This was a complex of buildings that stood on the north side of the old turnpike road (the present Connection Road) as it dropped steeply down to the Lower Mill. Initially it consisted of two rows of weaver’s cottages, built in the late 18th century, which ran down from the side of the road to the river bank, but by the early 1830s the upper ends of these two rows were joined together by an additional rank of buildings along the raised path facing the road. In 1840 all these buildings were cut off by the railway viaduct on the north side, thereby forming a hollow square. In the middle, various intervening vegetable gardens or allotments also remained, which gave rise to the title ‘Cabbage Square’ to the houses on the west side. The houses on the east side, facing onto the present footpath under the viaduct, came to be known as ‘Little Hill’. The entrance to the ‘square’ was through an archway at the lower end of the buildings fronting Connection road. On the upper corner towards the footpath was another entry, to a smithy (or rather a farrier’s shop), where horses (such as those drawing the buses from the railway station) were shod. When the house numbers in the High Street were altered in 1891, the different names for each of these groups of houses disappeared under the more convenient general title of ‘Clyde Buildings’.

Several of these buildings suffered bomb damage during WWII and remained in ruins until the whole block was demolished for the present transformer station in the late 1950s. The lower courses of the buildings on the western side however can still be seen in the undergrowth and are therefore of some archaeological interest. The high pavement and steps along the frontage also remain - complete with iron railings, together with another long flight of pennant steps at the lower end near the ruined foundations of several small buildings (perhaps privies). The stone pitching along the pathway seems to have survived more or less intact, although buried under a layer of humus, brambles and accumulated rubbish. In the high wall on the opposite side of the road is an arched recess, now blocked up, for the pump which was the water supply for the houses.

The interior of cabbage square, showing the large windows in the building on the right which illuminated the weaver’s looms.

The consecration of the war memorial in 1920 in the newly enlarged churchyard. In the distance is Clyde Buildings.

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