1912

Built for carding and weaving, emptied in 1974

The annexe went up in 1912 to take the carding machines out of the main building, which had run out of floor. It worked until the mill closed in 1974, stood empty for eleven years, and then spent three decades as storage and a printing works, with a short spell as a climbing gym.

A Tampere practice that had already worked on two of the mills downstream did the 2016 conversion. They set themselves the brief of adding as little as possible, and the building helped: the floors are deep and the windows tall, and the sawtooth roof lights the top floor for free.

What was added shows, and nobody tried to match it to the old fabric. The stair is new steel, the bathrooms are boxes dropped in so that they don't touch the outside walls, and the services run along the surface in galvanised trunking.

sawtooth roof, north light floors 1 to 3: rooms ground: table, hall, carding room the rapids run on the far side of the wall

Four floors and the sawtooth over the top one

The brick

Cleaned, repointed in two places, and otherwise left

The inside brick was washed and left at that. The dye staining is still visible in places at waist height, where the troughs stood, and the architects argued successfully for keeping it.

Two bays on the river wall had to be repointed after frost got into them, and the new mortar is a shade paler because nobody tinted it to match.

House rules

Five things worth knowing

  • Breakfast is served at one table, from seven to ten, and isn't brought to rooms.
  • Shoes come off at the door to the sauna floor, for practical reasons.
  • Children are welcome everywhere except the carding room, at any hour.
  • The river-side windows open, which lets the rapids in, and that is deliberate.
  • Rooms are held on a name and a telephone number; nothing is paid through this website.