| Description | These almshouses were erected for workers at Ripley Mill. They were first built at the top of Springwell Street in 1857 by Mr and Mrs Edward Ripley, the family who founded one of the largest dye works in Europe. The almshouses were moved to their present site in 1881, with four new ones being added at the same time. They are a symmetrical range of two storey almshouses in a restrained Jacobean style. They are built from fine quality dressed sandstone ‘brick’. The end houses break forward slightly, and are gabled with weathered saddlestones and kneelers. The intervening houses have single window fronts grouped in pairs, the first floor windows treated as gabled semi dormers. There is a small corbel table to the eaves, and a weathered first floor sill course. They have slate roofs, with prominent, corniced, chimney stacks. Throughout, the windows are two light thin chamfered mullion casements. There are dripmoulds over the first floor windows of the end houses. The terrace has paired doorways, except for the end houses, which have four centred arches with drip moulds raised over oak leaf carved panels.
The original date stones were reset following re erection. On the gable of the east end house is: ‘Bowling Dye Works Almshouses Anno Domini MDCCCLVII’. In the gable of the west end house is another stone inscribed: ‘Rebuilt in memory of Edward and Hannah Ripley Anno Domini MDCCCLXXXI’; and on the gable wall: ‘Erected Anno Domini MDCCCLVII’. |