Some say the Hotspur Press is Manchester’s oldest mill. Does it matter?

Dear Millers — many of our greatest stories have started with one of you tipping us off. So when three different readers got in touch to tell us that something strange was going on at The Hotspur Press – the picturesquely decaying warehouse by Oxford Road Station – we knew it was something worth looking into. ‘Weird lying developer ads’ read the subject line of one of the emails. ‘To list or not to list?’ went another.

What you were telling us was this: the people of Manchester were getting adverts on Instagram and Facebook for a petition to ‘Save the Hotspur Press’. But look a little closer, and they’d find that the petition was started by developing company Manner, in order to prevent the building from being listed, demolish a large portion of it, and build luxury student flats in its place. This week, Ophira delves deep into the history of the Hotspur Press – formerly Medlock Mill – to find out what its contentious past could possibly mean for its precarious future. Most importantly, she finds out what it really means to ‘save’ the Hotspur Press — and who’s really trying to do it. That’s after your briefing.

Your briefing

🪧 Protesters demanding a national enquiry in child sexual exploitation attempted to storm Andy Burnham’s office yesterday. The Million Women March was calling for Burnham’s backing of a statutory inquiry, with some entering the Tootal Buildings on Oxford Road so Burnham could hear directly from people affected. Present among the demonstrators were survivors of CSE from Oldham and Rochdale, who said they were told no representative of Burnham could speak with them. “Nobody could come down and speak to us,” one survivor told the MEN. “It felt like an insult.”

🕖 The restoration of Manchester Town Hall’s clock will feature on an upcoming episode of the BBC’s Repair Shop On The Road programme. “The programme showcases the level of skill and painstaking care going into every aspect of this once in a lifetime project,” said the council’s deputy leader Garry Bridges. Read our long read on the restoration project here.

A consultation has started on 500,000 sq ft of office space planned for Sister, Manchester’s new “innovation district” off the Oxford Road Corridor. Over 15 years, 1,500 homes and nine-acres of public space will be developed as part of Sister.

Some say the Hotspur Press is Manchester’s oldest mill. Does it matter?

In 1801, a fire tore its way through Medlock Mill. This much we know. From here on, accounts are hazy. The fire burned with “the most destructive fury for a considerable time,” according to a report made several decades after the fact, which also stated that 40 people were killed during the blaze. A different report sets the figure a little lower — just 11 people lost their lives in the fire that night, and all the property in the factory was unfortunately destroyed. Neither report, however, answers a question that is still being pondered 224 years later, quite possibly with more fervour than it has ever been pondered before. Was the mill itself, in its entirety, another casualty of the destruction? If so, then the mill as we know it today dates back to 1801, when it was rebuilt. If not, then at least parts of the building have been standing since 1794, making it the oldest surviving mill in Manchester.

You probably recognise Medlock Mill by another name — these days it’s better known as the Hotspur Press, the buddleia-ridden building which sits with its windows put out just west of Oxford Road station. The site was snatched up around 1902 by the Percy Brothers, who turned it into a printing press christened after Harry Hotspur, the blade-happy Northern knight who liked to pick fights with the Scots and win them. Nowadays the site lies empty where Cambridge Street cars cross over the Medlock. It’s also in the middle of a fierce dispute. 

On one side we have Stephen Hodder, an award-laden, Stockport-born architect, who argues that the best way of preserving this piece of Manchester’s history is to develop the building while keeping its famous façade intact — an argument backed quite naturally by the company hoping to build on the site, Manner. On the other side are the conservationists; those who argue that there is proof that this development would spell the destruction of an invaluable historical site. Both sides insist they are trying to “save” the building from the other — but what does saving the Medlock Mill, properly and practically, mean?

“It’s absolutely outrageous. I think it was a big con.” I’m sat with the man who anonymously submitted a listing application for the Medlock Mill last June, which (if successful) would have made it harder for any developer to make significant changes to the building. It’s been an eventful few years for the old mill. The first listing application for the Hotspur Press was submitted in 1993 — we don’t know by who, but we know that the suggestion was promptly turned down. Since then a second anonymous listing applicant has tried to overturn this decision twice: once in 2019, and once last year, failing both times. Meanwhile and in tandem, architect Stephen Hodder submitted two planning applications for its regeneration: one in 2018 and one last year — both successful, although the first never materialised after the developer walked away. The most recently proposed design is for a 37-storey tower of student flats with 595 beds, plus commercial units, green space and a brand-new public square. This time, the council approved of the new-build wholeheartedly. 

Naturally, the council’s acquiescence was the main reason why the anonymous man pushed for the building to be listed once more, but it wasn’t the only reason. An archaeological survey of Hotspur Press, of the kind always performed on historic buildings up for demolition, had just uncovered a number of exciting new details. The review, conducted by Salford Archaeology and reviewed by the Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service (GMAAS), suggested that a few of the walls standing today formed part of the original 1794 building — not everything was lost in the fire. Not only did this suggest Hotspur Press was the “earliest surviving textile mill in Manchester,” it also showed evidence of being the only remaining example of a mill that utilised a combination of steam and water power. Effectively, it could be far more historically significant than previously thought.

