Clegg Hall Mill

Clegg Hall Mill is a textile mill complex dating from the early 19th century, built for Joseph Fenton of Crimble Mill. The complex was extended after 1850, and by the late 1870s had become a cotton waste mill. It later incorporated finishing processes including bleaching and dyeing in the early to mid 20th century. Part of the complex was destroyed by fire around 1965.

The mill complex comprises five main elements: Clegg Hall House with its attached boundary wall on Branch Road; the reservoir (lodge) to the south-east of Clegg Hall House with sluice and overflow channel; the remains of the mill buildings on the south-east side of Clegg Hall Road containing the water wheel pit and engine house; the boiler house, fuel store, workshop with blacksmith's forge and chimney range; and the canal-side warehouse and mill range with waterwheel tail-race tunnel below.

Clegg Hall House

The house dates from the late 18th century with early 19th-century alterations and late 20th-century additions. It is built of coursed squared gritstone laid to water-shot courses with a stone slate roof. The two-storey building has two bays, with an entrance porch on the west side, a rear north outshut and a servant's cottage now incorporated into the house. The walls feature quoins with edge-tooling.

The south front has a large bay window with mullions and transoms dating from the late 19th century, brought here from a Jewish school in Manchester around 1970. The upper floor facade has two tall casement windows with tie-stone surrounds. The walling shows vertical joints, evidence of an earlier row of windows with flat-faced mullions, possibly indicating a weaving loft. A central mullion is grooved to give the appearance of separate stones. The building has tall banded end stacks and another to the rear of the ridge at the centre.

The entrance porch is probably an addition of the 1830s (the likely date for the present first floor windows), and has a heavy stone surround with moulded base to the jambs. The lintel is not visible. Round-arched windows on the returns are obscured by vegetation.

The attached boundary wall is approximately two metres high and fifty metres long, built of coursed stone on the road side and handmade bricks in 4:1 English bond on the garden side, with flat stone coping.

Mill Lodge

The stone-lined reservoir is approximately five to ten metres wide and seventy-five metres long. It was built along the contour with a steep embankment on the south side. The bed is raised at the centre, indicating either the line of a former drive to Clegg Hall or two phases of construction. Earthwork traces of the mill goit and sluice survive at the south-west corner of the dam at the west end, and a stepped overflow channel close to Clegg Hall House acts as a 'top-up' for the Rochdale Canal. The lodge is spring-fed.

The sluice and overflow channel runs below the house drive and below Clegg Hall Road, emptying into the canal via an open channel on the steep banking outside the north-east end of the canal-side mill range. The sluice for the head race of the water wheel is at the south end of the dam.

Mill Building Remains

The mill buildings on the south-east side of Clegg Hall Road possibly pre-date the canal, as they contain the water wheel pit. They are built of coursed squared gritstone laid to water-shot courses with brick rebuilding and Welsh slate roofs. This range was severely fire damaged around 1965 and the walls have been reduced in height. Service tunnels beneath the cobbled roadway on the north-west side lead to the canal-side mill.

The central taller block is the former engine house. The tall round-arched window survives at the rear, with a blocked original doorway to the left and an inserted doorway below, with wooden steps and platforms inside. The building has late 20th-century steel and concrete floors inserted since the fire. Early features include a blocked round archway in the stone side wall built to water-shot courses (now obscured by a straight-flight wooden stair), charred beams, remains of cantilevered stone stairs to the missing top floor, and a blocked round-arched window in the exposed south gable.

The left wing has been reduced to single storey with six bays and large windows in stone surrounds. The stone flagged floor covers the deep water wheel pit set against the south wall adjoining the engine house. The pit is lined with edge-tooled blocks with wheel grooves; the wheel was probably approximately twelve metres in diameter. The pit is now dry. The tail-race tunnel extends below the cobbled road and under the canal-side range. Another smaller tunnel carried pipes and later electricity under the road. This part of the mill housed drying machinery and dye vats in the mid 20th century.

