Spring Cottage

Detached house, latterly used as a hotel and club. The building was empty at the time of inspection in June 2003.

Spring Cottage is an early 19th-century building that was substantially remodelled and enlarged in the late 19th century. It is thought to have been established by Benjamin Townson and was later extended by the Eckroyd family and subsequently by the Moorby family, both textile manufacturers in Nelson.

The exterior is constructed in regularly coursed sandstone with ashlar sandstone dressings. The roof is covered in Welsh slate. The building features prominent gable and ridge chimneys with decorative pots and coped gables.

The house has an extended U-plan with later 20th-century infill to the rear. The main elevation faces south-west towards landscaped gardens and is asymmetrical, comprising two storeys with attics and six bays. Three advanced gables form the dominant features of the elevation. The main entrance is set within the middle gable in bay 3. It consists of a wide doorway with moulded surround set below a shallow arch with carved decoration to the spandrels and a hood mould with sculptured head stops. A 3-light chamfered mullioned first-floor window with slender attached colonnettes to the mullion faces sits above the entrance. Above this is a 2-light attic window with arched hood mould.

To the left, the gabled end bay has an inserted or altered doorway, two 2-light first-floor windows with hood moulds, and a pointed lancet to the attic. To the right of the entrance bay is a set-back bay, largely obscured by mature foliage, containing a tall 3-light mullioned window to the ground floor and a shallower first-floor opening above. Further right stands a narrow third gable with steeply pitched roof. This bay features a full-height 2-light ground-floor opening detailed as a shallow bay window with foliage ornamentation as an eaves band and with traceried heads incorporating quatrefoils to the individual lights. Above is a tall 3-light window with stepped hood mould, below which is incorporated a carved heraldic ashlar panel. A lancet window is set at the gable apex. The end bay to the right contains a 3-light ground-floor window with traceried heads and a 3-light first-floor opening, both with hood moulds.

The return wing to the left is a stepped range of three components. The 2-bay return to the front elevation is of two storeys and attics with a gable to the left and a crenellated canted bay to the right. Windows of 2 and 3-lights with hood moulds are set within rendered masonry walling. Further left stands a single 2-storey bay, followed by a set-back 2-storey, 2-bay section with a canted bay window with crested parapet below two 3-light mullion and transom windows.

The right return features a projecting chimney breast to the gable and a set-back 2-storey range of three bays with 2 and 3-light windows below hood moulds and a canted bay window with slated roof and transomed lights. To the left of this is a 3-light window above a cellar entrance and a doorway with double-arched overlight.

The interior was not inspected but is known to retain original fixtures and fittings including panelled and glazed entrance doors, a glazed vestibule screen with arch-headed lights, moulded plaster cornices and decoration to the entrance hall, and a hall fireplace with surround.

Spring Cottage is closely associated with the development of the textile industry that shaped the community of Nelson. It was the home of two of the most influential local entrepreneurial families: the Eckroyds and the Moorbys. The Moorby family were owners of the nearby Spring Bank mill, which may have derived its name from the house. Spring Cottage is thought to be the only surviving mill owners' house in Nelson. As a substantial and finely detailed example of late 19th-century domestic architecture of the scale associated with manufacturing and commercial enterprise owners, set amongst terraced workers' housing and close to the textile factories lining the Leeds-Liverpool canal, it represents a significant and well-preserved element of Nelson's notable industrial landscape.