Norwich Street Mills

Cotton spinning and weaving mill, now textile company buildings, built around 1860. Constructed in red brick with stone details and slate roofs, the complex comprises eight distinct elements arranged on a site positioned on the Rochdale Canal at its junction with a north branch.

The main building is an Italianate spinning mill that dominates the site. It is rectangular in plan, rising three and four storeys high across seven by twenty-two bays. The narrower east facade faces the Rochdale Canal and features loading doors on the left, corner pilasters, and a flat roof. The north side contains an entrance bay with a keyed round arch and a stair and water tower with a hipped roof above bay four, with a pilaster between bays five and six. Large rectangular windows are distributed across the building; some on the south side retain cast-iron small-pane frames with pivoted central panes. The south side also displays a five-sided projecting privy tower towards the left end, and a projecting full-height block at the far left built in lighter red brick. The building is clearly divided laterally, with the entrance and stair tower positioned on the axis of an internal division expressed externally by a buttress. On the south side stands an engine house with a round-arched window (now blocked) and corner pilasters matching the main mill.

The single-storey L-plan boiler house, probably built for Lancashire boilers, opens towards the canal through five round arches now boarded up, with a hipped roof and an added lean-to. Adjacent to this is a taller two-storey workshop block at the south end, featuring small-pane windows and a hipped roof. An octagonal brick chimney stands close by with its crown missing.

To the north of the main block stands a workshop and engine house constructed of white-painted brick with parallel hipped slate roofs. This two-storey, two-bay structure has the engine house set back on the left with a round-arched window with mullion and plate-tracery style frame, and two additional windows on the left return. The workshop section has rectangular windows with projecting stone sills and a large inserted loading door towards the canal. A second white-painted block, also two storeys and nine bays with parallel hipped roofs, features tall rectangular windows on the canal side, a gabled loading door on the left return, and an altered ground floor entrance.

A two-storey warehouse is built on the edge of the canal to the north. The site of the weaving sheds on the south side of the main mill survives as a roadside wall on Norwich Street. Subsidiary features include the stone walling of the canal edge and a short length of wrought-iron railings with bars, dog bars, and spear-head finials.

The substantial remains represent an important example of large mill building from a period when the cotton industry was flourishing, and the complex occupies a significant position within the canal-side setting.