To the right of the taller central block is a blank single-storey wall with moulded stone gutter brackets and quoins, rebuilt with a wide M-roof in light brown brick on the right return. This formed part of the dyeing complex in the mid 20th century when the mill made yellow dusters.

Boiler House and Chimney Range

The boiler house and chimney range dates from the mid 19th century and is built of rubble and brick walling, now mostly ruined. It was an L-shaped block with the boiler house close to the engine house (the beds are still visible) and a coal chute from the higher-level rear yard. The base of the square brick chimney with decorative band of bricks on edge survives (the upper part was demolished around 1976). At a lower level on the south-west side, the flue to the chimney and the blacksmith's forge in the corner survive in part. The lean-to roof of this section was rebuilt in the mid 20th century. This range is separated from the south side of the main mill building by a stone flagged pathway and steps approximately one metre wide.

Canal-Side Range

The canal-side warehouse and mill range is probably contemporary with the construction of the Rochdale Canal (1801-1804) and was altered in the mid 19th century. It is built of coursed squared gritstone with a slate hipped roof. The building is three storeys to the canal and one and two storeys against the sloping roadway, with thirteen by two bays and quoins.

At the south-west end, the attached single-storey stone range with slate roof covers a sloping ramp which gave access to the lowest floor of the main building. There are two tall round archways on this facade which rise through the line of the first floor. The canal side has loading doors in bay four and two round arches at water level (for the water wheel tail race and overflow from the engine house range). A stone walkway extends along the building just below the present water line. The windows are nine-pane with tie-stone jambs, and iron rings set into the top floor lintels were probably for winches bringing machinery or parts into the building.

The facade to the road has two doorways—wide on the left and pedestrian on the right—with chamfered jambs and voussoirs forming basket arches. Above the pedestrian entrance is a weathered stone plaque, and a clock in a carved stone laurel-wreath surround and moulded frame above the eaves line. An added range stands at the south-west end.

The basement level has a stone flagged floor and a retaining wall below ground level with a blocked service tunnel and the upper part of the tail race tunnel with floor cavity. Timber cross beams with extra cast-iron columns and secondary metal sleeves support the timbers built into the retaining wall. An original grooved stone ramp approximately one metre wide rises to a stone platform and loading bay to the canal (now a window) at the south-west end of the building. A straight-flight timber stair is set against the revetment wall on each floor and is a mid to late 19th-century replacement.

The middle floor has blocked doorways in the north-east gable end and, at the south-west end, a square opening to a timber-lined rising and curving tunnel which linked to a mill block (now demolished) that stood to the south of the engine house range. Small two-wheeled wooden trolleys with hollowed tops carried bolts of cloth from the higher level, possibly after the final finishing process was completed.

The top floor is a well-lit open room with windows on both long sides and twelve king-post roof trusses with splayed braces, pegged.

Historical Context

The deeds to Clegg Hall House survive from the late 18th century. In 1811 Joseph Fenton, a flannel-maker at Crimble Mill, applied to build a mill on the site. It therefore possibly began as a flannel mill, with the wheel powering spinning machines while looms were housed in the upper floors of the back-to-back cottages (numbers 1-8 Clegg Hall Road, now numbers 3-6 inclusive) and probably at Clegg Hall House.

The mill was extensively altered in the mid 19th century when a steam engine was installed and the boiler house and chimney range were added. It was run by John Rhodes in 1848 and by James Tweedale and Sons in 1861. By 1884 Thomas Wilson was processing cotton waste, and by 1898 the mill powered 4,500 spindles. In 1916 Robert Bailey and Son produced wadding and absorbent cotton wool (probably for war use), and by 1923 the mill was run by the Victoria Dyeing Company Limited.

This is an important group of buildings which represent the early processes of textile production and developed into a finishing mill by the mid 20th century. The architectural quality of the sloping canal-side site and the proximity of the earlier hall and housing are significant.