, plain door surrounds and widely-spaced windows suggest a late 18th-century date. This may be the engine house for the ten-horsepower Watt steam engine bought to power calendaring machines in 1796. The interior of the arched opening has timber longitudinal beams, joists and floorboards to the upper floor, with extra re-used timbers inserted between them. Over one metre of debris has raised the ground level outside, where a crane stood by the mid-19th century, as shown on the Ordnance Survey map.

Buildings of circa 1828

To the west of this building stands a domestic-style two-storey, five-bay block. The ground floor is part stone, the remainder brick, with a hipped slate roof and two round-arched doorways in slightly projecting bays, the left one blocked. This is possibly an office building. In 1828 the bleach croft was completely reorganised, and buildings at the centre of the site probably date from this phase, in particular the much-reduced range on the north side of the lower roadway. This was formerly four storeys and 28 bays, but is now two storeys and sixteen bays with two four-centred arched entrances built in rusticated voussoirs. The complete building was photographed from the air around 1924.

A tall square-section chimney stood to the rear of the east end of this range. A long two-storey rubble-built range lies parallel to the altered block, with a hipped roof and a bellcot at the west end. The end wall has rusticated masonry to the ground floor and round-arched windows. The side wall is of rubble, with all openings blocked and evidence of much alteration. A first-floor covered bridge over the roadway has been demolished. A boiler is set outside the east end, between the rubble range and a long brick workshop that forms part of the latest development of the site.

Building of 1840

On the west side of the site, a long six-window range was built in 1840 on the west side of the roadway leading north-east to Ridgway Delf, parallel to the northern addition to the early open-sided shed described above. The central tall round archway has edge-tooled and reeded voussoirs and a keystone with the date. The windows are large, with late 20th-century rebuilding on the ground floor to the left. The archway gave access to a rear yard with open sheds, which are not visible. The buildings flanking this road are now part of the North West Water Authority Pennine Division, Marklands Treatment Works.

Mid to Late 19th Century Buildings

Before 1860 the firm of Thomas Ridgway and Company became bleachers and dyers. A datestone of 1858 is set into the end of the building on the north-east part of the site, uphill from the circa 1828 range. This consists of three single and two-storey ranges with roof lights and ventilators. There are three 20th-century additions or rebuilds on the east side.

The latest buildings on the site, including a datestone of 1873, stand to the south-west of the circa 1828 building. There are a total of five parallel roofs covering single and two-storey sheds with ridge ventilators and roof lights. The latest engine house, dating from around 1870, with a boarded round-arched window and hood-mould, stands at the south end of the group, with two post-1893 sheds with ridge ventilation to the south.

The need for abundant supplies of pure water for bleaching is evident from the extensive layout of reservoirs and filter beds on three sides of the site, all of which are shown on the 1845 Ordnance Survey map. The earlier buildings were constructed along the line of a watercourse between the west reservoir and the rectangular pond on the east side. The northern ponds possibly date from the 1828 extensions, with a long filter bed built to the north-east.

Technical and Historical Context

Bleaching and finishing was generally done in single-storey buildings because of the weight of the machinery and the problems in moving very large quantities of wet cloth through the soaking and washing processes. The earlier separate small buildings represent a stage before the processes were gathered under single large roofed areas. At Wallsuches the construction of multi-storey ranges suggests that very large amounts of cloth were being treated, with the upper floors used for the 'making up' stages.

The method of chemical bleaching using chlorine gas was discovered in 1774. In 1777 James Ridgway's bleaching firm moved from the centre of Bolton to Wallsuches, Horwich, and the new process was first applied on a large scale here by John and Thomas Ridgway. Thomas pioneered the use of chlorine in bleaching and helped Crompton with his inventions. The five-storey 'Gingham House' was built in 1798, and a ten-horsepower James Watt steam engine was installed to turn mangles and a glazing calendar—a hollow cylinder with heated irons which gave the cloth a glaze.

Thomas Ridgway died in 1816 and his sons, Joseph and Thomas, took over. In 1818 they took Thomas Bridson as a partner. The site was reorganised and more steam power introduced in 1828, when the firm expanded to take the cloth produced at the Lever Bank works at Little Lever, the mill Bridson took over when he left Wallsuches in 1833-34. Charles and Christopher Howarth, former employees of the firm, were taken on as partners shortly afterwards, and by the late 19th century the site was used by Thomas Ridgway and Company and Christopher Howarth and Son, bleachers and dyers. In 1900 Joseph Howarth sold the business to The Bleachers' Association which controlled seventy companies by 1919, twenty-two of them in the Bolton area.

The 1845 Ordnance Survey map shows another site further west, close to the Chorley Old Road, also marked 'Wallsuches Bleach Works'. A gasworks stood close by. This was probably the site of the production of chlorine gas and bleaching liquor.

This is one of the few surviving finishing works in the Bolton area, where chemical processes in bleaching and dyeing were pioneered and where bleaching fostered the growth of the heavy chemical industry. During the early 20th century the area continued to be an important focus for cloth from abroad, as the finishing process was not understood elsewhere.