Royal Mill

Royal Mill is a cotton spinning mill, now used as clothing works, built in 1912. It was designed to utilize mains electricity from the start. The building is constructed of red brick with terracotta and stone dressings, featuring a cast iron, steel, and concrete internal structure. It showcases distinctive baroque detailing and stands six storeys tall, with a layout of ten by three bays.

At the northwest corner, there is an external stair tower topped by a dome, and electric motors are housed in towers that project from the east wall. The entrance block, which is seven storeys high, faces Redhill Street and is built over a courtyard entrance that connects Royal Mill with the earlier Sedgwick Mills. This entrance features a large segmental archway with a cast iron surround, and to the right is an office with a segmental doorway. To the left of the entrance is a narrow advanced privy turret, which has pairs of narrow windows on all floors, topped with a cornice and a segmental pedimented parapet. A water tower is set back behind the entrance block.

The main body of the mill has wide segmentally arched windows in each bay, enhanced by banded and panelled corner pilasters, and a heavy stone band above the third-floor windows. Royal Mill is part of the McConnell Kennedy works, which includes the earlier Sedgwick Mills and Paragon Mill, while another mill, Long Mill, is no longer standing. A stone above the entrance indicates that this mill replaced an earlier building on the site, originally constructed in 1797. It is recognized as an early example of a mill designed to use mains electricity from the outset, which is significant to the history of the McConnell Kennedy works.