Description

River Esk Frontage: 1854 - long single storey mill frontage facing River Esk with mixed classical and castellated motifs. Symmetrical with slightly advanced crenellated screen walls expressed as end and centre pavilions. End pavilions have blind Venetian windows under square hood moulds continuing as string courses below parapet. Centre pavilion has central blocked arched doorway with heavy steel lifting gear cantilevered above; rubble with raised window margins and long and short quoins, ashlar parapets, small quatrefoil windows below plain eaves, between pavilions. Re-roofed with asbestos tiles.

Courtyard; 1857, extended to east around 3 sides of a courtyard, approximately 20 bays long and 7 bays wide. East side has slate roof, west side reroofed with asbestos tiles, north end with asbestos sheets; squared rubble with ashlar dressings, corniced eaves on corbel table, in and out jambs to architraved semi-circular arched windows with projecting keyblocks, string course at impost level. End bay of west side, adjacent to entrance raised with ashlar pilasters supporting entablature with block pediment and enclosing hood moulded arched doorway. Centre bay of north side advanced with stepped paired anta pilasters supporting entablature and pediment with acroterion at apex and ends framing elliptically arched doorway with channelled jambs.

Main Building: 1866, 4 storey mill added at south end of court yard, 8 bays wide, 10 deep. Under 4, parallel piended roofs; upper parts of north face, coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and rustic faced ground floor, below cornice, ashlar band and string course. 2nd and 7th bays advanced and flanked by channelled piers ground floor beneath giant Ionic pilasters through 2 floors, which support entablature with main cornice, breaking forward over pilasters and supporting sculptured figures in front of antae supporting cornice and pediment. Architraved windows at all levels; ground and 2nd floor arched with projecting key blocks, 1st floor square headed with console supported segmental pediment and 3rd floor oval surmounted by swags.

Remainder of facade has angle ashlar piers, panelled above main cornice with pedestals above secondary cornice/coping, arched windows with raised margins and, at 2nd floor, projecting key blocks, segmental arches 3rd floor. Fixed 6 pane windows, 8 pane ground floor. West and south faces rendered with segmental headed windows except 1st and 2nd floors of south which are semi circular headed. Returned for 1 bay, and 2 storeys only round east side of courtyard. Rusticated with central architraved door with attached shafts below cornice at 1st floor level, supporting 4 Roman Doric pilasters and entablature with stepped blocking course framing 3 architraved arched windows with projecting key blocks impost moulds and blind balustraded aprons.

Extended eastwards 1890 by 2 bays in brick with parallel piended slate roof, north end flat roofed with balustraded parapet and includes slender clocktower with roundels below a broad cornice and 4 faced clock with an iron crown.

Office Building within courtyard: Circa 1860, single storey Greco-Egyptian flat roofed office block, with dome over central hall, in centre of courtyard. Five bay front, end bays advanced with solid incised parapets, with end antefixae above cornice, pierced iron balustrade between. Central door and windows with battered Egyptian jambs. Battered rustic sandstone base, coursed rubble above, with ashlar dressings, raised window, door and angle margins. Plainer side elevations, each with central canted 4 light bay windows with cast iron balustrades above cornice. Courtyard contains near spherical urn on pedestal within circular stone basin.

Statement of Interest

Derelict 1984. The Esk Mills site has undergone several stages of development to be converted to large scale accommodation for individual units and a restaurant with glazed addition to the former office block to the centre of the courtyard. The buildings are in use as office space (2012).

A large decorative ironwork piece designed by R S Lorimer which was previously over the former W entrance gates to the site has recently been re-sinstated on modern metal columns near to its original location. The iron work has scrolled detailing with decorative birds, flower buds and is surmounted by a fish with the same detailing as an iron sundial on the NE corner of the site.

(List Description updated, 2012)

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17810271

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)