Trencherfield Mill No.1, Pottery Road, Wigan. Greater Manchester. Archaeological Evaluation.

Nuttall Construction Limited has submitted a proposal to redevelop the Trencherfield Mill complex in Wigan, Lancashire (centred on SD 5787 0518). At its peak in the
early 20th century, the complex incorporated three multi-storey, combined cottonspinning and weaving mills, and associated ancillary buildings. The earliest of these,
Trencherfield Mill No 1, was erected in 1823 on what then a green field site, some 0.5km to the south-west of Wigan town centre. The complex had been expanded by 1847 with the addition of a second multi-storey mill (Trencherfield Mill No 2), and a third mill was built in 1907. The latter is presently the only extant mill on the site, designated a Grade II Listed Building in 1997, which was the focus of a recent archaeological building survey (UMAU 2005). This survey was coupled with an archaeological desk-based assessment of the entire proposed development site, which
concluded that the buried remains of Trencherfield Mill No 1 and a former blacking mill had some potential to retain in situ structures of archaeological significance.
In order to secure archaeological interest, the Assistant County Archaeologist for Greater Manchester recommended that the site be subject to a programme of evaluation prior to development to establish the presence or absence of buried
remains. This programme of work included the excavation of 12 targeted trenches, of which eight were to be placed across the site of Trencherfield Mill No 1 and its
immediate environs; in the event, only seven trenches were excavated due to logistical considerations. In February 2006, Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) was
commissioned by Nuttall Construction Ltd to undertake this work, which commencedimmediately.