Former Royal Oak Flannel Factory

The former Royal Oak Flannel Factory was built around 1830 as a flannel factory, deliberately located alongside the Lledan Brook to take advantage of water power. While the system used to harness this power has not survived due to 20th-century alterations, it is possible the factory relied on manual power. The building was reconfigured in 1924 to function as a cinema, and an entrance block was constructed onto the gable, potentially on the site of an earlier structure such as a wheel house. The cinema operated until 1938, after which the building fell into disuse until its conversion into flats in 1994-5.

The factory is constructed from random local rubble with a slate roof and appears as a long, narrow single range of four storeys, with a basement. There are 14 windows along its length. The basement openings are blocked and have been so for some time. Above, the windows are regularly spaced and aligned, each featuring a cambered voussoir head. A former loading bay on the east elevation has been filled in, and a wide entrance with sliding doors has been added to the ground floor. The main entrance is through a two-storey, trapezoidal entrance block that was part of the cinema. The central recessed section has paired doors divided by a pilaster on the ground floor, flanked by a row of four small-paned windows above. Decorative cornice bands run along the top, capped by a central tripartite window with small panes in a scrolled architrave. Attached to the south gable end is a lower range, featuring a large, segmentally arched opening that has been filled in; this may have once been connected to the factory.

The original factory interior was largely removed during the cinema conversion, leaving little of the original structure visible.

The building retains its external character as a former industrial building and has considerable historical interest as the only large-scale urban factory to survive in Welshpool.