New Mill
New Mill (or Bridge Foot Mill) originated as a group of workshops with a house in Mill Street, which Thomas Bush, a clothier bought from Thomas Rogers in 1784. Bush bought more land near the river in 1804, and about then a firm called Bush, Newton and Bush appears, so it is probable that the premises were enlarged at this time.

In 1816 it employed over 200 people here and at Limpley Stoke Mill, but stopped work c. 1818. The factory was apparently empty until 1825, when the Bush family sold the property to Messrs S. and J Mundy. This firm ran the factory until it was bankrupt in 1836, but had never paid for it, so that it reverted to the Bush family as mortgagees.

Samuel Pitman bought New Mill from the Bush family in 1839. Pitman had recently leased the adjoining Kingston Mill, but the Bush family were again forced to accept a release back only two years later.

The factory was finally sold in 1841 to Charles Spackman of the firm of Spackman and Timbrell, dyers, whose main premises were across the bridge near Westbury House. Hadens erected a second-hand 6 h.p. engine for Spackman in that year, no doubt on this site. It is possible that he converted the buildings entirely to a dye-house; perhaps the one in the centre of the town offered to let in 1845.

It had twelve vats, four dye-furnaces, a scouring furnace, a washhouse with machinery and an 8 h.p. steam engine for grinding indigo, filling the furnaces and driving the washing machines. There were two washing stages on the river.

In 1858 and 1864, however, it was empty again. Finally in 1867 the Spackman family let it, as a dye-house and cloth factory with steam engine and machinery, to James Harper who had recently been working Bullpit factory nearby.

Harper and a partner, Thomas Taylor, bought the freehold two years later, and ran it with factories in Church Street as Harper, Taylor and Little until 1882 They then withdrew, and a new partnership of Ward and Taylor continued until 1898, when the machinery was sold and the whole property was offered for sale.

New Mill, then said to be capable of turning out seventy pieces a week when in full work, was sold to the rubber firm of Spencer Moulton and Co.

The main factory is a long stone range, which was clearly built at two different periods. Nearest the river is a range originally of five stories and six irregular bays, and attached at one end, a transverse building with along round-headed window, now blocked, which was no doubt originally an engine house. The windows are of two lights with flat heads.

Originally there was an octagonal internal stack. This part of the factory could well be that 'newly built' in 1845, or even an earlier building then renovated. Attached at the town end is another range of eight bays, and of only four stories, although of the same height. The style is uniform with the other part, and it bears the date 1869.