Mill Lade, Robert Smail's Printing Works, 5, 7, 9 And 11 High Street

Mill Lade, Robert Smail's Printing Works, located at 5, 7, 9 and 11 High Street, is an earlier 19th-century building that has undergone alterations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The structure consists of a 2-storey, 3-bay rectangular shop with a flat above. It features a base course, a fascia supported by paired pilasters, and a canted shop window on the left, with an office to the right that has a tripartite timber window. The exterior is made of squared whinstone with painted sandstone quoins and raised tabbed window margins, while the sides and rear are rendered. Canted dormers and a later 20th-century forestair are present at the rear.

The building predominantly has 12-pane timber sash and case windows, with leaded toplights and etched glass in the shopfronts. The roof is covered with grey slate and has corniced gable end stacks with plain clay cans.

Inside, the shop and office accommodation remains in original condition with various fixtures. The shop features a glazed window with an enclosing glazed screen, fitted glazed timber cabinets, timber shelving, a mantelpiece, and a panelled ceiling. The office has beaded tongue and groove panelling, fitted shelves, a timber mantelpiece with tiled inserts, and an internal leaded window overlooking the shop. The upper flat includes marble chimneypieces, cast-iron grates, an unusual turned timber stair set sideways with delicate cast-iron banisters, and 4-panel doors.

The printing works is a 2-storey, roughly S-plan workshop with a pitched and piended roof, along with later additions and a 20th-century stair tower to the southwest. The north and east elevations are made of engineering brick, while the other sides are rendered. It has 4 top-hung timber windows on the south elevation, 2 high windows on the north gable, and banks of rooflights, along with timber-boarded doors. The slate roof features cast-iron rainwater goods.

Inside the printing works, the interior is plain and rendered, with boarded floors, doors, and a plain chimneypiece. A water wheel is present, along with original timber shelving in the paper store and the first-floor compositor's room. The interior houses an archive of printing materials, machines, and equipment. A timber ladder stair connects the compositor's room to the machine room, which contains printing machines dating from 1860, including an 1886 Wharfedale. The building features collared timber roofs and a reconstructed water wheel on original gearing.