Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands
Date 2007
Event ID 930368
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/930368
Holm Mills, Inverness
(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 2533)
This building, the former spinning and weaving factory of the Pringle family and now a retail outlet of James Pringle Weavers, is located within a group of buildings between the B862 road and the Ness on the south side of the town. The factory ‘was established about 1798 and is the oldest woollen factory in the north of Scotland. It is worked by both water and steam’ (Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer, 1901).
The building, now a display area, is single storey with five bays of roof trusses about 30 ft span making a width of 150 ft. The roof trusses are timber, some with iron tiebars, and vary in form from bay to bay. They are supported on timber beams carried on cast-iron columns of 6 1/2 - 7 1/2
in. diameter, probably made in the early-19th century. The 17 columns of the central line are spaced about 6 ft apart making the building about 110 ft long. As the centres of the trusses and columns do not correspond, the building appears crudely constructed. The ceiling height is 8 1/4 ft and some shafting and mill machinery are still in place on the trusses.
R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
