83-87 Long Street, North Middleton, Rochdale

Summary

Former domestic loomshop and houses, late C18, with alteration of the ground floor to two shops in the late C19, and C20/C21 alterations.

Description

Former domestic loomshop and houses, late C18, with alteration of the ground floor to two shops in the late C19, and C20/C21 alterations.

MATERIALS: hand-made bricks, with later applied timber-framing and render to the front elevation, and slate roofs.

PLAN: the main building is rectangular with a small outshot to the rear. The ground floor has two shops with a cross passage between. The first floor has two former residences, one opening into the rear outshot. The top floor has an open-plan former loomshop.

EXTERIOR: the three-storey, three-bay building faces east onto Long Street. The original symmetrical front elevation of brick is now covered by timbers attached in the manner of box-framing with the panels infilled by painted cream-coloured render.

The ground floor has a central doorway with a modern panelled timber door with a metal roller blind in front. To each side is a shop front with metal roller blinds in front and plywood covering the fascias and pilasters. The left-hand shop has a recessed doorway to the left with a timber and half-glazed door and a two-light shop window with a central timber mullion and vertically-boarded stall riser. The right-hand shop has a shop window with a wide, central window with narrow side lights, a moulded timber stall riser and a recessed doorway to the right with a stone step and a modern timber board door.

The central first-floor window has a timber cross frame with a lower side-hinged casement. To the left is a wider three-light window with a timber mullion and transom frame and top-hinged upper casements. To the right is a timber-framed window with a central transom and an inset, top-hinged upper casement (an early-C20 photograph shows a three-light, timber-framed mullion and transom window with a lower side-hinged casement).

The top floor had a central taking-in door now replaced by a timber-framed window of two square-paned lights directly under the eaves with timber framing and render infill below (the sill of the taking-in door was above a narrower band of box framing over the first-floor windows). Set lower to each side is a horizontal loomshop window with timber-framed Yorkshire sashes (sliding horizontally rather than vertically) of six square-paned lights.

The double-pitched roof is slated with a large brick stack to the left-hand, south gable, shared with the adjoining property.

To the rear of the building is a small yard, reached by an external passageway beside the north gable wall, which is considerably lower than the adjacent ground associated with the Methodist Church Sunday Schools. The three-storey rear elevation is built of hand-made bricks in English garden wall bond. On the right-hand side the two-storey outshot faces north into the yard. It too is built of hand-made bricks, though they are not bonded into the main rear elevation, with a mono-pitch slate roof abutting the north side of the adjacent property, which on this side retains its walls of hand-made bricks (rebuilt to the outer elevations). The top floor of the main building has two long horizontal windows. The left-hand window has a timber frame of six lights with mullions and a central king mullion. The right-hand window is the same width although the three right-hand lights are now boarded over; the three left-hand lights have timber mullion and transom frames. Between the first and second floors are a line of infilled mortices for beams (of unknown use). Both windows have soldier brick lintels and no sills. On the first floor are two smaller horizontal windows with narrow sandstone lintels and stone sills, which respect the position of the outshot to the right. They may be later insertions as there is a long row of soldier bricks and a straight joint in the brickwork which suggests there may have been an earlier long horizontal window to the left half of the elevation. The left-hand window has a timber frame with a metal security grille over; the right-hand window is boarded. The ground floor has two inserted doors with modern brickwork between with a sandstone lintel for a former window or doorway. To the right of the right-hand doorway is a shallow, unbonded mono-pitch lean-to with a breeze-block infill to the outer face. The front, north-facing elevation of the outshot has breeze-block and modern brick infill on the ground floor. The first floor has a central three-light timber framed window.

The north gable wall is blind and built of modern bricks.

INTERIOR: the ground and first floors are subdivided into two properties. The ground floor has a cross passage entered from the central doorway which leads through to a narrow rear staircase against the rear wall up to the first floor. To the left is a doorway into the south shop. The shop has two chimney breasts to the south wall and three boxed-in beams running north-south. The innermost beam is on the junction between the main building and the rear outshot. The north shop has a narrower beam running across north-south with a fake boxed beam to each side. There is a wide staircase against the rebuilt north gable wall up to the first floor.

The first floors of the north and south properties both have two large, roughly-hewn beams running from front to rear. The south property has wide wooden floorboards running north-south across the space. There are also two narrower beams over the rear staircase landing, which may relate to a former stair arrangement as the northern beam has been cut back to provide headroom for the present staircase to the second floor. A doorway into the rear outshot has a moulded architrave.

The second-floor former loomshop is a single room (presently subdivided with modern light-weight partition walls). It has a ceiling with two large, roughly-hewn and chamfered beams running from front to rear of the building, both with a thinner piece of wood attached to the inner sides. In the roof over each beam is a jowled and pegged king-post truss with raking struts, with a ridge post and a purlin to each side. The northern truss has a bolted wrought-iron shoe and has two bolts through to the underside of the beam. The southern truss has a bolted wrought-iron strap and also has two bolts through to the underside of the beam. To the south of that truss is a squared timber set into the purlins on either side, with mortices for another adjacent timber of similar size. Attached to the ridge post are two metal pulley wheels (indicating that the ceiling is later). The south beam also has a metal loop attached to the south side of the beam, which is cut away at this point. The room is reached by a narrow staircase against the rear wall which crosses over a main beam on the first floor. The south gable wall has been boarded out, hiding the two chimney breasts which rise from the ground floor and also a former stair position, which is visible as the under-slope of a staircase in the ceiling of the room below on the first floor; it too has a boarded out south gable wall obscuring the exact arrangement of this staircase.

