Philip Sidney Stott (1858–1937)

Sidney Stott was the best-known of a family of Lancashire architects, specialising in the design of textile mills, whose buildings can still be seen all over Europe and further afield. The first architect in the family was Sydney Stott’s grandfather, James Stott. He had two sons, Abraham Henthorn Stott (1822-1904), who was apprenticed in London with Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) who founded the firm AH Stott & Sons on his return to Oldham in 1847, and Joseph Stott (1836-94), also an architect. In their later years the two brothers did not speak.Sidney Stott was the third son of Abraham Henthorn Stott, and worked for a time with his father before establishing his own practice in 1883. The first mill he designed was at Chadderton, near to his birthplace, in 1885, and he was subsequently responsible for 22 mills in the Oldham area and 55 elsewhere in Lancashire, with a total capacity of nine million spindles. Most were in hard red brick, with brick arches on steel frames, and towers containing reservoirs for sprinkler systems. His last mill, Magpie Mill No 2, was completed in Oldham in 1915.

After the First World War there was less demand for new cotton mills and Stott turned his attention to politics. He bought a mansion near Broadway in the Cotswolds in 1913, and in 1923 presented the Conservative Party with a house in Northamptonshire for use as a training college for agents, and for political discussions. It was closed in 1929 which in due course led him to resign from the party.

Stott’s ‘Oldham-style’ mills were built in India, at Enschede in the Netherlands and in Germany at Bocholt, Chemnitz and Rheine.