Peter Scott's Factory, 7-11 (Odd Numbers) Buccleuch Street, Hawick, Scottish Borders

Description

1897-1923, with core of circa 1816. Extensive complex of mill buildings with long, 3-storey and attic elevation to Buccleuch Street and tall chimney, boiler house, storage blocks and weaving sheds in roughly triangular site to rear.

BUCCLEUCH STREET BLOCK: Long street frontage of different dates, comprising 10-bay, ridge-roofed section to left, 14-bay mansard-roofed section to centre and single-bay, gabled, pedimented section to right.

Earliest section, 10 bays to left, built in 2 stages (7 right bays first; 3 left bays later). Squared, coursed whinstone with polished yellow sandstone ashlar dressings (some painted) to street elevation; yellow sandstone and whinstone rubble to rear. Base course; 2nd-floor and attic band courses; tall blocking course with modillion cornice. Tripartite, stone-mullioned windows with projecting cills. Ridge roof. 4 marble steps to door of ground-floor shop to 3-bay left section; broad, 2-leaf, timber-boarded gate to pend entrance at left of 4-bay central section; 4 granite steps to recessed central door in plain, corniced architrave to 3-bay right section.

14-bay central section, Charles Brown, 1910; 2nd floor and attic added by James Pearson Alison, 1923. Continuous strip windows divided by stone mullions, and 4 evenly spaced, flat-roofed dormers. Squared, coursed yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings; yellow sandstone and whinstone rubble and brick to rear. Cill courses; dentilled eaves course. Stop-chamfered margins to ground and 1st floors; 2nd-floor windows recessed behind pilaster mullions. Raised door to left of centre and round-arched window to outer left at ground floor. Full-height, M-gabled wing to rear.

Tall, single-bay, gabled block to right, James Pearson Alison, 1923, with quadripartite window at ground floor and tripartite windows above, rising to Diocletian window at attic and broken pediment. Yellow sandstone ashlar to street elevation; rendered to side (W); yellow sandstone rubble to rear. Channelled pilaster quoins.

Plate glass in timber sash and case windows to principal block predominantly 6-pane fixed glazing with tilting upper panes to blocks to right. Grey slate roof with metal ridge and ridge vents. Ashlar-coped skews. Coped ashlar stacks with octagonal, buff clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

CHIMNEY AND BOILER HOUSE: Tall, octagonal, tapered, painted brick chimney with banded detailing. Roughly rectangular-plan boiler house block in tooled, squared yellow sandstone at base of chimney, with 3-leaf, timber-boarded doors; and various additional brick and timber structures to roof.

STORAGE BLOCKS AND KNITTING SHEDS: 3-storey, roughly rectangular-plan canteen and stock-room block diagonally adjoining rear of E end of Buccleuch Street block; extensive, single-storey, weaving sheds with linked piended roofs. Brick, rendered to stock-room block. Strip skylights throughout.

Grey slate roofs with metal ridges and ridge vents.

INTERIOR: Late 1950s decoration to ground-floor boardrooms and offices at No 11 Buccleuch Street, with light wood panelling inlaid with strips of dark wood; some panelling to 1st-floor offices. Regularly spaced cast-iron columns with simple capitals supporting ceilings throughout most buildings.

Statement of Interest

A substantially structurally unaltered, early-20th-century textile mill complex with a prominent, well-proportioned elevation to Buccleuch Street, tall boiler-house chimney with a dominating presence on the Hawick skyline, and extensive ancillary structures.

Textile manufacturing plays a key role in the history of Hawick. Conveniently situated for water-powered milling at the meeting of the River Teviot and the Slitrig Water, Hawick became one of the richest burghs per capita in Scotland as a result of the industry. During the 19th century, water power was superseded by steam power, and tall chimneys came to dominate the town's skyline. The chimney of Peter Scott's is the only such structure remaining today.

The hosiery (and later knitwear) manufacturing firm of Peter Scott & Company has its origins in the partnership of Adamson & Scott, who commenced business nearby in 1878. The partnership split in 1884, and in 1897 Peter Scott moved his firm to Buccleuch Street, to occupy a building believed to have been constructed shortly after the street was first laid out in 1815. Over the next 30 years, the property was greatly extended and altered, including the gradual construction of a new façade on Buccleuch Street and the building of numerous knitting sheds on the awkwardly shaped site to the rear. The majority of the extensions were designed by Charles Brown, Burgh Surveyor; but the upper storeys of the long strip-windowed Buccleuch Street section and the giant-pilastered terminal block are by James Pearson Alison (1862-1932), Hawick's most prominent architect. Born at Eskbank but raised partly in Hawick, Alison had commenced practice in the town in 1888 and remained there until his death in 1932, during which period he was responsible for a large number of buildings of widely varying types and styles, including a considerable proportion of the burgh's listed structures.

A former yarn store at the south-west corner of the site, originally part of the Peter Scott's complex, was due to be sold with planning permission for conversion into flats at the time of resurvey (2008).

External Links

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