Building record 1090001000 - Outbuilding to rear of 76A High Street

Historic building recording carried out by John Moore Heritage Serices in February 2008 confirmed the documentary evidence for the use of the outbuilding as a needle-making workshop in the nineteenth century. Building originally divided into 2 rooms (now 3 rooms), with brick walls on a stone plinth, a peg-hole tile roof, a beaten earth floor in the first (western) room, a brick flloor in the second (eastern) room, external doors at each end and an internal door. Iron fittings in the floor of the first room were assumed to be fixings for machinery (possibly the steam-powered scouring mill known to have been installed in 1848). In the second room, a brick fireplace with opening for a second flue and external plaster scar from an associated hood or structure and with an area of sooting below, possibly associated with a footing set into the floor. Near the external door in the eastern room was a low brick plinth apparently associated with metal and ceramic ?water pipes, possibly used for quenching the hot needles during manufacture. See report for detail (B2).