Hovis Mill, Macclesfield

11.30pm, Sunday Sept 30th 2007. 

The restored Hovis Mill is the iconic heart of Macclesfield.  The town itself is famous historically for silk weaving, but the famous brand name means that boaters probably better remember it for brown bread. 

There's little dispute about the origin of the name Hovis - it's a contraction of 'hominis vis', the strength of man - but exactly where the flour and bread were first made is still argued over.  The Macclesfield Canal Society has a history of the mill here, but a group of mill enthusiasts called The Hampshire Mills Group has a history of Hovis as a flour here, and suggests it originally came from Stone in Staffs.  (Hmm, did that town get its prosaic name from 'millstone'?)

Currently there's a ground-floor 2-bed flat for sale in Hovis Mill for  £150,000 (PDF brochure here).  This is about as much as a top-line liveaboard narrowboat.  For the price you won't get swans tapping at your hull in the morning, but you will get better views than in the average marina, and - I presume - a more solid investment.

From next week Macclesfield will also get worldwide exposure - as the hometown of Joy Division's Ian Curtis - in the new movie Control, and some scenes were filmed in the town.  I'll be interested to see if director Anton Corbjin was able to resist including the mill and canal in the film.  I wonder if you can see the film in Macclesfield?

Comments

[RedKev]

I live in flat 33 Hovis Mill. It overlooks the town and not the canal. Being on the 4th floor we get great sunsets and are at the height rockets explode on Bonfire night. It was the publicity works from 1914 on when it grew too small for making the bread.

[matt]

Currently there's a ground-floor 2-bed flat for sale in Hovis Mill for £150,000 (PDF brochure here). This is about as much as a top-line liveaboard narrowboat. For the price you won't get swans tapping at your hull in the morning, but you will get better views than in the average marina, and - I presume - a more solid investment.

A) swans do not tap on the hull ov ur boat because they dont live in the canal there at nights pool B)the ovis mill apartments look like well wat can i say like a premiere traval stop haha and can u travel up and down the canal to change ur view ? can u move if u dont like ur negbours ? beta view i just dont get how ur in the canal u can see everythin and touch them swans that u think live in the canal

[Jonathan]

I hope so. There used to be a lovely single-screened cinema in the town centre which lost a lot of trade to the multiplex in Stockport and later became a nightclub. However there is a film society which has showings at the Silk museum (see silkscreen.org.uk). Maybe they'll show it there.

A few years ago you could still clearly make out the fading 'Publicity Works' wording right across the Hovis mill on the canal-facing side, I often wondered if it was meant as a proclamation or merely to identify the building.