Source/Archive record SCH5406 - Dale Street Mill, Mill Street, Macclesfield

The building is two storey, solid brick built on top of stone plinth wall which is about 600mm (2 feet) high. The main body of the building is a rectangle approximately 34m long x 11.5m wide, perpendicular to Dale Street, with flights of stairs at either end. The roof of the main body is slated at quite a low pitch and hipped at either end, presenting a hipped gable on the Dale Street frontage. The ground floor of the building originally consisted of two elements; a large high ceilinged space which functioned as the ‘factory’ and has been (vertically) subdivided in later years, attached to a smaller masonry built lower-ceilinged part which presumably functioned as the ‘administrative’ area. In the factory, a mixture of cast iron and timber columns support the floor above, and with regularly spaced and numerous windows around the four surrounding walls, the layout and structure maximise the amount and flexibility of naturally lit and ventilated space. At first floor level above the factory, the pattern is similar but ceilings are much lower, and the main beams span the full internal width of approximately 11m without any columns to support them. At the front (North)end, the administrative first floor is at a lower level then the main floor and this is expressed externally by the lower window height. An additional element, described on the 1986 drawings as the ‘textile warehouse’, approx 10m wide x 6m deep, aligns with the gable end of the main building to form an ‘L’ shape and giving a total frontage on Dale Street of approx 21.5m. The warehouse has a corrugated asbestos roof with a triangular gable end rather clumsily abutting the eaves of the main building. At its junction with the main building there is an opening in the form of a ‘pend’, which gives access to the yard behind. The warehouse is accessed from inside the pend, with its own flight of stairs. The first floor bridges over the pend to join the main building. The warehouse has a corrugated roof