Flax Mill (Cluny Warehouse), 36 Lime Street

Built as a flax mill in 1848 on the site of an earlier corn mill, to the design of John Dobson for the firm of Plummer and Cooke, who previously owned the flax mill on the adjacent site which became Northumberland Lead Works. Flax was used to make linen and sail cloth. Originally steam powered the adjacent freestanding, recently restored chimney (HER 1840) forms part of the original Dobson complex. Its use as a flax mill was short. In 1866 it was bought by Proctor and Sons and converted to a flour mill. The building was extended in the mid 1870s when two brick warehouses were constructed - one for flour, the other (HER 5149) for grain. The complex is shown on Ordnance Survey second edition as "Northumberland Mills". Then taken over by Henry Leetham & Sons in 1900. A Miss Carr apparently lived in the garden house next to the big chimney and was employed by Leethams to test each batch of flour by baking small loaves of bread in her oven. The flour mill stood empty for many years until it was taken over by McPhersons Wine and Spirit Merchants in the 1920s, who stored bonded whiskey under the brand name of Cluny. Now internally divided, it has a variety of users, mainly craftspersons or artists and a café bar. Sandstone ashlar, later brick additions and attic storey date to 1870s, Welsh slate roof. The road between mill and chimney is at a much higher level than the internal cobbled yard into which the former coal shoots opened. One of the shoots retains its original metal shutter. LISTED GRADE 2