Swan Meadow works western mill number 2, Eckersley Mills

Swan Meadow Works Western Mill Number 2, Eckersley Mills

A cotton spinning mill built in 1888 by the architect AH Stott of Stott and Sons for ffarington Eckersley and Co, with later alterations. The mill is constructed of red common brick with sandstone dressings and slate roofs, timber windows, cast-iron columns, steel beams, and common-brick floor arches.

The mill is aligned east-west with a projecting entrance and stair turret on the north side, a latrine turret on the east side, and a south-west turret. It now stands three storeys tall, measuring 33 by 10 bays, and is designed in Italianate style with brick in English Garden Wall bond, panelled corner pilasters, a projecting plinth, a ground-floor sill band, and a coped parapet (formerly the third-floor sill band).

The mill forms the south-western component of an important group of cotton mills and associated structures on the site, which collectively form a striking feature and a substantial part of the Wigan Pier Conservation Area.

The northern front is arranged asymmetrically with long spinning rooms to the left, a later four-bay service turret (excluded from the listing) in the angle adjacent to a stair turret, and short preparation rooms to the right (fenestration of 20:4:1:8 windows respectively). The stair turret rises to four storeys and has a dentilled cornice and Flemish gable dated 1888. It features basket-arched windows with prominent stone dressings on both the front and side returns. The main ranges to left and right are regularly fenestrated with large windows on all floors, all with six-pane joinery and dark-brick segmental heads. The ground floor is partially painted and contains, from the left, an inserted doorway in bays 1 to 3, a blind bay 29 (with a first-floor loading door retaining an iron architrave and truncated teagle), and a window with lowered sill forming a loading door in bay 31, with an added roller shutter.

The east end has corner pilasters and a central four-storey two-bay latrine turret flanked by four windows to each side. Bays 1 and 2 of the ground floor have an inserted doorway, and bays 9 and 10 are obscured by a single-storey flat-roofed extension (excluded from the listing). A fire escape rises to the parapet in bays 2 and 3. The six-pane windows have stone sills and segmental heads, with a ground-floor sill band. The latrine turret has a third-floor plat band and lintel band, with each floor featuring paired, stacked lancets to each bay. The side returns have two lancets per floor; the south-west corner of the turret retains a Second World War firewatcher post with a small window.

The south elevation matches the front in detail and is arranged with seven and 22 windows to the left and right respectively of the rope drive slot, which sits opposite the entrance. Bay 10 (from the right) has first- and second-floor loading slots with timber doors and a projecting beam. Bays 14 to 20 are obscured by a single-storey extension (excluded from the listing). The engine-house bay is flanked by partial stub walls of the engine house and also by stubs of the massive brick engine bed, flanking the central rope-drive slot. The slot is arched and flanked by slightly shorter blind arched recesses, all three with banded pilaster-jambs. At impost level the drive slot is flanked by moulded stone corbels of the former roof structure. A polychrome glazed dado is broken by a doorway to the left of the drive slot and a larger blocked doorway to the right. Above the engine-house gable line, the surviving top floor of the rope-race retains two bays of the former third floor with cornice and moulded coping, and blind segmental windows with stone keystones and imposts. To the left, the ground floor is largely blind with short windows above where the boiler house was formerly attached. In the south-west corner stands a four-storey dust-flue turret with panelled corner pilasters, bands, and a dentilled moulded cornice topped by a coped parapet.

The turret returns on the west wall, which has similar detailing to the other sides. The ground floor is blind in the centre two bays, with damaged decorative stone corbels to the former beaming and winding block; the wall above is also largely blind but with some blocked doorways and no upstand above the second-floor windows.

Internally, cast-iron columns support steel cross-beams and longitudinal inverted-T joists, which each support an additional two cross-beams. These in turn support cross-wise plastered brick jack-arches (three arches between each row of columns), which are covered by concrete floors above. Some axial arches also adjoin the rope race. Some columns retain seatings for fixing power-transmission equipment. Several power transfer boxes survive within the walls, some being crossed by the present floor levels. The rope race retains gantries and access stairs. Some fire suppression pipework survives. Original timber doors to the engine house survive on the first floor, along with a curved passage serving the same purpose.