Croal Mill

Croal Mill is a cotton spinning mill built in 1908 by the architectural firm Bradshaw and Gass for the Croal Spinning Company Limited. The mill closed as a cotton mill in 1967 and is now used as a warehouse by a mail order company. The site includes the spinning mill, an engine house that projects at one angle with a rope race alongside, a boundary wall, and ancillary buildings against its inner face, as well as a gate lodge and office building.

The exterior of the spinning mill is constructed of red brick with a flat concrete roof and features a concrete, steel, and cast-iron internal structure. It has six storeys and is organized into ten by five bays, with wide windows situated between narrow brick pilasters. The brickwork is corbelled out above the fifth floor. A stair tower projects from the north-east angle and displays Byzantine details, including banded buff brick angle pilasters and terracotta dressings, with stepped features and volutes at the upper stage, as well as stepped windows grouped in threes. The upper windows are segmentally arched and oriel, and there is a shallow dome with volutes at the angles. The engine house, which projects from the south-east angle, has three round-arched windows, and there is a boiler house adjacent to the south. The blind segmentally arched panels can be seen on the adjacent rope race. The single-storey entrance lodge and office building has a plain tiled roof, buff brick banding, and terracotta dressings, with a central pedimented gable over the entrance.

The wall along the eastern boundary serves as a screen to the ancillary buildings within the yard and is divided into panels by pilaster buttresses. Croal Mill is a striking example of an early 20th-century mill designed by a notable architectural practice, and it remains largely intact, illustrating how manufacturing processes were separated across different storeys of the building.