endlessrarities | An Industrial Heritage Success Story

By now, you'll be used to me bewailing the demise of a much-loved industrial building, or - Cassandra-like - foretelling Certain Doom for yet another piece of our industrial built heritage. So, as a follow-up to my lament over the dilapidated flax mills of Glasshouses, I'm going to be much more up-beat and present to you a redundant industrial building which has found an alternative use in the 21st century. Once again, our destination's Pately Bridge in Yorkshire: this particular building lies outwith the town itself, on the route of the walk which took us up to the abandoned leadmines where we met our friend the dancing grouse...

I saw a drawing of this structure in our guidebook first of all, and thought at the time, 'must see!' It was the massive waterwheel that caught my eye, the predominant feature in a building that started out as a flax mill, then subsequently found use as a ropeworks:-

After it fell into disuse as an industrial building, it was transformed into an inn, but this venture failed and the building has now been converted into housing. Very fetching it is, too. The paint job on the waterwheel is particularly lovely - it certainly had the 'wow' factor as far as I was concerned. It probably demonstrates the secret of success as far as restoring industrial buildings are concerned. As mill structures go, this one's compact and bijou, and it was probably still fairly well-maintained when the decision was made to convert it into housing.

But a cautionary note for the future... Just how do you persuade the owner/occupiers to keep subsidising this marvellous waterwheel? Okay, so it's no longer in active use, but... To keep it looking so good, it's going to take a bit of financial outlay. And it's not as if you have to maintain it as part of the physical fabric of your house ... It might be a part of the building's essence, but it's not as if losing it will impinge on your life, as a collapsed drain or a leaky roof would.

Time will tell, I suppose. It always does...