CPAT Regional Sites & Monuments Record

PRN 42185 - Welshpool, former Royal Oak Flannel Factory
Listed Building 16728 (II )

Listed building.

The following is from Cadw's Listed Buildings database

Set back to the rear of the Royal Oak Hotel, at right angles to the street.

Built c1830 as a flannel factory, sited so as to enable the use of water power, alongside the Lledan Brook. No evidence of the power system survived C20 alterations - it is possible that the building was hand-powered. In 1924, the interior of the building was re-ordered to permit its use as a cinema, and an entrance block was built onto the gable (possibly on the site of an earlier building for instance a wheel house?). In use as a cinema until 1938 and subsequently disused until conversion to flats in 1994-5.

Random local rubble with slate roof. A long and narrow single range - 4 storeys with a basement. 14-window range. Basement storey openings are all blocked (and appear to have been so for some considerable time); upper windows are regularly spaced and aligned, and all have cambered voussoir heads. In the E elevation a former loading bay towards the S has been filled in, and a wide entry with sliding doors inserted on the ground floor. The main entrance to the building is through the former cinema vestibule block: this is 2 storeyed, trapezoidal in plan: recessed centrepiece with moulded architrave houses paired doors divided by a pilaster to the ground floor, and a band of 4 small paned windows above. Heavy cornice bands surmount this, and there is a central tripartite window with small panes in moulded scrolled architrave above. Adjoining the building against the S gable end is a lower range with a massive segmentally arched opening filled in which may at one time have been connected to the factory.

The original interior of the building had been largely gutted on conversion to a cinema, and very little of the original structure is visible inside.

The building has been altered on conversion, but retains its external character as a former industrial building which is of considerable historical interest as an urban factory building on a large scale - the only one to survive in Welshpool.

Ion Trant, The Changing Face of Welshpool, 1986, p.126.

Sources:-
Cadw Listing database , 2000 , ,
Jones, N W, Silvester, R J & Britnell, W J , 2003 , Montgomery Canal Conservation Management Strategy. Landscape Archaeology Assessment , CPAT Report 550 .

Events:-
Assessment CPAT / 2003(31/08/03) -
Desktop study CPAT / 2003(31/08/03) -
HLC CPAT / 2003(31/08/03) -

record created 25/09/01 CM01 - copyright CPAT , last updated 10/05/04
The above data are supplied by CPAT in partnership with its Local Authorities and the partners of END, © CPAT SMR partnership, 2004 (and in part © Crown, 2004 - as indicated)

CM - 10/05/04 ( 12:12:09 ) - HTML file produced from CPAT's Regional SMR
Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, Curatorial Section, 7a Church Street, Welshpool, Powys SY21 7DL.
tel (01938) 553670 , fax (01938) 552179, email trust@cpat.org.uk , website www.cpat.org.uk