The Old Silk Mill

SP 14 39 CHIPPING CAMPDEN SHEEP STREET (West side)

7/211 The Old Silk Mill

GV II*

Former silk mill, now workshops. C18, in 2 stages of build; from December 1902 the mill became the workshops for C.R. Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts. Coursed limestone rubble with Welsh slate roof. Rectangular plan. 3 storeys with attic to right part; 8-window first-floor range. Entrance to 4th opening: double plank doors and large late C18 fanlight with radial glazing bars in ashlar surround with imposts and keystone. Continuous timber lintels over 3-light wood casement windows-throughout, except 2-light to 8th bay and plank loading doors to 5th bay. Inserted round-arched window at right has 2-light casement with radial glazing to head and sill. Mill projects to rear right; similar fenestration to rear, but with paired casements separated by stone mullions; some C20 windows in original openings, otherwise mainly 3-light metal casements, some with green glass. Interior: entrance passageway formerly housed mill wheel. Ground floor has some 4-panel doors. Chamfered joists and exposed tie beams. Dog-leg oak staircase from entrance passage; remains of turned half-balusters to newels. First floor includes fireplaces to each workshop, fluted wooden housing for wires (electricity was installed by C.R. Ashbee in 1903, the first in the town), some pulleys from Ashbee's lathes. Centre window to rear of second floor has window inscribed "J.T. Bruce, Plumber, glazier and house painter. November 29 in the year of Our Lord 1829". King post roof. There are 3 attached plaster plaques designed by Ashbee, 2 to ground floor, one to staircase landing, with coats of arms between bands of foliage. Also to landing a metal memorial plaque_to C.W. Atkinson, D.1894, Guildsman and first apprentice of the Guild of Handicraft, with ornamental repousse wreath, enamelled. The silk mill, which is a significant example of an 18th century industrial building of this scale, is remarkably unaltered since Ashbee's day, and has retained much of its green glass described in the Ashbee Memoirs. The Guild of Handicraft, founded by Ashbee in 1888, became one of the foremost Arts and Crafts workshops of its period. It was transferred from Whitechapel to Campden in 1902, and the former silk mill then formed the focus of the communal life which, as a pioneering social experiment, formed the most bold and important expression of Arts and Crafts principles.

(Alan Crawford, "C.R. Ashbee. Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist", Yale, 1985; Fiona MacCarthy, "The Simple Life: C.R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds", Lund Humphries, 1981).

Listing NGR: SP1492638990