Fearnley'S Mill

Fearnley's Mill is a former worsted spinning mill dating from the 1830s, constructed in coursed dressed sandstone with a slate roof. The building is aligned roughly north to south, lying immediately north of Hebble Brook, and comprises four storeys plus a basement, which is visible externally only on the west side due to the fall in ground levels. The building is slightly trapezoid in shape.

The east elevation contains fourteen windows with entrances in the fourth bay from the south and the end bay to the north. The west elevation has twelve windows and features a covered footbridge on the first floor leading into Crossley's Mill, which runs at right angles to it. The south end is four windows deep. The north elevation has a central run of taking-in doors, now converted to windows, with single windows to each side, those on the right now blocked. Throughout, the windows have stone cills and lintels with twentieth-century metal frames.

The interior is not of fireproof construction and retains timber beams, joists and decking with cast iron columns and line shafting. At the time of inspection, the building was undergoing conversion to offices.

James Akroyd and Sons occupied a mill in the Hebble valley north of Halifax from 1815. Several buildings including Fearnley's Mill and Crossley's Mill warehouse were built by Akroyds in the 1830s. The mill appears to have existed by 1836, when a building with the same footprint is shown on a Rating Valuation map of that date, owned by Jonathan Akroyd. This is confirmed on the Ordnance Survey Five Foot Plan surveyed in 1847, where it is identified as Bowling Dyke Mills, a multi-storey woollen spinning mill. Documentary and fabric evidence suggest the mill was partly destroyed by fire in 1843, with the top two storeys rebuilt using some of the fire-damaged stone. The original Bowling Dyke Mill, a spinning mill, was destroyed by fire in 1847 and quickly rebuilt, with a first phase to the east opened in 1849 and a second phase to the west in 1851.

The Akroyds were major industrialists and benefactors of Halifax engaged in worsted manufacture. Their complex spread over a considerable area to the east and north of the Crossley complex at Dean Clough, including the Haley Hill complex and Copley Mill. Their business suffered decline from the 1890s, and various parts of the site were sold into different ownerships. Fearnley's Mill was owned by the British Cotton and Wool Dyers' Association until 1976, when it was sold to Norman Fearnley Ltd and eventually became part of the Dean Clough complex in the early twenty-first century.