Havelock Mills in central

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

were built between 1820 and 1840. It was probably the largest surviving silk mill in the north-west region in the 1970s and had a unique combination of silk and

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven b ...

s on one site. It was a landmark on the Rochdale Canal, overlooking Tib Lock, one of the Rochdale Nine.

Location

The mills were built on the canal side on Great Bridgewater Street. The

Manchester and Salford Junction Canal The Manchester and Salford Junction Canal was a canal in the city of Manchester. It was originally built to provide a direct waterway between the Mersey and Irwell Navigation and the Rochdale Canal. The canal opened in 1839 and was abandoned i ...

was to the east, and Rochdale Canal's Tib Lock (Lock 89) was to the south.

History

The mill was a large silk mill and early spinning mill. It was granted Grade II listed building status but was demolished in 1992. The site is now occupied by the Evershed Building. Demolition of the Grade II listed building was controversial but went ahead after protests and a public inquiry. Before demolition, the developer agreed to a programme of structural tests on the building frame sponsored by English Heritage and the Department of Trade and Industry. The designer of the frame is anonymous, but it is in the style of the Manchester engineer

William Fairbairn Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet of Ardwick (19 February 1789 – 18 August 1874) was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder. In 1854 he succeeded George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson to become the third pre ...

. After demolition Joe Marsh and Tom Swaile of UMIST arranged for part of the iron frame to be re-erected on the UMIST campus. Assembly on campus was by Percival Brothers of Stockport. Another part of the frame was shipped to Paris and formed the 'gateway' piece to an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre "The Art of the Structural Engineer". Remains of Havelock Mill - geograph

Architecture

Havelock Mills were two interlinked L-shaped multi-storey mills. They were notable in that the mill built in 1820 was a silk-mill and the second, built in 1840 was a fire-proof

. The silk mill was of six storeys over a basement and had 18 bays facing Great Bridgewater Street (Nos 72 and 74). The windows had raised sills and wedge lintels. Three bays were blind. The doorways were round-headed with rusticated long-and-short surrounds. The 20-bay west range had segmental-headed windows with raised sills, and loading doors on most floors, the octagonal chimney was in the south-west corner. The rear of the main range had a

garderobe Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word der ...

turret (privy tower) to the right and a semi-octagonal turret in the centre. The cotton mill was of a basement and six storeys, its 10 bays were at right angles to the street. It was 4 bays wide and attached by a two-bay link to the silk mill over the wagon entrance to the court-yard. The cotton mill was of fire-proof construction with 2 rows of cast-iron columns, and parabolic cast-iron beams carrying brick vaulting. Attached to south wall was a full-height vertical drive-shaft. The parabolic cast-iron beams were Hodgkinson beams, of the type that

had devised after intensive

stress analysis Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

tests carried out at the Ancoats

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

three years earlier. The cotton mill has a fire-proofed basement boiler-house with massive cast-iron girders and stone flagged floors. Its cast-iron spiral staircase was contained in a semicircular turret at the south-west corner. The detached engine house contained a beam engine.

References

Footnotes

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Cottontown.org website

Spinningtheweb.org website
{{Lancashire Cotton Textile mills in Manchester Cotton mills Silk mills Former textile mills in the United Kingdom Demolished buildings and structures in Manchester Demolished manufacturing buildings and structures Buildings and structures demolished in 1994 1820 establishments in England 1994 disestablishments in England History of Manchester Former listed buildings in England