Manchester (Part 4 : Reddish)

Reddish - bit of an odd name. But I love the wit of having a local open space named as Reddish Green (its on the map, truthfully). Oh, and looking at the map also shows that we are in the borough of Stockport rather than Manchester, but Manchester Part 4 this posting shall remain.

My trip to Reddish was on the quest of a local clock tower, but my view out of the bus window was filled with this huge building.

This is Houldsworth Mill (also known as Reddish Mill), completed in 1865 and covering 260,000 square metres (although of course when it was built metres didn't exist in these parts).

The mill was financed by Sir William Henry Houldsworth (1834 - 1917) to produce cotton (which you might of guessed a Manchester / Stockport mill would have done).  When cotton production ceased in the 1950s, the building became a warehouse for a mail order company. A more recent conversion has created a mixture of apartments, shops and start up units.

And so on to the quested clock. Which of course is a memorial to Sir William Henry Houldsworth, unveiled on 11 September 1920.

The monument was designed and built by Messrs J and H Patterson of Manchester, and is made of sandstone with pink granite pillars (pink being of course rather reddish).