Valley Mills, Drighlington

Industrial campus to be cleared for a new suburb:

Not the grandest of Yorkshire’s mills, this dark red brick complex of north-light buildings, houses, and mills is to be cleared for a very dull volume house build in this rural location in between the cities of Leeds and Bradford.

A heritage-led masterplan would see the terraced houses retained, and all the two-story elements utilised as a nucleus from which to design the rest of the site. No such vision from the architects that have put together this layout, which suffers from the usual standardised highway widths, corner radii, and housing types.

Even the retention of the road layout would at least leave a token allsuion to the site’s history. And always worth a mention is the incredble waste of embedded carbon which could be saved if the buildings were rennovated and not demolished.