Former Mill Cottages At Laverstoke Mill

Former Mill Cottages at Laverstoke Mill

Laverstoke Mill was a large multi-phase paper mill that operated between 1719 and the 1950s. Within the mill complex, the Mill Cottages are workers' cottages built by John Portal for his employees in 1842. The architect is not known. The building is constructed of flint and red brick with a slate roof.

The long narrow building is aligned northeast-southwest. At its eastern end, on its north side, it abuts the later Building No. 19, a despatch building built between 1928 and 1930. At its western end, on the south side, it abuts another later building, No. 17, the 1868 gatehouse. The row of cottages is of single room-depth plan.

The Mill Cottages comprise a long narrow two-storey row of five cottages. The principal façade, facing north, is of coursed flint galleting with red brick dressings and a hipped slate roof. The windows are paired lancets with thick, unmoulded ashlar jambs, simple brick hoodmoulds and intersecting iron glazing bars in the Gothick style. The windows and plain doors are arranged regularly. The openings and porch are modern and relate to the building's late 20th-century conversion to offices. The eastern end was partially rebuilt in the late 20th century. The interior is of single room-depth, converted to offices in the late 20th century.

Laverstoke Mill was founded as a paper mill in 1719 by Henry Portal and operated as such until the 1950s. Prior to 1719 it was the site of a corn mill belonging to Laverstoke Manor, probably one of the two Laverstoke mills recorded in the Domesday Book. The paper mill produced mainly hand-made rag paper, and at the peak of its production in the early 1920s it was one of the largest hand-made paper mills in the country. From 1724 the Portal family held an exclusive contract with the Bank of England for the manufacture of bank notes, treasury bills and dividend warrants. Laverstoke also produced currency for a number of other countries including, from 1860, the Government of India.

The earliest buildings standing today are from a rebuilding programme in the mid-1850s, just before the issue of fully printed bank notes. The mill was largely rebuilt in the early 1850s with new machinery including a water-turbine, a ten horse-power steam boiler, and drying and sizing machines, although the paper continued to be mould-made.

The Mill Cottages date to 1842 and were established by Portal as subsidised, low-rent housing for his workers. An octagonal ashlar plaque on the north elevation reads "Built by John Portal Esq., 1842". These cottages follow the tradition of early 18th-century estate cottages and those built by railway companies for their employees. They are the precursor of the large model communities of the 1850s and 1860s such as Copley, Halifax, Saltaire and Ackroyden. The cottages reflect a paternalistic attitude, current in some early Victorian employers, towards their employees and a means of exercising social control over what was seen as their domestic and moralistic betterment. Being located close to the entrance to the mill complex, they were clearly intended to be seen by visitors and were therefore provided with an architecturally distinct Gothick north elevation.