Avondale

Cadw's description

Location

Approximately 1km ENE of Pencader, reached by private road on the N side of a minor road between Pencader and Gwyddgrug.

History

Built in 1870 as the Sunnyhill Woollen Factory. It originally comprised the mill with 2 dwellings built in line, but a wing was added to the mill soon after and is shown on the 1889 Ordnance Survey. In the C20 it was owned by John Jones & Sons and declined slowly. By 1947 it employed 3 people producing knitting yarn. It closed in 1950.

Exterior

A 3-storey woollen mill, with a house adjoining to the R (formerly a pair of houses) and a later lower cross wing at right angles to the L. The main mill is rubble stone with yellow-brick dressings, and camber-headed windows and slate roof. In the front elevation facing the yard are 4 windows not equally placed, with small-pane glazing and incorporating pivoting lights (in poor condition), and lower R is a lintelled doorway with split boarded door and strap hinges. An additional window is inserted in the lower storey to the L side. The upper-storey windows are beneath the eaves.

The lower 2-storey 3-window cross wing to the L has camber-headed replaced windows and red-brick dressings and renewed slate roof with skylights. It has boarded doors to the R in both storeys, wider in the lower storey. The 2-window gable end and 4-window rear, have similar details, but the glazing is mostly missing from the rear, where there is also a boarded door to the L. The cross wing projects beyond the gable end of the main range, and beneath it runs the tail race in a segmental-arched culvert. The rubble-stone wheelpit is against the L gable end of the main range. Part of the head race survives at the upper level. In the gable end of the main range are replaced small-pane windows and a boarded loft doors. The rear has windows similar to the front.

The 2-storey house is lower than the mill, has rubble-stone walls, red-brick camber-headed openings, slate roof with projecting eaves, and brick stacks. The L-hand was originally a 3-window house and has margin-lit 2-pane sash windows and a central boarded door. The R-hand, formerly separate 2-window house, has renewed small-pane sashes and replaced glazed door to the L side. The R gable end is roughcast.

Interior

The mill retains its original simple stairs without risers. In the added wing, probably a dye house, a cast iron boiler is retained.

Reason for designation

Listed as a well-preserved small woollen mill of the type constructed in the district after the arrival of the railway in the C19, of which few have survived and retained original integrity.