Former Independent Labour Club, Middleton

Former Independent Labour Party Club

Built in 1911–12 to designs by architect Edgar Wood, this is a single-storey rectangular building constructed of mottled common bricks in stretcher bond with a double-pitched roof of small Westmorland green slates. The building runs north–south across six bays and stands on the east side of Milton Street.

The plan comprises a south room lit by two large canted bay windows, beneath which is a basement, and a larger hall occupying the five northern bays. Originally the cornicing suggests these were two separate rooms, with a small flat-roofed entrance porch at the south end, likely containing cloakrooms.

The west roadside elevation is the principal façade. The first five bays contain tall round-headed windows with small-pane glazing and sunburst glazing to the semi-circular heads. These windows are flanked by very shallow brick pilasters rising from a plinth topped by a row of headers and containing regularly-spaced square louvred ventilation bricks. The pilasters have concrete impost blocks from which round-headed brick arches spring. Each window has a slightly-projecting concrete sill with a shallow brick apron beneath. The sixth bay projects as a wide canted bay rising to a concrete-coped parapet above eaves level. The angles of the bay are separated by very shallow brick pilasters continuing to the parapet coping. Within are a large central rectangular window and narrower rectangular windows in the angled planes, all sharing a slightly-projecting concrete sill band and a deeper flush concrete lintel band. Below the central window is a wide rectangular ground-floor opening fitted with a metal louvred grate.

The south gable wall has subtly-projecting wide pilasters forming a stepped parapet with concrete coping. The central tallest step includes pierced detailing.

The entrance porch is a small four-bay rectangular structure bonded into the main building with a flat roof. The doorway is in the second bay, raised above ground on a short flight of concrete-topped steps with plain iron railings. Above the square-headed doorway is a very shallowly recessed panel. The timber door has two fielded panels with an upper row of three window lights. Bays one and three contain windows with slightly-projecting concrete sills and segmental-arched heads; bay four has a narrower similar window. The window frames are timber casements of two horizontal lights and a single light. A cast-iron drainpipe runs between bays three and four.

The north gable wall, partially obscured by a later circa-1930s extension, steps above the roof with a lower, differently-detailed concrete-coped parapet than the south gable. Just above the extension roof is a central semi-circular overlight with sunburst glazing, marking the position of the original north doorway. The east elevation is largely hidden by a 1960s flat-roofed nursery extension, though five rectangular windows remain visible above its roofline, now boarded.

Internally, the porch retains a wide inner doorway into the main building fitted with a three-panel door. The exposed roof structure at the south end shows king post roof trusses with raking struts and bolted iron straps, with a single purlin to each side. The bay windows are spanned by rolled steel joists to which the southernmost roof truss is bolted. The main hall retains a simple cornice on the west, north and south sides. The window jambs continue to floor level with recessed panels beneath. On the east side of the south room, a doorway in the left-hand angled plane of the bay window leads into the later extension corridor; it is likely original as there is no evidence of a blocked window above. A cupboard with panelled double doors is located to the right, and the basement steps begin on the north side of the cupboard. The north end wall contains a wide central doorway with timber architrave and double doors, with a wide round-headed niche on either side. The semi-circular overlight sits above but detached from this doorway.

Later 20th-century extensions, including a circa-1930s flat-roofed addition to the north gable wall and a 1960s flat-roofed nursery extension abutting the east side, are excluded from the listing.