British Mills

A needle and fish-hook factory with adjoining house, built for Samuel Thomas, the factory owner, around 1840. Now divided into offices and small factory units. The building comprises No 80 on Prospect Hill, with mill buildings adjoining to the east on Albert Street (north side), and No 1 Albert Street.

The main structure is of stuccoed brick with shallow-pitched, hipped slate roofs behind parapets. Part of the complex is two storeys, part three storeys. Banded rustication at ground floor level rises to moulded cornice or sill bands at first floor level, with moulded eaves cornices throughout.

No 80 is two storeys with three bays. The central bay breaks forward, and the parapet above has a shallow gable. All windows are 12-pane sashes. The central entrance is distinguished by a Distyle Doric portico with fluted columns. The door has a moulded architrave, panelled reveals, half-glazed double doors and a transom light with two glazing bars.

To the rear right of No 80, behind a forecourt, extends a three-storey factory wing of four bays. The central two bays break forward, with a shallow gable in the parapet above. Windows are 16-pane sashes on the ground and first floors and 8-pane sashes on the second floor. The two central ground floor bays are occupied by a semi-circular headed archway, with rustication bands forming voussoirs. Between the first and second floor central windows is a circular moulding, possibly for a clock face originally.

The wing has a six-bay west return enclosing the south side of the forecourt. Its two-bay west end faces the road and features similar fenestration and detailing. At the east end is a half-glazed door with a transom light of three glazing bars.

Adjoining and slightly set back from the west end is an additional two-storey wing of six irregularly spaced bays. The ground floor windows are all round-headed sashes with rustication bands forming voussoirs. The first floor has six 6-pane sashes. The main entrance in the fourth bay has a moulded flat canopy and entablature on large pilasters. The round-headed doorway has a moulded architrave, 4-panelled door and plain fanlight. In the second bay is a large semi-circular headed archway with similar voussoir detail to the ground floor windows. Above this bay, on the roof ridge, is a square lantern with four turned posts, moulded cornice and ogee domical lead roof with weathervane.

Adjoining the north end of this wing, with its main front facing south, is No 1 Albert Street, dating from the mid-19th century. It is brick with blue brick and painted stone dressings, beneath a shallow-pitched slate roof with large ridge and rear stacks. The building is three storeys with a chamfered blue brick plinth band and painted stone first floor sill band. It has a moulded eaves cornice and four bays. Windows have gauged flat heads and are mainly 6-pane sashes. The main entrance in the second bay features a round-headed archway, a 20th-century door and plain fanlight. Its west end is a single bay in depth and terminates the main British Mills west frontage at the south end.

The building underwent mid-20th-century alterations.

British Mills was one of the largest and most important needle mills in the centre of Redditch. Samuel Thomas introduced pointing-machines and fans for drawing away dust from the grinders' wheels at British Mills in 1843, methods that soon became widely accepted in the region.