142-148, CROMFORD HILL

The description details four houses at 142-148 Cromford Hill, likely built in the 1780s or 1790s. They were constructed for Richard Arkwright to house workers for his textile mills. The houses are built of coursed rubble with tiled roofs, and have two black and red brick ridge stacks. The design resembles Arkwright’s Phase I type houses, featuring a single unit with service buildings to the rear under a catslide roof. The houses are three storeys high, with side stairs located against end or party walls behind and to one side of the front entrance.

The front elevation has two bays. The entrance bay has no windows above the ground floor, while the other bay has two-light stone-mullioned windows on each floor. The doorways feature large rectangular lintels with crudely tooled capitals and bases to the imposts. Original doorways exist in all four houses; the windows are intact at Number 148 on all floors and at Number 146 on the upper floors only. The window openings at Numbers 142 and 144 have been altered. The rear of the houses retains some original window openings, along with various small 20th-century extensions.

Number 148 is also described individually as a late 18th-century terrace cottage built of gritstone with gritstone dressings and a plain tile roof with a single, shared red and blue brick gable stack. It is a single-bay, three-story building. The doorway has flush dressed jambs and lintel, with a 20th-century half-glazed door. It features a single two-light flush mullion window with 20th-century casements on each floor, and was built as part of the millworkers' cottages for Richard Arkwright’s Cromford Mill.