The mid-nineteenth century building at this location was probably a sheet rolling mill, part of a lead smelting and working site which dates back to the late-17th century. A two-storey building, of stone with massive timber roof trusses, it is now a retail fabrics store. On the north-east side is a waterwheel pit, said to have been 60ft (18.3 metres) in diameter and built by Ellis Evans, Greenfield, who also erected the mill c1848. It was driven by water from a large pond on the hillside to the west, still extant (SJ1741979201), supplied through a siphon passing under the main road. Also on this hillside, at SJ1749979190, is the base of an enormous brick chimney some 30ft (9.1 metres) in diameter; it was said to be 180ft (55 metres) high. Round its perimeter are the ruins of structures which may have been part of the condensing system for recovery of metals from the smelter fumes.
The smelt works may have been in existence by 1684, certainly by 1720, and may have used charcoal as fuel. In the 1750s the works was extended, with reverberatory furnaces using coal fuel. These furnaces were sited to the south of the junction of a lane with the main road, at SJ1760879139, and all three editions of the 25-inch O. S. maps show a building of irregular cruciform plan which housed them. On the south side was another millpond supplying power to another waterwheel, probably for crushing ore. A flue, in which metals would have been condensed from the flue gases, ran along the rear of the building and under the lane to the chimney. This part of the site has been obliterated under three large modern industrial sheds.
The works closed c1886, but were reopened briefly in the 1890s by the North Wales Lead Co, then used by the Darwin & Mostyn Iron Company for the production of ferro manganese, finally closing in 1955.
W J Crompton, RCAHMW, 12 November 2009.