British Listed Buildings

Listing Text

Mid 18th century, former factory. 3 storey, 8-bay much altered building. Harled. Modern enlarged ground floor entrance and fenestration. Regular windows in lst floor (2 blocked); 4 small
square 2nd floor windows; 2 larger openings to left. Varied glazing, some metal framed with 4- and 8-pane glazing in original windows.
Modern rear wing on concrete stilts; plain return gable to Kingswell Lane with 2 modern windows. Single coped end stack; concrete tile roof.

A E Mahood, BANFF AND DISTRICT (1919), p 17. Stanley Chapman: "The Robinson Mills: Proto-Industrial Precedents" in INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY
REVIEW Vol XV No 1 (Autumn 1992) pp58-61:

"The Robinson family was active in Banff for more than a generation before the earliest Arkwright mill was opened in Nottingham. What comes as a surprise is the considerable scale of the investment in Robinson's Banff Mill, as recorded in a 1774 insurance valuation totalling '5,500".

Part of the former thread and linen manufactory established on an unparalleled scale by George Robinson and his brother William, who imported Dutch techniques. From the 1780s production concentrated on linen stockings knitted "on a highly improved frame, of which these gentlemen are the sole patentees" (OSA) and employed 560 persons. The elder George Robinson (1713-98) built in 1786 the world's first
steam-powered textile mill in Nottinghamshire. This is its direct
antecedent.

Source: Historic Scotland

Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI Click-use licence number C2008002006.