History

The silk industry was a late development in England, driven by the suppression of the Protestant Huguenots in France and their subsequent acceptance in this country, notably bringing an expertise in silk textiles. In 1778 Baines’ Directory records silk weaving in Middleton. The town subsequently had a particular association with silk manufacturing, as well as cotton manufacturing, thought to have been greatly influenced by the Huguenot Mellalieu family, whose name is commemorated in Mellalieu Street. At this time weaving was a domestic industry both for cotton and silk, carried out in houses containing loomshops, with basement workshops suiting the damp conditions needed for cotton weaving and top floor workshops for silk weaving (a feature also seen in woollen weaving areas in Yorkshire).

The building now known as 83-87 Long Street was built as a domestic loomshop with living accommodation for two or three families on the ground and first floors and a loomshop on the second floor. This suggests that it was built for silk weaving, though its original occupants are not known. It also has a small, domestic, two-storey outshot to the rear, which was probably added as the brickwork is not bonded in, although the handmade bricks used match those of the main building, so it may have been built soon after its initial construction. On the south side was another building which projected further to the rear, forming an L-shaped footprint. It is shown on Yate’s Map of Lancashire of 1786, an Estate Map of 1795 and the tithe map of 1839. The 1:10560 Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1844-1845, published 1848, shows the building standing on the west side of Rochdale Road, as Long Street was previously called. By this time it was no longer in use as a loomshop. The 1841 census suggests that a printer, William Horsman, lived in the right-hand property, with a hatter in the left-hand property, and Horsman remained in 1851, with a tailer in the left-hand property.

The longer south building was mostly rebuilt in machine-made bricks in the later C19, with the later brickwork of the front elevation oversailing the roof of the former loomshop.

The building appears in an historic photograph taken in the early 1890s, at which time the front elevation was unrendered, with the central taking-in door visible on the top floor. The building also had two wide gable stacks; the roof appears to have been re-covered with slate, replacing the original stone flags, which were the traditional local roof covering. In 1899 Edgar Wood’s adjacent Methodist Church and Sunday Schools (Grade II*) was built. A drawing of the complex of 1902 by Wood includes a partial rendition of the building, though drawn with a degree of artistic licence, rather than being truly accurate in its details. It does, however, indicate that the ground floor was shops by this date. A second photograph, taken after the Methodist Church had been built, shows that the front elevation of the building was constructed of Flemish bond brickwork; metal advertising signs were attached around the right-hand shop (the left-hand shop is not visible). Around 1907 the front elevation was timber-framed and rendered in a manner that echoed the appearance of the early-C17, timber-framed Ye Olde Boar’s Head public house (Grade II*) a short distance to the north on the same side of the road. The Jubilee Library of 1887, opposite the pub, also emulated timber framing detailing as part of its design. The early-C20 historic photograph of the elevation’s new decorative treatment shows that the second-floor taking-in door was still present at this date. The right-hand shop had a shop window with a fascia and cornice over and timber shutters, the first floor had timber casement windows and the second floor had Yorkshire sashes lighting the former loomshop.

At an unknown date in the C20 the north gable wall was entirely rebuilt in modern bricks, removing the original gable stack, and the chimney breasts internally. The two ground-floor shops were re-fronted and the taking-in door was replaced by a window with matching render and timber framing beneath.

Reasons for Listing

83-87 Long Street, Middleton, two houses and a domestic loomshop built in the late C18, with late C19 and C20/C21 alterations, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a late-C18 three-storey pair of houses with an upper domestic workshop identifiable by the distinctive long workshop windows and former central taking-in door, typical of hand-powered loomshops;
* as an early surviving example of an urban vernacular workshop built of hand-made brick with rare surviving horizontal-sliding Yorkshire sashes to the workshop windows;
* the interior retains the top-floor, single-room loomshop with large cross-beams on the floor below to support the weight of the looms, a roof structure of tie-beams and trusses reinforced with metalwork, and metal fixtures including pulleys attached to the ridge post.

Historic interest:

* Middleton had a particular association with silk manufacturing as well as the more ubiquitous cotton manufacturing of the North-West, weaving of the former usually carried out in upper workshops, such as 83-87 Long Street, and the latter in damp basement workshops in the town;
* the building represents a particular aspect of the economic development of the textile industries being a transitional type, illustrating the move of rural domestic production to more urban settings, but pre-dating the full mechanisation of processes in large, purpose-built mills;
* as an increasingly rare survival of a domestic workshop in central Middleton, once a common feature of the town’s long association with the textiles industries, but with many since demolished.

Group value:

* the building contributes to the varied historic streetscape of Long Street, standing in close proximity to the listed 1899 Long Street Methodist Church and Sunday School by Edgar Wood, the early C17 Ye Olde Boar’s Head Public House, and the C19 former National School.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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