Peel Fold Mill, Stanhill Road, Oswaldwistle, Lancashire. Archaeological Investigation Final Report.

Morris Homes Ltd has secured planning permission (11/12/0288) for the redevelopment of a site on Stanhill Road, near Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire (centred on NGR 372704, 427763). The development proposals allow for the erection of 36 residential units, together with provision of vehicular access, landscaping and related infrastructure that will necessitate considerable earth-moving works. The site is of
some archaeological interest in that it was occupied from the mid-1780s by a row of hand-loom weavers’ cottages that fronted onto Stanhill Road. In 1860, the land to the rear of the cottages was developed as Stanhill Mill, a steam-powered cotton-weaving factory, which became known subsequently as Peel Fold Mill. An expansion of the mill in the early 1950s necessitated the demolition of the cottages, the site of which was subsumed by the footprint of the new building.
In consideration of the planning application for the proposed redevelopment of the site, the Lancashire County Archaeology Service (LCAS) recommended that a programme of archaeological investigation was carried out to inform the planning process. In the first instance, the investigation comprised trial trenching, which was intended to establish whether any buried remains of the eighteenth-century cottages and the mid-nineteenth-century textile mill survived in-situ, and whether they merited further archaeological excavation and recording in advance of the proposed development.