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Description: Greenups Mill

Address: Greenups Weaving Mill Carlton Yard Sowerby Bridge West Yorkshire HX6 2EE

Grade: II

Group detail: Town Hall Street (south side, off)

Full description:
Wool textile mill now commercial premises. 1793 for William Greenup (Fitzgerald) with additions and alterations 2nd half C19. Coursed stone, stone slate roof. 4 storeys, 10 bays with block added to south, front additions to either end of east front, and wings added at right-angle projecting from either end of west front, all these additions being not of special interest. East front: gable over 3 central bays. Ground floor: much altered; bays 5 and 6 have inserted shouldered carriage-arch, the arch replaced by a girder; to right of this a blocked round archway (probably originally one of a pair), a window, a wide doorway now window, another window. 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors each have a central loading door with an oculus above in the gable and windows with plain stone surrounds, the cills lowered in order to accommodate later 9-pane windows. Louvres to ridge. Rear of main range: windows as front; a round arched doorway flanked by wide lights (said to make access to water courses (Fitzgerald)) and above it, to left, a loading door. Shaped gutter brackets. Interior: cast-iron columns, reportedly post-1840 (Fitzgerald) supporting large-scantling cross-beams. Upper floors not inspected, but reported to have queen-post timber roof trusses with later gallery inserted between queen posts (Fitzgerald). Although there has been a mill on the site since at least 1752 and mill buildings were built and added to throughout the 2nd half of the C18 it appears that the mill which now occupies the site was built in 1793, the building date given by George Greenup (son of William Greenup) at an enquiry of 1834. The mill was water-powered and used for wollen-carding, spinning and filling. Fitzgerald suggests that William Greenup must share with Benjamin Gott of Bean Ing Mill, Leeds, the credit for pioneering attempts to factoryise the entire process of cloth manufacture, although Gott's complex (built in 1792) was entirely steam-powered. Calderdale Archive Service, William and George Greenup: Sowerby Bridge: Merchants 1754-1824 SPL:384-385; RS Fitzgerald, "Reviving the heart of Sowerby Bridge Appendix A', Typescript; RCHM(E) report.