The Mills

The Mills is a woollen mill, later used for corn and starch production, and now occupied by agricultural merchants. It dates to around the late 18th or early 19th century, reputedly built in 1789. The building is constructed of slate rubble, with slate hanging on the south side except for the ground storey. The roof is covered in asbestos slate, with a gable at the west end and a hip at the south east end. There are slate hung end and axial stacks, and a rendered lateral stack. The plan consists of a long rectangular range with a shorter wing set at an obtuse angle to the west. An office and manager's house is integral with the longer range at the east end. The shorter west range has open floors with loading doors on each level. The top floor was originally open from end to end, extending over the manager’s accommodation and office. There is an axial stack to the house and office, a lateral stack to the front of the main range, and a gable end stack at the west end. The building is three storeys high at the east end and four storeys high at the west end, but the roofline is consistent. It has an asymmetrical facade of approximately eight windows. There are some old casements with glazing bars, and some old windows with lapped glass panes. The windows on the right-hand (east) end of the north front have been replaced with 20th-century casements, except for an early to mid-19th century French window with glazing bars and margin panes on the ground floor, to the right. The left-hand range has wide loading doors on each floor, with a hoist above. An east-end doorway has a semi-circular fanlight, and a round-headed window to the left, both with radial glazing bars. Windows on the outer north side have segmental brick arches, and those to the right (west) have iron bars, now clad in corrugated iron. Most of the windows on the left (east) are 20th-century replacements. The roof has bolted softwood trusses. The ground storey of the west end has floor beams supported on iron posts, said to be from a later adjacent mill building, possibly when that building was reduced in height. The office has an early 19th-century moulded chimney piece and a plaster ceiling cornice.