Meredith Village Cotton Company Mill; Meredith Linen Mills
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Mills Falls Marketplace
c. 1820. Bounded by Main St., Dover St., and NH 3.
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(Photograph by Austin Dodge)
Built about 1820, the former Meredith Village Cotton Company mill is one of New Hampshire’s oldest and best extant examples of wood-frame industrial architecture. It is the last early structure of its period and type in the town. Local history sources speculate that it may have been built by local business developer John Bond Swasey (see BE45) either as a grist mill or cotton processing (fulling) factory. About 1830 J. W. Lang and several partners acquired the mill and ran it as part of the Meredith Village Cotton Company. This and adjacent textile mill buildings came under control of the Meredith Mechanic Association, known in the region as “The Corporation,” in 1859. When Englishman Samuel Hodgson (see BE40) launched a hosiery manufactory in the mill and another mill lower on the site, the Association’s financial fortunes significantly improved. After the second Hodgson factory burned in 1889, the property was ultimately developed into the Meredith Linen Mills. Over subsequent decades, various kinds of textiles were manufactured here. Then, starting in 1984, the site, including the remaining c. 1820 mill, was developed into a hospitality and shopping center. Although the integrity of the mill as an industrial structure has been compromised, particularly on the interior, it has thrived as a mercantile enterprise. On the exterior, the impact of the Classical Revival may be observed in the flat corner pilasters, the corniced open-end gables with returns, the thick window cornices and molding, and the open columned cupola with metal ogive roof set on octagonal and square stages underneath. This last attractive visual feature was moved from North Woodstock, Vermont, where it once served as the belfry of a local church.
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