These new findings, it seems, were taken quite seriously at first. The previous two applications to list the Hotspur Press were rejected by Historic England but, with the addition of this new report, last year’s bid was passed on to the secretary of state for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Lisa Nandy. Historic England now strongly recommended that the building be listed after all. Still, this didn’t turn out to be the big win our anonymous campaigner had hoped for: Nandy turned the application down. This is highly unusual — an archaeological director I spoke to told me that, in his entire career, he’d never seen a secretary of state rebuff an application supported by this far more knowledgeable body. However, when I asked Nandy why she disagreed with Historic England’s recommendation to list the Medlock Mill, a DCMS spokesperson got back to me saying simply that ”[a]fter considering all the evidence presented, it was decided that Medlock Mill (Hotspur Press) building did not meet the criteria for listing.” Got it.

This rejection was likely in no small part thanks to Manner’s ‘Save the Hotspur Press’ campaign — a campaign waged in response to our anonymous source’s listing bid. Centred around a petition urging members of the public to “take action today to prevent The Hotspur Press being condemned”, the passionate plea was presented on a custom-built, Hotspur-specific website, through which they vehemently argue the case for supporting grassroots developers in sticking it to a single, concerned member of the public.

The petition received over 800 signatures, but it’s safe to say that not everybody was particularly impressed. We received multiple emails from readers about “Weird lying developer ads”, and our anonymous campaigner wasn’t happy either. “I think it was just absolutely scandalous that anybody should think of stopping the people who were trying to save it by claiming that they were saving it themselves,” he said. The campaign neglected to mention any of the evidence found in the archaeological review, and presented the listing of the Hotspur Press as a foolproof route to its sordid demise — development as its only saviour. But what would actually happen if the building were listed? And is there any legitimacy to the claims that, by being developed into student accommodation, the Hotspur Press is actually being saved?

Architect for the development Stephen Hodder certainly seems to think so. Hodder is a celebrated figure in Manchester: among his triumphs is the Corporation Street bridge linking M&S to the Arndale, of which I am a massive fan as it means that I can get from my office to the weird little pub in the Arndale market when it’s raining and barely get wet. In his office in Castlefield, Hodder walks me through his plans for the brand-new Medlock Mill. A mild-mannered man in his sixties, he answers my questions for the most part quietly and with care, only perking up enthusiastically when we discuss our joint passion for the aforementioned bridge.

He lists off everything that will be saved and refurbished if Manner go ahead with their development: the entire wall with the ‘Percy Brothers Ltd’ and ‘The Hotspur Press’ signage, as well as a second, curved wall to the south, and parts of a wall to the west. The rest would be demolished and they would build a new, separate, tall tower protruding out of the original mill walls.

This process is known as facadism, and is fairly common practice in Manchester — see the Motel One on Cross Street for a bad example, or the Portland Hotel near Piccadilly Gardens for a better one. Some think it’s a clever way of retaining the beauty of an old building while still developing it for modern use. Others, like the anonymous campaigner, find it to be less than ideal, although still a better option than total demolition. 

Hodder only aims to save the outer shell of the building — a goal he claims to share with the council, who he says “were very clear that that was what they wanted to retain”. Our anonymous campaigner doesn’t agree. “Half the interest of a building is on the inside,” he points out. Crucially, he wants to save the parts that Salford Archaeology identified as belonging to the 18-century mill.

But according to Hodder, those parts might not even exist. “I don’t think anybody really definitively concluded whether any bits of the 18th-century building are left,” he says. He’s referring to the findings of a second review of the building, conducted by specialist industrial investigator Dr. Ron Fitzgerald, and commissioned by Manner, after the most recent listing application was submitted. 

This second report, Hodder claims, casts doubts on the first as to the genuine historical significance of the building. I hear the same thing from the architect Stephen Levrant, who I speak to separately. Levrant tells me that the previous archaeological findings are completely wrong. “All of that was categorically disproven by [Fitzgerald] at a level of knowledge far greater than any of us would have had,” he says. Later he will dilute this slightly, conceding that there is “no conclusive evidence” either way in terms of how much of the building was destroyed.

Out of everyone I speak to while working on this story, Ian Miller — a GMAAS director who personally monitored Salford Archaeology’s work as it produced that first report — seems most intent on explaining both sides of the debate clearly and in full. He normally provides advice for archaeological matters, which means he’s used to wading through the minutia of very technical disputes. “It’s often a grey area,” he says of this work, even when it comes to seemingly simple questions of “what’s purely below ground, what’s above ground”.

So what did Salford Archaeology find? There were quite a few features that indicated the original building wasn’t totally destroyed, such as large cast iron blocks that would be typical of a late 18th-century mill. However, most interesting to Salford Archaeology was the discovery of a sandstone arch, about a metre high and half a metre wide.

We can’t say conclusively what the arch was for, but Salford Archaeology’s interpretation was that it was most likely used to house a waterwheel connected to a steam powered engine, necessary to give the wheel extra oomph because the Medlock river was far too weak to power the mill alone. If correct, then Medlock Mill is the only remaining example in the country where physical evidence of this hybrid technology survives. The Fitzgerald report, I am told, rejects this interpretation, and dismisses all the evidence used to suggest that parts of the original building remain.

