Rising through five narrow storeys behind Bridge Street, this exceptionally rare workshop preserves the small-scale textile world from which industrial Galashiels emerged.
Last reviewed: 15 July 2026.
Quick Facts
| Date | earlier nineteenth century; no precise construction year is given by HES |
|---|---|
| Location | 23 Bridge Street, in the backland behind the street frontage |
| Building type | Former hand-loom or hand-frame workshop |
| Form | Five storeys and six bays, with a slightly later two-storey block to the north-east |
| Listing status | Category B, HES LB50678; listed 14 November 2006 |
| Current use | Recorded as storage in 2006; present use requires confirmation |
| Public access | No public interior access is assumed; visibility from surrounding public space should be checked locally |
| Image status | No securely identified reusable photograph is currently displayed; a site-owned photograph is planned |
Before the Great Mills
The textile history of Galashiels is often represented by large mills, tall chimneys and mechanical power. The former workshop at 23 Bridge Street belongs to an earlier and less conspicuous world. Here, production was concentrated in a tall but relatively narrow building whose working floors held hand-operated equipment and skilled workers.
Hand weaving did not disappear as soon as spinning and other processes became mechanised. For a transitional period, machinery and hand production existed side by side. Yarn could be prepared in powered mills while weaving continued on hand looms, particularly where flexibility, smaller production runs or complex patterns remained valuable.
RCAHMS explains that an important stage in Borders manufacture was the development of dedicated hand-loom shops. Instead of every loom standing in a weaver’s home, multiple hand looms were brought together in workshop buildings. By 1838 most Galashiels looms were already described as “factory” looms, although this did not necessarily mean that they were power driven. It could mean hand looms organised collectively within a factory or shop.
The Bridge Street Backlands
HES describes loom shops as once common in the densely occupied backlands of Galashiels. They were often arranged at right angles to the principal road, using long narrow plots behind houses and street buildings. This explains why the Bridge Street workshop can be difficult to identify from a passing street view: it belongs to the interior geography of an industrial plot rather than presenting a formal public facade.
The survival of this pattern is highly significant. Later redevelopment has erased many backland workshops, yards and connecting passages. Number 23 preserves both an early industrial building and evidence of how manufacturing was fitted into the growing town before extensive purpose-built mill complexes dominated its edges.
Architecture for Work
The principal workshop is five storeys high and six bays long, with a tall, narrow rectangular plan. Its south-east elevation has small, regularly spaced windows. A slightly later, two-storey and two-bay block with a hipped roof stands to the north-east.
The walls are built of carefully laid but essentially workmanlike whinstone rubble, with whinstone quoins, roughly hewn sandstone lintels and irregular rubble sills. HES regards these simple vernacular construction methods as characteristic of early industrial buildings in Galashiels. They represent economy and local building practice rather than architectural display.
The surviving windows are varied, including sixteen-pane fixed timber casements, four-pane casements and side-hung paired windows. Some ground-floor openings have been blocked, while the later two-storey section contains early twentieth-century openings with brick margins. Boarded timber doors and slate roofs reinforce the workshop character.
Light, Floors and the Hoist
A high-level hoist door survives in the north-east gable. This allowed materials to be raised directly between the yard and upper working floors, avoiding the building’s steep internal circulation. HES did not inspect the interior when preparing the listing, but a previous owner described plain boarded floors linked by steep timber ladder stairs.
These details suggest a building organised with little wasted space. Each floor was a working platform; the stairs moved people, while the hoist handled yarn, cloth, frames or other bulky loads. The small windows provided repeated sources of daylight without requiring the broad glazed elevations seen in some later mills.
Hand Looms or Hosiery Frames?
The building’s precise industrial interpretation requires care. The statutory listing calls it a former hand-loom shop and associates it with the loom shops in which Galashiels tweed developed. A later HES publication on the Borders mill towns discusses the Bridge Street building within the hosiery industry of the 1820s-40s and describes it as a hand-frame shop of a type also found in Hawick, characterised by small windows and light from one principal side.
These descriptions are related but not identical. A hand loom wove cloth; a stocking frame produced knitted hosiery. Both were manually operated textile technologies and could occupy multi-storey workshops, but they should not be treated as the same machine. Until primary evidence identifies the equipment and occupants of number 23 more securely, this entry retains the official listed name while recording the alternative hosiery interpretation.
The difference may also reflect a more complex site. HES records evidence on the north-west elevation of an attached former weaving shop, now largely demolished except for parts of a side wall and gable. More than one textile process or workshop phase may therefore have been represented within the group.
A Partly Lost Workshop Group
The surviving tower-like block was not originally isolated. Scars on the north-west elevation show where the former attached weaving shop met it. Most of that structure has gone, leaving only fragments of walling and gable.
