Dawson And Sons

Dawson and Sons is a former woollen mill and warehouse located on the corner site with Upper Park Gate. Built around 1865, the mill incorporates the remains of East Brook House, which had its grounds known as Peckover Park until the late 1850s. The remaining facade of East Brook House, dating from around 1800, is set back to the north of the mill and features restrained neoclassical detailing.

The building is two stories high, with a basement and attic, and is constructed of finely dressed ashlar. It has a three-bay front with a crisply moulded cornice and parapet, originally featuring three blind balustraded panels, of which only one survives on the left side below a later turret feature with a hipped roof. An attic storey was added to the right. The windows are tripartite with shallow reveals and slender dividers, and the entablatures are sharply moulded. The ground floor includes Venetian windows with an entablature carried up over the arch and slender columns. The central former doorway is round-headed and recessed for one order. The ground floor is largely obscured by lean-to additions, and there is one similar blocked window on the north return.

The mill retains characteristics of the early to mid-19th century tradition, with four stories made of dressed sandstone that resembles brick. The corner of the building features three windows that are sharply bowed and slightly inset, with sill bands and a bracketed eaves cornice. There is a pilastered entablature doorway at the center of the bowed corner, and a plain range of twelve windows faces Upper Park Gate.

East Brook House was built by Edmund Peckover, a member of the Norfolk family. After a brief period as a woolstapler, he established a banking firm with his nephew Charles Harris, which later became the Bradford Old Bank.