Spotland Bridge New Mill

Cotton spinning mill, now industrial centre, built around 1833 for Joseph Butterworth and Co. Ltd, with an early 20th-century extension.

The original mill comprises five storeys and an attic, thirteen bays wide, constructed in red and brown brick with a slate roof and gable copings. A square fireproof external stair is attached to the north end. On the west side are a privy tower and fire escape doors (the same size as windows) with cast-iron railed platforms. The building features a blocking course and corner pilasters.

The interior structure consists of two rows of cast-iron columns with flat bolting faces for line shafting, supporting massive timber cross-beams and joisted timber floors. The roof structure comprises queen-strut trusses to the attic storey, lit by roof lights and gable windows. The lower engine house at the south end has paired narrow round-arched windows indicating it housed a double-beam engine. Attached to this is a contemporary low boiler house, with a 2-storey storeroom to the rear and a tapering octagonal chimney nearby.

Later additions include a 2-storey office block added by the 1870s, featuring 4-pane sash windows with margin lights. A 4-storey east-facing addition of 9 by 8 bays, built in Accrington brick with a flat roof and segmental-arched 9-pane windows, employs a structural system of steel beams with cast-iron columns and concrete floors with a sprinkler tower. This later mill was powered by mains electricity.

Access from Edenfield Road is through a gateway with wide wrought-iron gates. The original cobbled road surface survives, as does the revetment wall of massive stone slabs on the west side.

The mill owner's house stands on the site facing the road junction. Constructed of coursed gritstone with stone surrounds to doors and windows and a slate roof, it is two storeys high and two rooms deep. It features a central recessed half-glazed door with overlight, flanking full-height canted bay windows, and a doorway with tall stair window to the left of centre at the rear. A single-storey attached outbuilding is at the rear, with a low retaining wall to the forecourt.

The mill was built for spinning coarse cotton twist. By 1888 it housed 17,424 spindles, when the business was taken over by Charles Whittaker Ltd. The structure demonstrates the increasing width of industrial buildings (18 metres) as construction methods improved during the 19th century. The width is spanned by timber beams in non-fireproof construction, typical of the mid-19th century. The roof lights and structure indicate use of powered machinery rather than storage on this floor. The double-beam engine had two cylinders working side-by-side, with one line shaft powering each of two rows of spinning throstles on the wide spinning floors.