This loss changes how the building is read. What now appears to be a single narrow store may once have worked as one element of a larger production arrangement. The surviving masonry junctions are therefore evidence, not untidy remnants: they record the growth and contraction of the workshop complex.
Workers, Skill and Organisation
HES calls number 23 the earliest and least altered surviving example of its type in Galashiels. Its social importance lies in the labour it represents. Large mills tend to foreground owners, engines and capital investment; this building turns attention towards hand skills, repetitive work, workshop discipline and the many people whose production established the reputation of Galashiels cloth.
Concentrating looms or frames in a shop changed working life. It separated production more clearly from the home, brought workers and equipment under one roof and allowed yarn and finished goods to be supervised and moved systematically. The building therefore sits between domestic craft and the fully mechanised factory.
Why It Matters
The former workshop matters because it preserves a stage of textile industrialisation that has almost vanished from the town. Its importance does not depend on ornament. The height, narrow plan, repeated small windows, hoist door, boarded floors and ladder stairs were all shaped by work.
It also changes the story told by the Heritage Directory. Galashiels was not transformed in a single leap from cottage weaving to giant powered mills. Buildings such as number 23 reveal intermediate forms: collective but manually operated production, fitted into crowded urban backlands and later absorbed, altered or demolished as technology changed.
Things to Notice
- The exceptional five-storey height combined with a narrow workshop plan
- The six-bay rhythm of small windows on the principal elevation
- Whinstone rubble, rough sandstone lintels and irregular rubble sills
- The high-level hoist opening in the north-east gable
- The slightly later, lower block attached to the north-east
- Blocked and altered openings that record changes in use
- Masonry scars from the largely demolished attached weaving shop
- The building’s backland position, set behind rather than aligned as a public street facade
Timeline
- Earlier nineteenth century: principal five-storey workshop constructed
- 1820s-40s: hosiery manufacture is concentrated around Bridge Street, according to HES’s Borders mill-town study
- By 1838: most Galashiels looms are described as factory looms, many still manually operated in collective shops
- Later nineteenth century: lower north-east block added; the precise date is unknown
- Early twentieth century: some openings in the lower block altered with brick margins
- By 2006: building recorded in storage use; interior not inspected by HES
- 14 November 2006: workshop and south-east boundary wall listed at Category B
Significance Scores
These are editorial guide scores for public interpretation, not statutory designations. See the significance scoring methodology.
| Criterion | Score | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural Interest | 4/5 | A highly distinctive early workshop whose austere construction closely expresses its function. |
| Historical Importance | 5/5 | Documents the transition between domestic textile craft and mechanised factory production. |
| Social Significance | 5/5 | Rare physical evidence of workers, hand skill and collective workshop organisation. |
| Rarity | 5/5 | Identified by HES as the earliest and least altered surviving example of its type in Galashiels. |
| Townscape / Landscape Contribution | 4/5 | A striking survival of the dense industrial backlands behind Bridge Street. |
Notes and Uncertainties
- No exact construction date, architect, builder or original proprietor has been securely identified in the sources consulted.
- The HES listed-building record interprets the property as a hand-loom shop associated with tweed weaving. A later HES publication places the Bridge Street building within hand-frame hosiery manufacture. Both interpretations are recorded pending stronger primary evidence.
- The former attached weaving shop has mostly disappeared, making the original arrangement difficult to reconstruct.
- The interior account derives from a previous owner’s description reported by HES; the listing survey did not gain access.
- Storage use was recorded in 2006. Present ownership, use, condition and public visibility require local confirmation.
- The address identifies the property, but an accurate contemporary photograph should be checked on site against the tall dark-stone, five-storey form before publication.
Image and Licence Notes
No securely identified open-licence photograph of the building has yet been located. A site-owned photograph is planned and is preferable to an uncertain image of a neighbouring property. Until then, the entry deliberately uses no architectural photograph. Archive and HES publication images may be linked for research but should not be copied without explicit reuse permission.
Related Places
Sources
- Historic Environment Scotland, LB50678: 23 Bridge Street, Former Hand Loom Shop – designation, detailed physical description and statement of special interest.
- Trove / National Record of the Historic Environment: 23 Bridge Street Handloom Mill – national site record and location reference.
- RCAHMS, Historic Galashiels: The Archaeological Implications of Development – development of hand-loom shops and wider industrial context.
- Historic Environment Scotland, Hawick and Its Place Among the Borders Mill Towns – Bridge Street hosiery and hand-frame interpretation.
- Historic Environment Scotland, LB50704: Riverside House, Former Hand Loom Mill – comparative evidence for surviving Galashiels hand-loom factories.
- Historic Environment Scotland, LB50696: Gala Mill – comparative evidence for an early hand-loom mill within a larger complex.