Fancy staying as a Holiday Lettings guest in an 1840’s built grade II listed former cotton mill? The building, formerly known as Richard Harris & Sons Factory, and used as a hosiery warehouse by Pool, Lorrimer & Tabberer from 1890-1970 was given grade II listing in February 2000. Designed by William Flint of Leicester who also designed the Corn Exchange in Leicester it’s a historic building located in a historic quarter of the city which has seen a number of similar factory conversions in the last ten years or so.

I’m lucky enough to have a few pics from the original conversion work done to a high standard by Enterprise Heritage. Their page about the Cotton Mill is also worth a look, in case you’re interested have a look here too.

So with refurbishment work starting from this shell-like state in around 2002, before completion of the 40+ loft style apartments in 2003:

As an industrial archaeology geek from Leicester originally (I even went to the same school as Marianne Suhr) I was already interested in buying a loft apartment from seeing all the great warehouse properties in London, but was put off by the sky high price tag. So it was great to see the same quality but over a third cheaper in my home town.

What do you call a bunch of budding industrial archaeologists?!

Then in 2007, I went to view one of the apartments owned by Prof. Martin Richardson, a holographer & sci-fi fan – and decided it was the property I wanted:

And if that ‘loft living’ style appeals to you too, there were (at the start of 2013) around 10 properties for sale at the Cotton Mill. Of course once you move in you may want to add a little of your own interior style too. I used Which? Local which recommended Malcolm Pollard to fix up an interior wardrobe for me, using a neat design idea I borrowed, to make best use of the narrow but tall space available!

Custom built cupboard, with its own ladder…

Then back in 2012 I saw an advert on the London tube and decided to turn the apartment into a holiday letting. The full story below in an article slideshare, plus the Sunday Mirror version below too!

[slideshare id=25196407&doc=cottonmillleicester-130813032504-phpapp01]