{"id":499842,"date":"2026-03-28T09:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/499842\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:38:09","slug":"major-fire-tears-through-leeks-historic-the-big-mill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/499842\/","title":{"rendered":"Major fire tears through Leek&#8217;s historic The Big Mill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The six-storey building, which has a bell tower, dates back to 1860 according to its Historic England listing, and is one of the earliest mill buildings of its scale in the town.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was last used as a mill in the 1980s and was then home to a pine manufacturer and workshop.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It has been derelict since 2007, local councillor Bill Cawley said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cawley, Labour representative for Leek West on Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, said he had previously warned about hazards and antisocial behaviour at the building, which had been bought by a developer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"http:\/\/publicaccess.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk\/portal\/servlets\/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=130762\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">An application was submitted by Atique Choudhury, external<\/a> in 2019 to convert the site to 55 flats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The councillor said two previous fires at the site were mentioned during a meeting he attended with the fire service and environmental health in August, and flammable materials such as wood, carboard and a can of petrol had been removed from the building&#8217;s basement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Young people had also been seen on the building&#8217;s roof in December 2024, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The six-storey building, which has a bell tower, dates back to 1860 according to its Historic England listing,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-499842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}