The Silk Mill

Details

SP 9211
11/51


TRING,
BROOK STREET (West side),
The Silk Mill

II

Silk textile mill complex, now light engineering factories. 1824 for
William Kay who bought the Manor of Tring in 1823, run by his brother
from Macclesfield but leased to David Evans & Co. after 4 years and
worked up to 1898. Mill reduced to 3-storeys in early C20, and stair
tower built against front in 2nd World War when floors strengthened by
steel beams below old floors. Red brick with slate roofs, E front of W
range now painted. A courtyard complex with tall W range 150 x 35ft
originally of 5 floors but now of 3, lower S range of 2 and 3 floors 100
x 35ft, and the long single-storey E range facing the mill and backing
onto Brook Street built to lodge children working in the mill, later
used as offices and workshops. The N range has brick walls, timber
floors of joists with boards below and above carried on heavy timber
cross-beams linked by lesser beams, and pitched roof on re-used
original wide-span queen-post timber trusses. Wide eaves soffit and
projected verge both on shaped brackets and cantilevered purlins and
wallplates. Close-spaced rows of uniform windows with gauged brick
cambered arches and wooden small-paned recessed windows, some with
central 1/3 a top-hung opening light. Step in W wall at vertical brick
shaft perhaps for belting. Aqueduct runs at high level on W side of mill
and an enclosed large iron waterwheel 22ft diameter and 6ft wide
survives in situ at junction of W end S ranges. Lying E-W it revolved
clockwise as viewed from N, has buckets, iron cross-bracing, and heavy
4-flanged iron axle. The drive is taken from a rack along the rim. S
range has tall 2-storeys and basement hipped roof block at E end facing
the road which is designed to appear as a 3-windows long symmetrical
house in red brick with cambered gauged arches, stone sills, broad giant
stucco pilasters at each end above plinth with paired brackets, single
at each end. Recessed sash windows with 15/10 small panes and 3-centred
gauged arch to central doorway with threshold 1m above pavement.
Half-glazed door and 8-pane basement windows. This building has painted
brick interior walls and a wide relieving arch across the rear wall
where it adjoins a 2-storeys warehouse with wooden roof trusses and
ground higher on S side so that it appears as single storey. The W part
of the S range is a taller engine house with pilastered S wall, 5
windows in the N wall facing the yard, a glazed top-hamper to the iron
framed roof, and massive vaulted base last used to support electrical
generators but former square brick chimney to NW now demolished. When
described in 1840 there was a 25hp steam engine and 16hp of water power,
500 pairs of hands consisting of 40 men, 140 women and 320 children.
Gerald Massey the Chartist poet and prototype of Felix Holt in
George Eliot's novel entered the mill here in 1836 aged eight. (Branch
Johnson(1970)67-70, 177).


Listing NGR: SP9253311884

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

355688

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Branch Johnson, W, The Industrial Archaeology of Hertfordshire, (1970), 67-70 177

End of official list entry

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