Hope Mill

Hope Mill is a former cotton spinning mill built in 1824 on Pollard Street in Manchester, with later additions and alterations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It was originally built for Joseph Clarke and Sons, cotton spinners and fustian weavers, and stands between the Ashton Canal and Pollard Street.

The building is constructed of red brick with ashlar sandstone dressings and double pitched roofs covered in Welsh slate. It has a rectangular plan oriented north-west to south-east and comprises 20 bays arranged over 7 storeys, thought to have been built in a single, possibly interrupted phase. The exterior features regularly-spaced rectangular window openings with stone sills and wedge lintels, most now replaced with 20th-century frames. Original doorways to bays 4 and 6 on the east elevation have ashlar surrounds with semi-circular arched heads featuring V-jointed rustication. The north end wall contains 4 blocked segmental arch-headed openings to former internal boiler house spaces. A double pitched roof sits behind a low gable parapet wall with stone copings. The east elevation has a 4-bay end wall with stacked double loading doors to the left of centre, now served by a 20th-century metal fire escape. An altered loading door and hoist beam to the upper floor marks what was possibly a former warehouse section at the north end. The west elevation displays a truncated integral tapered chimney stack set between the original engine and boiler houses.

The mill employs fireproof construction throughout, with cast-iron columns and cross beams supporting shallow brick vaults. A full-height cross wall between bays 5 and 6 at the north end separates the former internal engine and boiler houses from the spinning floors. Between bays 6 and 7 stands a fire-proof internal stair tower, half-oval in plan with landings adjacent to the side wall, originally designed to accommodate a hoist shaft, now fitted with a 20th-century elevator. The top landing ceiling is supported by fish-bellied cast-iron beams which formerly carried the mill water supply tank.

The former internal boiler house features long cast-iron columns designed to accommodate Boulton and Watt vertical damper pipes, supporting a tall vaulted ceiling. To the south lies a 3-storey former engine house with well-preserved ceiling vaults, the iron beams of which retain integral lifting rings. The roof structure of the 15 bays to the south of the cross wall uses a double span form, with each span carried on king post trusses rising from a common cross beam, the valley gutter between the two trusses supported on a central arcade of cast-iron columns. North of the cross wall, the roof is carried on a prefabricated iron structure consisting of 5 trusses formed from angled struts with both horizontal and angled tie rods. The trussed roof system incorporates a cast-iron valley gutter supported by cast-iron columns with Y-shaped brackets at their heads forming base plates for the roof principals and horizontal tie rods. Original cast-iron slate laths survive in some areas.

In 1824, the mill's owners, Joseph Clarke and Sons, purchased an 80 horse-power mill beam engine from Boulton and Watt of Birmingham. Documentary evidence indicates Hope Mill was one of the earliest developments in the new industrial suburb created from greenfield land alongside the Ashton Canal in the 1820s. By 1880, the area was fully developed with numerous steam-powered industrial complexes. In the early 20th century, Hope Mill was occupied by John Hetherington and Sons, manufacturers of textile machinery, based at Vulcan Works further west on Pollard Street.

At the time of inspection in 2002, the building was in multiple occupancy. Hope Mill represents one of the earliest and best-preserved examples of steam-powered textile factory design in Manchester, retaining extensive evidence of the evolution of successive power systems. Its innovative prefabricated iron roofing system demonstrates designer understanding of compression and tension principles in roof structures, relating to similar early iron roof structures in contemporary mill developments in Ancoats. The building makes a significant contribution to the international importance of this part of Manchester as the prototypical industrial suburb and forms an important component of an impressive group of former textile mills flanking the Ashton Canal, including Brunswick Mill. The Ashton Canal corridor defined the southern boundary of the Ancoats district, with industrial buildings of near contemporary dates extending from the Rochdale Canal north-west to Oldham Road, creating a historical industrial landscape of international significance.