‘Commercial to Residential Mill Conversion’ Project Case Study

Project Brief:

‘An old dilapidated and empty mill to be transformed into supported living accommodation’

The mill building, on Topping Street, Bury - a red-brick, two-storey former industrial mill constructed in the mid to late 1800s was occupied by confectioners Scott & Rosse before they vacated it in the 1960s, and has been vacant for several years. Before we commenced our works, we found it in a severely dilapidated condition…

OBP Projects Ltd were employed to complete an extensive package of structural builders works to bring the building back into safe use.

We completely refurbished and in some places re-built the Mill. We started by erecting a scaffold internally and externally to provide safe access for our works to be carried out and also to provide structural support to some elements of the building that were unsafe.

On one side of the building the original timber truss roof was removed. With the other side, we were able to retain and support the existing metal trusses. The existing stone gutters would become redundant, so these were removed, allowing for brickwork to be rebuilt to incorporate new lintels at the head of the arch windows. All traditional features and construction methods were either retained or replicated with careful workmanship.

The roof was redesigned to reduce future maintenance requirements, with the valleys being replaced with a flat roof system that allowed the surface area to be widened for a better dispersion of surface water during heavy downpours.

New windows keeping to original design, brick clean and a finishing touch of new natural hydraulic lime mortar to point the brickwork, ensured that the newly refurbished building would be worthy of it’s new purpose and continue to stand the test of time.

Our work here was done. It was a huge challenge for our team, but one that we certainly enjoyed from start to finish, and this is a project that we are extremely proud of.

Our client was able to occupy the building on time and on budget, the next phase of fit-out commenced before welcoming the new tenants to this repurposed Mill.