De Montalt Works (South Range)

De Montalt Works (South Range)

Workshops, apprentice shop, stores and coach-house to a paper mill, located on the south side of Summer Lane at Combe Down. The buildings date from the early 19th century, though they may incorporate some earlier fabric. The main mills themselves date from 1804–1805. The South Range stands approximately 6 metres south of the main works.

The structures are built in limestone ashlar and random stone with slate and pantile roofs. The complex comprises three parts joined by a section of boundary wall.

The range includes a small two-storey gabled building with a slate roof, the toothed ends of its walls suggesting it may formerly have been attached to adjacent structures. The gable facing the works features one door at upper level, above two blocked doorways. To the north-west are two first-floor openings and a full-height stub wall with sockets for first-floor joists. The far side has two fifteen-pane sashes above a door. The outer gable is coped with a corner stack. From this end, a coped ashlar wall approximately 2.5 metres high, with a central opening, links to a two-storey workshop building running south-west parallel with the main works. The workshop has a stone ground floor and an upper floor with wide-spaced timbers and ashlar block fill arranged in three bays. A continuous row of four-pane casements runs along the upper floor, beneath a pantile roof swept down in double Roman tile over a wide extension to the rear. The ground floor features sundry doors and openings beneath deep flitch lintels, with wide piers and capitals that formerly supported an open shed structure. An in-line lower gabled range, possibly a former farm building, is attached at the right-hand end. Built in rubble with a corrugated iron roof, it has two square eaves lights above a wide pair of plank doors forming a carriage opening, a smaller door and paired light. The outer gable is plain with a ventilation slit. A swept-down range continues across the rear with horizontal boarding to the framing.

The interiors were not inspected and the buildings are now in poor condition.

The site passed from the Prior Park Estate in 1779 following the marriage of the Baron de Montalt to Ralph Allen's niece. The 2nd Baron, subsequently Viscount Hawarden, founded the paper mill here in 1805. It was initially operated by the firm of Bally, Ellen and Steart, producing high-quality writing and sketching paper used by Turner, Constable and leading artists of the day, as well as paper for banknotes issued by provincial banks. By 1834 the mill was producing gutta percha. Paper-making was subsequently removed to Wookey Hole. The mill was formerly noted for its overshot wheel, 56 feet in diameter, fed by a large pipe on pylons from a reservoir to the north-west. Two pylons remain to the north of the building at its east end, constructed in good ashlar work, tapering from approximately 1 metre square bases to approximately 5 metres high, forming piers at the entrance to adjacent cottages. The site became a furniture factory in the later 19th century, operated by John Whitaker. Despite its poor condition, the site forms a highly interesting group of considerable architectural and industrial archaeological value, set on the southern edge of Bath in dramatically falling countryside.