Tower Mill

Heritage listing

Category A Date Added 19/08/1977 Local Authority Scottish Borders Planning Authority Scottish Borders Burgh Hawick NGR NT 50200 14429 Coordinates 350200, 614429 — Circa 1852. 3-storey former mill (now converted for cultural and commercial use) with long, splayed rectangular plan following bend in road, carried across Slitrig Water on single segmental arch. Random whinstone rubble with droved yellow sandstone ashlar dressings. Eaves course. Long and short quoins. Tabbed window margins with projecting cills. 10 bays to W (Kirkstile), 6 bays to E (Tower Knowe); 4 bays to S (Silver Street). M-profile piended roof. 30-pane glazing in timber frames (see NOTES). Grey slate roof with metal ridges. INTERIOR: Plain cast-iron columns supporting timber ceiling beams. Water wheel and boiler frontage in basement (see NOTES). — A good, mid-19th-century former textile mill retaining its original waterwheel, traditional in style but advanced in construction, being supported on a single arch spanning the Slitrig Water at the heart of Hawick. Tower Mill is the only mill in Scotland to be built on a bridge, a characteristic found at tide mills and on large river systems in mainland Europe but not elsewhere in the UK. It is also notable for having the largest surviving waterwheel in a textile mill in southern Scotland. This massive wheel was the first in Hawick to generate electricity in 1900. The mill was built by Messrs William Elliot & Sons, hosiery manufacturers, who had been granted permission to pull down an earlier mill on the same site. It is believed that much of the stone from the demolished building was reused in the construction of the new one. William Elliot & Sons remained the mill's owners until 1950. The building was comprehensively refurbished in 2006-7 by Gray, Marshall &

From Historic Environment Scotland under OGL v3.