Bank Mills C And Attached Tow Warehouse

This is a flax mill and attached tow warehouse dating from 1832-33, designed by John Clark of Edinburgh for Hives and Atkinson. The buildings are constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings and have double-pitched hipped slate roofs.

'C' mill is five storeys high facing the street and six storeys to the rear, with 16 bays. It features continuous ashlar sill bands, an ashlar parapet, and a hipped slate roof. The ground floor has an off-centre entrance doorway with a double-plank door and overlight, along with two further windows. A partly truncated chimney stack is present. Each floor above contains 16 glazing-bar windows.

Adjacent to the 'C' mill is a five-storey, eight-bay tow warehouse connected by a single-bay link with three small windows on each floor. The tow warehouse has continuous ashlar sill bands and an ashlar parapet. The front has a single glazing-bar window, a single door with overlight, three similar windows, a large cart entrance with double plank doors, and a blocked window. Each floor above has eight glazing-bar windows.

The river frontage features a 16-bay, six-storey mill building with a three-bay boiler-house entrance to the left, supported by two cast-iron columns and ashlar lintels. This is followed by 13 round-headed windows, some of which are now blocked. Upper windows have continuous ashlar sill bands. The building has 16 glazing-bar windows on each floor. Further along the river frontage is a seven-storey, six-bay tow warehouse with a central loading doorway flanked by three round-headed windows. Above each floor are central loft doorways flanked by three glazing-bar windows.

The western end of the main building reportedly contained boiler and engine houses, with giant cast-iron cylindrical columns, approximately 0.3 metres in diameter, on the ground floor. An original tramway connected the tow warehouse along the river to mills 'B' and 'D'. John Clark also designed mill buildings at Marshall Street and Hunslet Mill. Tow refers to the coarse or broken part of the flax.