Hartley Homes

Hartley Homes is a complex of 20 almshouses built and presented to the town of Colne in 1911 by Sir William Pickles Hartley, founder of the Hartley's jam and preserves empire, and Lady Hartley. The buildings are constructed of dressed local stone beneath a Westmorland slate roof.

The almshouses are arranged linearly around three sides of a rectangle containing a landscaped garden. All are single-storey. The east and west ranges each contain a terrace of six almshouses stepped in pairs to follow the sloping terrain of the garden. The central pair in each range has a cross gable on the front elevation with front doors either side of a round-headed central arch beneath the gable. The west range has a drying room and boiler house attached to its north end; the east range has a boiler house at its north end. The north range contains eight almshouses with four on either side of a central clock tower. The end almshouses on the north range each have cross gables. Every almshouse has a canted bay window topped with crenellations and modern uPVC windows and door. To the rear are cross gables and modern flat-roofed bedroom extensions in the same local stone. The almshouses have a mixture of gable and cross-axial chimney stacks.

The clock tower is a three-storey, flat-roofed crenellated structure with diagonal buttress and original windows. The clock face is on the second floor beneath a half-rounded dripmould. The entrance porch has a chamfered doorway and contains wooden benches on either side and a mosaic floor with a central circular display of hearts in red and gold. Entrance to the clock tower is through part-glazed timber doors flanked by round-headed blind windows.

Internally, each almshouse contains a short hall opening to a living room where some original features survive, including full-length fitted cupboards and drawers, picture rails and panelled doors. From the living room are doors to the kitchen and a small hall with access to bathroom, storeroom and bedroom. The clock tower is used for maintenance and contains a small office and toilet. Stone steps lead to the second floor where the interior mechanism is housed in a glass-fronted wooden case, with a step ladder to the upper floor.

Between 1960 and 1963, each almshouse was modernised and enlarged with the provision of a bedroom to replace the original bed-sit arrangement. The garden was renovated in 1977 to commemorate the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Further renovation and upgrading were carried out between 1998 and 2000 with the insertion of uPVC windows and front doors.