But nobody who’s seen the Fitzgerald report seems able to actually send it to me. Hodder and Levrant both tell me to ask Manner, and Manner are relentlessly evasive about it. They won’t tell me how long it is, how technical it is, why it’s proving so difficult to attach a file to an email, or if they actually intend on sending it at all.

This discrepancy matters, since it’s partly why Hodder was so staunchly opposed to the listing application. It calls into question the historical significance of the mill — if it is not that old, then why list it? But, whether the building is listed or not, Hodder tells me that damage has already been done by the application. Deterioration in old buildings isn’t linear, but exponential, he explains. As such, the nine-month delay caused by waiting for the DCMS to rule on the listing application has already let the building fall into an even worse state of disrepair.

Hodder also insists that if the building did secure listed status, this would actually harm it in the long run. If the mill can’t be redeveloped, he argues, it will inevitably collapse into the river of its own accord. Is there a way the building could be renovated with a lighter touch? Not if you want to recoup your costs, he argues. The only future for the building that makes financial sense, according to him, is turning it into flats — even preserving just the façade will be an expensive project and renovating it for any other use, such as artist studio space, wouldn’t bring in enough income. If you want flats, then you need to build something entirely new. Medlock Mill is a famously flammable building – a timber construction that has already caught fire twice in its lifetime. As such, there’s no way it could meet the safety requirements expected of a residential building without significant work.

Which leads us very neatly to the future Manner has proposed for the building. Namely, a large, economically viable development and the demolition of the combustible outer walls. As Hodder tells it, this is the only real option. “You cannot convert that building. I can’t emphasise that enough,” he says. “The way to salvage it is what we’re doing now. A building like that, you can’t mothball it in the hope that you’ll save it. You can’t, it’s too far gone.” (Mothballing a building refers to the act of closing it off to protect it from weather and vandalism).

But Lydia Franklin from SAVE Britain’s heritage disagrees with Hodder’s pessimism about what would happen if the mill was listed. SAVE was one of multiple conservation charities that supported the recent listing application. When I read out to Franklin the suggestion from Manner’s ‘Save The Hotspur Press’ petition that listing will inevitably lead to the Hotspur Press being condemned, she tells me that she very strongly disagrees. Why? Because listing doesn’t prevent change, but rather manages the degree of change and how it’s implemented. “It doesn’t mean that they are mothballed. In fact, it can actually bring in greater attention, greater press, and help with regeneration.”

Crucially, both Franklin and the anonymous listing applicant believe that, to some degree, Manner is saving this historic building from ruin. “SAVE is absolutely not anti-development,” Franklin explains. “We would love to see this building restored and regenerated and brought into a new use. But in a way that doesn’t erase its history or stamp on it.” Like SAVE, our anonymous campaigner is in favour of the development – for his part, out of purely pragmatic reasons: “We want the building to be saved, and that means a big development next to it, otherwise it doesn’t happen.” He explains that his motive for listing was purely to ensure that what had been found wouldn’t be destroyed, rather than to ensure that the building remains entirely untouched.

So how much more would the kind of sensitive regeneration that the campaigner and Franklin want actually cost? If Manner has an estimate, it’s not one they’re keen on sharing with me. The developer initially suggested their director could meet me at the site and give me a tour of the premises but, while I accepted their offer, this was unfortunately not possible to arrange in time for this piece. I approached Manner to speak to me over the phone instead, on a number of occasions, but they never took me up on the offer.

But Manner did ask me to mention that they received a huge degree of support for the development from nearby residents, city council members, local MPs, and the wider Greater Manchester community. I did, in fact, speak to a local resident, Melissa Brakel, who told me that she and her neighbours were overwhelmingly impressed by Manner’s level of communication with them and their genuine interest in the needs of the local community. In particular, the plans for a public square and better connection between roads were incredibly well-received.

So what’s the conclusion to all this? Medlock Mill is either the oldest or the second oldest mill in Manchester. Realistically, it’s either going to be knocked down in part by Manner, or fall down entirely in due course. Do either of these options amount to saving the Hotspur Press?

When I ask Hodder what saving the Hotspur Press means to him, he answers: “retaining the best bits”. But the best bits by what metric? Aesthetically – and so by the metric of the architects – the best bit of the mill is the façade. Historically – and by the metric of the archaeologists – it’s a sandstone arch in the basement. When I ask archaeologist Ian Miller for his vision of saving the mill, he suggests Manner could set important archaeological artefacts aside, perhaps even displaying them in the brand new public square. “You need to make sure it’s done in a meaningful way,” he says. There are still questions that remain unanswered, namely why the Hotspur Press was left to rot in the first place, ever since being purchased by an unknown buyer back in 2015. But the future of the Medlock Mill right now seems clear: It will be developed, and all we can hope is that this is done with the utmost respect for the building’s past. Because whether it’s the oldest mill in Manchester or not, “it’s an old building,” as Miller summarises succinctly. “It needs love and care and attention, and it’s not had that.”