Haarlem House At The South Side Of Haarlem Mill

Mill house, circa 1858.

MATERIALS: Tooled stonework laid to courses, and welsh slate. Chimneys are of brick with terracotta pots.

EXTERIOR: Rectangular in plan, it is two storeys high with a gabled roof. The main, south, elevation is three bays in length with a central doorway under a small hood with consol brackets, and a six panel door. Window openings have stone sills and flat headed stone lintels, and contain eight over eight hornless sashes. Rear windows are six pane casements.

INTERIOR: A central hallway with stairs, leading to a rear door, and with rooms to either side. The staircase has stick balusters and a turned newel, side panelling and an under stair cupboard with a four panel door. It rises to the back of the house with a full central landing and balustrade at first floor level. Ground-floor rooms have shutters to the front windows and six panel doors. Doors to the first floor are four panelled. The joinery has been well stripped of paint or may not have been painted. Fireplaces have been removed. A room to the rear has been converted for modern kitchen use and has a sliding door.

HISTORY:The Haarlem Mill complex stands on the modest River Ecclesbourne. The world renowned industrialist Richard Arkwright leased the site in 1777 and by 1780 he had built Haarlem Mill, a very early, if not the earliest, factory building designed to house a steam engine in association with cotton spinning.

Haarlem Mill was sold in 1792 and in 1815 was converted for tape weaving, said to have been for Maddley Hackett and Riley, smallware manufacturers of Derby. The name Haarlem Mill was acquired after a works in Derby of a similar name established in 1806. Silk weaving was carried on in part of the site in the 1820s and it subsequently passed through several hands until it was purchased by the Wheatcroft family, local tape manufacturers, in 1858. The mill manager around this time was Samuel Evans, uncle of the novelist George Eliot (1819 - 1880), who is thought to have based the characters Adam Bede and Dinah Morris, in her novel 'Adam Bede' (1859), on her uncle and aunt, and used Haarlem Mill as the inspiration for the mill in 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860). It is likely that Haarlem House was erected circa 1858, at the time that the mill was taken over by the Wheatcroft family.

SOURCES:

Menuge A., The Cotton Mills of the Derbyshire Derwent in Industrial Archaeology Review Vol. XVI, No. 1, Autumn 1993

Calladine A, Fricker J. East Cheshire Textile Mills, RCHME, 1993

Falconer, K. Haarlem Mill, Old Building, unpublished report, RCHME 1988, NMR No. 076957

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION:

Haarlem House is designated at Grade ll for the following principal reasons:

• It is a mill house of circa 1858, which has survived well and contains original fixtures and fittings, notably a stick baluster stair, six and four panel doors, and window shutters.

Listing NGR: SK2839552596