Research Findings

The initial owners and investors in Hope Mill were Joseph Bell Clarke, George Clarke and Edward Temple Booth. The Clarke family were owners of several mills in the area including Phoenix Mill, Wellington Mill and Holt Town Works. On several maps, the mill and others nearby are labelled as belonging to Joseph Clarke & Co, Joseph Clarke Bros and/or George Clarke Ltd. Joseph Clarke was born in Norwich, Norfolk in 1786. In 1809, he married Anne who was born in Norfolk as well. Her maiden name was Anne Hope Ames, this may be where the mill gets its name. They moved to Manchester c. 1817 and also lived in Bristol, Cheltenham and Wilmslow. Joseph and Ann Clarke had nine or ten children, including William Parkinson Clarke, John Clarke, Daniel Ames Clarke and George Clarke. Records suggest they were involved in the cotton trade and other industries in the Ancoats area. Evidence from Manchester Rate Books suggest that Clarke had offices at a number of different locations in Manchester.

There is also still a bit of a mystery about where they lived during their time here. newspaper report from the 1820s (above) mentions Joseph Clarke allowing a Dr Bedale to swim in his reservoir or pool adjacent to his house in Holt Town in order to win a bet.There were a number of larger houses in the Holt Town area at the time that may have been the Clarke family residence. There are also several bodies of water that may have been the reservoir or pool mentioned in the article. These can be seen on the map below dated 1848. The blue star is the location of Hope Mill.

Hope Mill was built in 1824 and was designed to be an integrated spinning and weaving factory; this means it was used for a range of processes from the preparation of raw fibre to the manufacture of cloth. The mill was known for cotton spinning and fustian weaving. Fustian is a hard wearing cloth made from cotton, sometimes including wool or flax. It was used for heavy/hard wearing clothing (e.g. prison uniforms!) upholstery and drapery. The original building included a carding room, weaving shed and dye house.

Drawings from Boulton and Watt (the company that manufactured the engine that powered the mill) suggest that the internal boiler house was located where the Hope Mill Theatre Bar is today. The internal boiler house would have contained three 21-foot long ‘wagon’ boilers lined up along the rear wall, where the arches are behind the bar. The arches originally opened onto an area at the rear of the building, next to the canal. On the outside of the building there are cast iron ribbed plates in between the arches. Now painted green, these plates are likely to have been installed to protect the brick piers that support the arches from the heat of the boilers.

The beam engine, which powered the mill, was located in an internal engine house to the south of the internal boiler house, where the toilets and dressing rooms are now.

The theatre auditorium was not part of Hope Mill when it was built in 1824, but was actually a single storey extension built in the late 1800s. The walls extend right up to the side of the canal and, like the theatre bar, it has arched openings along its back wall. This may mean that the auditorium space was built as an additional internal boiler house to provide more power to the mill.

Although Hope Mill was built in 1824, it underwent several redevelopments early on, with changes made to the building in 1828, 1831 and 1833. The changes in 1828 were probably due to a fire at the mill that destroyed part of the building, whereas a likely reason for redevelopment in the 1830s was to accommodate new power systems consisting of large engines and boilers.

The main body of Hope Mill (which now houses AWOL Studios) has seven storeys and twenty bays. It was built along the angled line of Pollard Street and, consequently, is not a perfect rectangular shape: there is additional space at the south-west end of the building. Tongue and groove panelling on some of the floors suggests that this extra space was used for the mill’s privies – its toilets!

The mill has two different types of roofs. Above the southern bays the roof is of a standard timber construction. However, above the bays to the north, the roof is made of cast and wrought iron. This is very rare and is a large part of why Hope Mill is a Grade II* listed building. The two parts of the building are separated by a fireproof cross wall to reduce the risk of fire from the engine and boiler houses that were located at ground floor level in the northern bays. The main entrance and staircase to the mill are still in place. The staircase is fireproof and was designed to include a full height hoist used to lift equipment and materials. The staircase also supported a water tank on the roof.

