Beehive Mill

Beehive Mill is a cotton spinning mill, built in the early 1820s in three main phases, with later additions. It’s located in Ancoats, Manchester. The external walls are brick, while the internal structure is of cast iron and timber.

The earliest part of the mill is an L-shaped block of six storeys with a 13-bay range facing Radium Street, and a 3-bay wing facing Jersey Street. A five-storey, 13-bay mill was added to Bengal Street around 1848. The original building has small, cambered-headed windows in each bay, with six windows in the gable returns. The attic is lit by three windows to the north and a segmental window to the south. Inside, cast-iron columns support transverse timber beams with heavy floorboards, and there are no joists. Curved cast-iron roof ribs support timber rafters in the attic, which was originally powered. There's an internal beam engine house towards the north of the building, with a cross wall originally containing an upright shaft, creating a segregated area to the north. The original circular staircase was located on this axis, enclosing a chimney (now demolished). Taking-in doors were originally provided on each floor in this end section.

A range to Jersey Street, dated 1824, was likely built for warehousing; it has three bays with a centrally placed segmentally arched entrance to a yard, and small windows with cambered heads in each bay. It originally had double taking-in doors on each floor, which have since been altered. The interior of this section has cast-iron columns supporting a grid of T-section cast-iron beams carrying stone-flagged floors, along with cast-iron trusses and wrought-iron ties to the roof structure. The block to Bengal Street was added in 1848 and partially rebuilt after a fire in 1861. It is four storeys high, with 13 bays, and the rear elevation features narrow, full-height pilaster-like towers, potentially related to a heating or ventilation system.

The warehouse range is a notable example of early fire-proof construction, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the properties of cast and wrought iron for its time. The original building is also a good example of a common early 19th-century construction technique, characterized by timber floors without joists, offering a strong and slow-burning structure capable of carrying heavy weights. This construction method, along with the roof design, was suitable for a room and power mill where different firms utilized different floors. The early use of bolting faces for line shafting cast into the cast-iron beams is also significant. The overall plan is an L-shaped layout, with the internal engine house forming a segregated area.