Melksham, Wiltshire

Five early pieces: 5

My final reprise (for now) is one of my smallest buildings (and one of my shortest posts). The roundhouse in Melksham...

This small surprise is tucked away in a side-street in the Wiltshire town of Melksham. It’s an 18th-century structure, built, Melksham being a wool town, as a wool-drying room. When the wool trade declined in the 19th century many such buildings were no doubt demolished. But this one survived, playing down the years a multitude of roles – armoury for the local volunteer militia, feed store, business premises, tourist information centre, and museum. England has many specialized structures like this, the often odd-shaped remnants of local industries – oast houses and lime kilns come to mind. Often they seem designed so precisely for their original function that adaptation appears impossible. But with a little imagination, many of them have been recycled to the delight both of their users and of passers-by.

Postscript 2012 This small paragraph contains a large truth: that the survival of historic buildings often depends on finding new uses for old structures. Even a highly specialized building like the roundhouse has lasted more than 200 years because people have found different things to do in it and with it. Sometimes a change of use requires some adaptation of the building, but a little sensitive alteration is better in the vast majority of cases than demolition or dereliction. Let’s hear it for thoughtful adaptation and sensitive reuse.

South Woodchester, Gloucestershire

A few months ago on this blog a post about the roundhouse in Melksham, Wiltshire, provoked some interesting comparisons both on and offline. Here’s another round building, one that used to be known as the teasel tower, because it was once used for drying teasel seed heads for use in the cloth industry.

The clothier’s teasel, Dipsacus sativus, is slightly different from the native teasel, Dipsacus sylvestris, in that its prickles have recurved hooks. It is these that are useful to the cloth-worker, because when drawn across the cloth they pull out loose fibres and raise a nap on the surface. To begin with the heads were arranged in a wooden frame which was drawn across the fabric by hand like a large brush. Later they were fixed to turning cylinders in a mechanical device called a gig, which from the time of the industrial revolution onwards could be driven by steam. This kind of gig mill could process the cloth more quickly than a hand worker and, it was alleged, produced a more uniform surface.

The cloth industry of the Stroudwater area used teasel heads by the thousand, and they were still being grown near Cheltenham just before World War II. This building just off the Stroud to Nailsworth road was apparently one of the places where they were made ready for use. It is part of a house now, but is in its way as interesting a reminder of the old industry of the Stroud valleys as the many mills in the area.

Roundhouse, Melksham, Wiltshire

This small surprise is tucked away in a side-street in the Wiltshire town of Melksham. It’s an 18th-century structure, built, Melksham being a wool town, as a wool-drying room. When the wool trade declined in the 19th century many such buildings were no doubt demolished. But this one survived, playing down the years a multitude of roles – armoury for the local volunteer militia, feed store, business premises, tourist information centre, and museum. England has many specialized structures like this, the often odd-shaped remnants of local industries – oast houses and lime kilns come to mind. Often they seem designed so precisely for their original function that adaptation appears impossible. But with a little imagination, many of them have been recycled to the delight both of their users and of passers-by.