Extraordinary English Lair For Sale – Barrow Bridge Chimney

Barrow Bridge Chimney – This Extraordinary English Lair is for sale with Miller Metcalfe. 

Barrow Bridge Chimney, a 260ft red-brick sentinel from the early 19th century, is no ordinary property listing. Once part of Bolton’s booming cotton industry, this Victorian industrial landmark now comes with full planning permission for a conversion unlike any other: a glass-and-steel residence suspended 18 metres above the ground, wrapped around the colossal chimney shaft itself. It’s not just a home — it’s a statement, a fortress, and a chance to live inside history.

The proposed design introduces a two-storey dwelling of striking modern architecture, built on a steel frame with angled glass walls that reflect the woodland canopy below. From the village lanes, the house seems to vanish into the landscape — until you look up and see it perched dramatically against the chimney’s timeworn brick. This is heritage reborn as spectacle, an icon reimagined as a modern lair.

Inside, the approved plans reveal double-height living spaces, three bedrooms (with scope for four), and soaring views across the moors and Manchester skyline. Practicality meets theatre: vast open-plan rooms for family life and entertaining, complemented by the potential to carve private sanctuaries higher into the stack — a gym, sauna, snug, or study spiralling upwards like hidden chambers in a watchtower.

For those with lair-worthy ambitions, the very arrival is cinematic: step through a brick-clad base hall, ride a glass lift through the chimney’s core, and emerge into living quarters floating above the treetops. Ascend again to the rooftop garden — a lawn in the sky — where you command both wilderness and city, sunsets over the Pennines to one side, Manchester’s skyline to the other.

In Barrow Bridge — a conservation village of stone cottages, woodland paths, and model industrial history — this project offers more than a home. It is a landmark preserved, a lair created, and a legacy waiting to be written.

Highlights of the Barrow Bridge Chimney Lair:

• Early 19th-century 260ft industrial chimney, a cherished local landmark.
• Full planning permission granted for residential conversion.
• Dramatic two-storey, glass-and-steel structure suspended 18m up the chimney.
• Interiors include double-height living spaces and three (potentially four) bedrooms.
• Optional vertical extras inside the chimney: gym, sauna, games snug, or private retreats.
• Rooftop garden with panoramic views.
• Conservation village location: moorland trails and historic cottages nearby.
• Auction starting bid: £300,000 plus fees — a legacy project for visionary buyers.

For more information about Barrow Bridge Chimney, visit the Miller Metcalfe Website.

See Below for a Drone Video of the chimney.