Former Wool Stove At Bourne Mills

Former Wool Stove at Bourne Mills

A wool stove (a heated building for drying and storing scoured and dyed wool), constructed in the early 19th century, now used as a storage building.

The building is constructed from coursed rubble limestone with a limestone ashlar stack, under a plain clay tile roof. It is an almost-square rectangle on plan and rises to three storeys as a rectangular block.

The main north-east elevation features an external stone stair rising to a central segmental-headed door on the first floor, with a similar door below. To the left of each floor is a single three-light window with chamfered stone mullions. The north-west gable end has a later casement window at first-floor level.

The interior is reported to contain a cast-iron frame of columns and fish-bellied beams rising through three floors.

Bourne Mill has been the site of a mill since at least the 17th century. In 1690 the site comprised a house, two fulling mills, and a rack place. During the later 18th and early 19th centuries the mill was used for textile and rug making, and in the 1820s it also functioned as a corn mill. The wool stove, together with two other mill buildings that survive on the site in the early 21st century, dates from this period of development. By the mid-1860s Bourne Mill was occupied by Richard Grist & Co, mattress-wool, mill-puff and shoddy makers. By 1901 the site was no longer in use for cloth production and became a cabinet works. In the mid-20th century it became a manufactory for walking sticks and was later used for various light industries.

The Stroud Valleys have been a centre for cloth production since at least the 14th century, and by the beginning of the 17th century the industry dominated the industrial life of the area. During the 18th century, Stroud and the surrounding district were famed for the quality of cloth produced and the rich hues of the dyes, some invented locally. During the earlier 19th century there was wholesale reorganisation of the cloth-making industry, with larger-scale mill buildings erected to accommodate mechanised weaving and other processes. In the 19th century there were 14 mills spaced at intervals of 300–400 yards along the River Frome along the eastern borders of Stroud parish, including Bourne Mill.

The wool stove is a rare survival of a custom-built wool drying house from the period when the larger rectangular design was coming in, and appears to be largely complete. The exterior is largely unaltered and the interior arrangements are understood to be complete. It forms a contemporary and functionally related group with two mill buildings at Bourne Mills, both listed at Grade II.