Abbey Mill

Abbey Mill stands on Garden Street in Abbey Village, a former mill village on the A675 between Chorley and Blackburn, set in open countryside on the edge of the West Pennine Moors. AMCO was instructed in July 2023. It is the kind of building that has defeated a great many owners: five storeys, deep upper floors, no vehicle access above ground level, and a rural location well outside any established industrial market. Let to a single occupier or a handful of large ones, a mill like this is hard to fill and harder to keep filled.

We run Abbey Mill as a high-density small-unit estate: 114 individually let units across all five floors, at an average unit size of 360 sq ft. Every floor given a purpose. The ground floor carries the larger workshop and industrial units at 259–1,366 sq ft with drive-in access and roller shutters. The first and second floors are configured as offices and studios at 154–390 sq ft. The third and fourth floors take a mixed range, from 55 sq ft compact studios up to 1,348 sq ft — so no floor is dead space and every enquiry can be matched to something. Solved the access problem. A goods lift serves every floor, making upper-floor units viable for storage and light industrial occupiers who would otherwise only consider ground level — unlocking four floors of otherwise unlettable area. Genuinely accessible rents, from £150 per calendar month, with unit sizes and assessments positioned so qualifying businesses fall within small business rates relief. Individually serviced units. Metered electricity and, where required, separate water supplies, so occupiers pay for what they use and each unit lets independently. Estate infrastructure funded across the whole building. 24-hour access, CCTV security, communal WC facilities, on-site tenant parking, loading bay and secure gated yard — provision no 55 sq ft occupier could ever justify alone. Management built for volume. Lettings, referencing, rent collection, arrears, compliance and occupier liaison across 114 tenancies with continuous turnover — a fundamentally different operation to managing a handful of large lettings.

107 of 114 units are let or under offer, with six currently available. In three years a single difficult mill has been turned into a full business community of over a hundred occupiers, serving trades, storage users, studios and small manufacturers across Chorley, Blackburn, Preston and Bolton — all within ten miles. The ladder of unit sizes is what sustains it: businesses start in a 55 sq ft studio and move up through the building as they grow, rather than leaving.