Hope Mill

Details

MANCHESTER

698-1/17/535 POLLARD STREET 06-JUN-94 BESWICK AND CLAYTON (Northwest side) 113 HOPE MILL

GV II* Former cotton spinning mill, in multiple occupancy at time of inspection (5/2002). 1824, with later C19 and C20 additions and alterations. Built for Joseph Clarke and Sons, cotton spinners and fustian weavers. Red brick with ashlar sandstone dressings, double pitched roofs with Welsh slate coverings.
PLAN: Rectangular plan, oriented north-west/south-east, with integral engine house, boiler house and chimney, and sited between the Ashton Canal and Pollard Street.
EXTERIOR: 20 bays, 7 storey spinning mill thought to have been built in a single, possible interrupted phase. Regularly-spaced rectangular window openings with stone sills and wedge lintels, mostly now with replacement C20 frames. Original doorways to bays 4 and 6 on the east elevation, both with ashlar surrounds with semi-circular arched heads, the ashlar masonry with V-jointed rustication. North end wall with 4 blocked segmental arch-headed openings to former internal boiler house. Double pitched roof set behind low gable parapet wall with stone copings. 4-bay end wall with stacked double loading doors to left of centre now served by C20 metal fire escape. North end of east elevation, possibly a former warehouse, with altered loading doors and hoist beam to upper floor opening. West elevation with truncated integral tapered chimney stack set between original engine and boiler houses.
INTERIOR: The mill is of fire-proof construction, with cast-iron columns and cross beams supporting shallow brick vaults. Full-height cross wall between bays 5 and 6 at the north end segregates former internal engine and boiler houses from the spinning floors. Between bays 6 and 7, a fire-proof internal stair tower, half-oval in plan with landings adjacent to the side wall, and designed to accommodate a hoist shaft, now with C20 elevator. The top landing ceiling is supported by fish-bellied cast-iron beams which formerly carried the mill water supply tank. Former internal boiler house with long cast-iron columns (designed to accommodate Boulton and Watt vertical damper pipes) supporting tall vaulted ceiling. To the south of this, 3-storey former engine house with well-preserved ceiling vaults, the iron beams of which include integral lifting rings. The roof structure of the 15 bays to the south of the cross wall is of double span form, each span carried on king post trusses rising from a common cross beam, the valley gutter between the 2 trusses carried on a central arcade of cast iron columns. To the north of the cross wall, the roof is carried on a prefabricated iron structure, consisting of 5 trusses formed from angled struts and both horizontal and angled tie rods. Integral to the trussed roof system is a cast-iron valley gutter, supported by cast-iron columns with Y-shaped brackets at their heads which form base plates for the roof principals and horizontal tie rods. Original cast-iron slate laths survive in some areas.
HISTORY: Documentary evidence suggests that Hope Mill was one of the earliest developments in the new industrial suburb created from a greenfield site alongside the Ashton Canal in the 1820's. In 1824, the owners, Joseph Clarke and Sons purchased an 80 horse-power mill beam engine from Boulton and Watt of Birmingham. By 1880, the area was fully developed, with a large number of steam- powered industrial complexes. In the early C20, Hope Mill was occupied by John Hetherington and Sons, manufacturers of textile machinery, based at Vulcan Works (q.v.) further west on Pollard Street.
SOURCES:
Williams, Mike. Hope Mill, Manchester. Architectural Investigation Reports and Papers B/047/2002.
Williams, Mike with Farnie, D.A. Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester. Carnegie Publishing. Preston: 1992.
Hartwell, Clare. Manchester. Pevsner Architectural Guides. Penguin Books. London: 2001.

A steam-powered textile factory of c.1824, one of the best-preserved examples of its type in Manchester, one which retains extensive evidence for the evolution of successive power systems, and which includes an innovative prefabricated iron roofing system. This important component structure demonstrates an understanding by the designers of the principles of compression and tension acting in roof structures, and is related to similar early iron roof structures in contemporary mill developments in Ancoats. Hope Mill makes a strong contribution to the international significance of this part of Manchester as the prototypical industrial suburb. Additionally it forms an important component of an impressive and evocative group of former textile mills flanking the banks of the Ashton Canal including Brunswick Mill (q.v.). The Ashton Canal corridor defined the southern boundary of the Ancoats district, with industrial buildings of near contemporary dates to those that extend from the Rochdale Canal north west to the Oldham Road. Although the area between the 2 canals is much altered, the shared architectural and landscape characteristics of the 2 canal corridors express the extent and density of Manchester's textile and engineering industry at its peak, and together constitutes an historical industrial landscape of international significance.


SJ8573498512

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

456041

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Williams, , Farnie, , Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester, (1993)
Hartwell, C, Pevsner Architectural Guides in Manchester, (2001)

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