In the early 1830s, Hope Mill owner Joseph Clarke gave evidence to Parliament’s Factories Inquiry Commission which was investigating working hours and conditions in mills across the UK. Each mill owner interviewed was asked 79 different questions.

It seems likely that spinning and weaving ceased at the mill in the 1890s, and it is possible that the Clarke family may have sold the building earlier than this. In the years that followed, a wide range of businesses were based here. Some may have had sole tenantry/ownership, whilst in more recent years the mill appears to have been inhabited by a range of different companies at the same time.

Edward Chappelle, a cotton spinner, was involved in an altercation outside the mill in 1827. This was reported in the Manchester Courier newspaper (above). Joseph Clarke gave evidence against him at his trial and Edward was convicted of assaulting another employee. Edward was part of a group of employees who protested when one of their colleagues was sacked. They ‘turned out’ which meant they demonstrated and went on strike. Chapelle was convicted and sentenced to over a year in jail – which he had to serve at the Castle Prison in Lancaster. It’s difficult to know how long he was actually away from home; this must have had a big impact on his family. He and his wife Ellen had five sons and four daughters by 1841, aged from 20 years to 6 months. The eldest five children all worked in cotton mills.

Across the road from the mill, there used to be a music hall called Star Hall. One of the managers was a James Joseph Bleackley. His history is a bit sketchy, but he appears to have been a brewer, hall manager and general labourer. In 1879, he was taken to court by a harpist called Kate Skuse – she accused him of breaking his promise of marriage to her. She was a member of a performing troupe called Tute’s Minstrels and she gave evidence that he had asked her to marry him, given her a ring and then taken it back. In the end she was awarded £40 compensation. The court case was covered in an article in the Manchester Evening News.

The Star Music Hall appears to have struggled to make money for a number of years, and by 1889 the hall had been purchased by Francis Crossley.He was an engine/motor manufacturer, and he and his brother ran Crossley Engines and Crossley Motors, which had factory in Openshaw. They are best known for making Crossley bus engines.Francis was a methodist and thought it was important to provide for his workers and their community. He turned Star Hall into a Mission Hall, and he appears to have demolished the original building and built a new one. The new hall hosted events such as lectures and concerts, and also became the home for Francis’s family, who moved there from Bowdon near Altrincham. Francis died in 1897 and his wife and daughter Helena took over the running of the Mission Hall.Star Hall Mission became well known as a place of refuge for women, especially those who were homeless, unmarried and pregnant. The Mission Hall was taken over by the Salvation Army in 1919.The housing across the road from the mill is named after the Crossleys. It is owned and managed by the Salvation Army and the street is called Crossley Court. Crossley Hospital opened here in the 1920s and closed in the 1940s. It was also a maternity home for a period of time.

Helen ‘Ella’ Kathleen Crossley took over the running of the mission hall when her father died in 1897. By 1911, she was managing the hall with the help of Mary Alice Hatch and Isabella Volckman. Mary is listed as a bible student in the census of 1891 but by 1905 was a qualified midwife, working in Ancoats. By 1921, they had moved to live together in Sussex. In 1926, Ella wrote a short biography of her father titled ‘He Heard From God’. In it, she describes what life was like in Ancoats at the time and recalls her father’s decision to buy Star Hall:‘…he found a disreputable building for sale called ‘Star Music Hall’ pictures of prize fighters displayed upon its walls’.Opinion on the nature of the impact of Francis Crossley’s work is divided. Many of his contemporaries supported his work and his funeral in 1897 was reported to attract 15,000 mourners. However, recent research explores Francis Crossley’s links to a movement which advocated ‘social purity’. The ‘Social Purity’ movement led to the instigation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1885, which criminalised male homosexuality. It was under this act that Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, among many others, were prosecuted and convicted.The impact that this criminalisation has had on the lives of people within the LGBTQIA+ community cannot be overstated.

The Manchester University Settlement was founded in Ancoats, in 1895, with the aim of assisting communities to help themselves. At the outset this was achieved primarily through an inspirational form of education consisting of lectures, debates, concerts and classes, but gradually the emphasis shifted towards social services.