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Montrose, Eastern Road, Chapel Works

Flax Mill (19th Century)

Site Name Montrose, Eastern Road, Chapel Works

Classification Flax Mill (19th Century)

Alternative Name(s) Paton's Lane; Marine Avenue; Chapel Bond; Thomson Bros And Company; Bow Butts Bonding Company; George Morton & Co

Canmore ID 72775

Site Number NO75NW 84

NGR NO 71871 57735

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/72775

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Angus
  • Parish Montrose
  • Former Region Tayside
  • Former District Angus
  • Former County Angus

Archaeology Notes

NO75NW 84 719 577

NO75NW 84.01 NO 719 577 trial excavation

(Location cited as NO 717 577 to NO 721 577). Chapel Works, founded 1795 as a linen and rope works. A large complex on a rectangular site. The front building is a single-storey, 8- by 17-bay coursed-rubble block, with prominent quoins and an imposing arched central entrance, dated 1795. At the rear are buildings of various dates, possibly the oldest being a two-storey, eleven-bay building with a bellcote. Next to that is a three-storey and attic, twelve-bay building with a water-tower at one end and a chimney stump at the other. There is also a seventy-bay, single-storeuy ropewalk. Now in multiple occupation, partly as a bonded warehouse.

J R Hume 1977.

Activities

Publication Account (2013)

In 1828 J & G Paton founded what became the largest spinning mill in Angus, excluding Dundee. The firm had its own engineering drawing department, but most of the buildings were put up by the Douglas Foundry, Dundee. The first spinning mills of 1828 (By J&C Carmichael) and 1833 have been demolished, but parts of the central range of hackling preparing buildings that faced these survive (a fire occurred during the conversion that reduced their scale). The buildings are small-windowed and narrow in plan, but deep over a coal store that has gothic openings. Beside these is a very tall double beam engine house intended to be part of something huge, but not completed in that form. Three sturdy side walls are linked at the top by a series of cast iron inverted T-beams. Beside this is a new machine hackling building of 1845-6 with arched windows, converted to housing, and to the west a flax warehouse with architectural treatment devised to enhance the view to the courtyard (part of the complex now allocated to health care, a new clinic on the site of other warehouses). In 1867/1878 the inner courtyard was enfolded by an outer courtyard and a single-storey spinning mill giving a frontage to Marine Avenue. It forms the external walls of the housing that was completed in 2006, after an intervening period, 1973-1989 as the largest bond of George Morton and Co, rum and whisky blenders. One last phase is yet to be completed.

M Watson, 2013

Standing Building Recording (29 April 2020)

NO 71788 57724 A Level 1 Standing Building Survey was conducted of a derelict flax mill (Canmore ID: 72775) in advance of conversion to flatted dwellings, on Eastern Road, Montrose, on 29 April 2020. The building, B-listed and more recently a whisky bond, was part of a complex first constructed in 1795 and once containing the largest spinning mill in Angus outside Dundee. The poor condition of much of the structure (which had been standing empty since 1989) rendered the exercise hazardous and prevented access to a large part of the interior.

Archive: NRHE (intended)

Funder: George Martin Builders Ltd

C Fyles − Alder Archaeology Ltd

(Source: DES Vol 21)

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