Arrow Vale Mill

ROCHDALE

SD81SE QUEENSWAY, Castleton 335-0/6/10018 (West side) Arrow (Vale) Mill

II

Cotton spinning mill. Built by 1908. Steel and concrete internal structure, walls of red brick, ashlar details, grey slates. The group survives almost intact and is composed of a single building housing the primary production processes, an office/ reception building, engine house attached at rear corner, and separate boiler house and chimney. EXTERIOR: the main building is 5 storeys, 44x5 bays, with water tower at NE corner with 'ARROW' and tall hipped roof with band of glazing and wrought-iron balustrade, smaller corner towers; tall thin rectangular windows, stone sills, brick lintels, brick pilasters to rope race on N side, engine house with round-arched recess and corner pilasters at N end of W side. 2-storey carding/ preparation room parallel to road. 2-storey office block at NE corner has ashlar bands, pedimented entrance, plate glass sashes with decorative etched panes, blind parapet. Workshops/ boiler house and cylindrical chimney with moulded crown to NW. HISTORY: the mill stands on the south side of the Rochdale canal. The J and W McNaught 1700hp vertical triple expansion steam engine was made in 1907; it weighed 47 tons and drove 40 ropes, the fly wheel measuring 22' diameter. By the 1950s the engine was driving an alternator and many electrically driven frames were installed then. The engine was scrapped about 1960. A good example of early C20 mill architecture surviving almost complete. (Bradford City Libraries Register of Historic Steam Engines: Watkins G (University of Bath) : Record No.15291-55D81-121).

Listing NGR: SD8861410918