Independent Labour Party Club, Milton Street

Though politically a Liberal, Wood was friendly with the Middleton Independent Labour Party and was asked to design their club house. He published a two-storey flat-roofed design in Academy Architecture in 1910 but what was actually built was a smaller single storey pavilion on Milton Street in 1912. It is a simple linear design of hall, meeting room and entrance porch. The architectural focus is at the lower end with two brick bay windows illuminating the meeting room, a striking Art Deco stepped gable and a little concrete flat-roofed entrance porch. Built of common brick and small Westmorland slates it has a gentle plain texture. [ David Morris Rochdale MBS. Vic Soc in Manchester Winter 2009]

The Independent Labour Party was founded in 1893 as a working-class, socialist, political cause which in the early twentieth century it was to become a key component in the formation of the early Labour Party. The Club was built for the Middleton branch of the ILP, the membership of which was drawn largely from textile workers.  It is accordingly very modest in form, being a single-storey, rectangular, building with porch in a stripped, sparse idiom, containing just two main rooms: a club room and a hall.  This building demonstrates the idiosyncratic characteristics of his work, notably the stepped gable parapets, a motif that suggests C17 Holland or the inter-war Art Deco period rather than an early twentieth century date. [ Historic England Designation Yearbook 2014]

Reference    David Morris Rochdale MBS. Vic Soc in Manchester Winter 2009
Reference    Historic England Designation Yearbook 2014