Student Accommodation
The Silk Mill: Signal Through Walls Built in 1792
Reliable WiFi in every room of a Grade II listed silk mill built in 1792, where extremely thick walls shaped the whole design.
Client Overview
Background
The Silk Mill is a converted Georgian silk mill in Galgate, a village a few minutes from Lancaster University, now student accommodation. The building started life as a working silk mill in 1792, which makes it one of the oldest silk mills in England, and it is Grade II listed. Today it houses students in studio rooms, and they expect the same internet as someone in a new build.
Walls built in 1792 were built to carry a working mill, and they are thick. Thick masonry is one of the worst materials for WiFi. A signal that passes cleanly through a modern plasterboard partition arrives on the other side of a mill wall weakened or not at all. The standard approach of covering a floor from access points in the corridor simply does not work in a building like this, so coverage has to be designed room by room.
The previous system had many issues, and in a building like this that is no surprise. Kit positioned the way it would be in an ordinary block gets defeated by walls like these. The Grade II listing adds its own constraint too: cable routes and equipment positions have to work with the historic fabric, not against it. AirGen was asked to replace the failing system with one designed for the mill as it actually is.
Building photo: Alexander P Kapp, via Geograph, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0
How we helped
Solutions
The walls meant the survey and design stages carried most of the weight. AirGen IT delivered the full end-to-end service, including:
- A detailed site survey measuring how the mill's walls block signal, section by section, rather than assuming standard coverage patterns.
- A room-first design, with access points positioned so every studio gets reliable signal directly, not a weak leftover from the corridor.
- More access points than a modern building of the same size would need, because signal that cannot pass through the walls has to be delivered past them.
- Cable routes planned to respect the Grade II listed fabric of the building.
- Removal of the failing system and full installation of the new network.
- 24/7 proactive monitoring and direct tenant support, so residents contact AirGen with any issue, not the site team.
Outcome
Result
Despite the walls, every room gets stable and fast internet. Tenant complaints are minimal, and some tenants have commented on the improved speed and reliability. For a building that had been living with a failing system, that is the outcome that matters. The WiFi stopped being a topic.
There is a pleasing mismatch in a mill built in 1792 running a modern managed network, but the principle is the point. If reliable WiFi can be engineered into one of the oldest silk mills in England, through walls that stop signal dead, it can be engineered into almost any building. AirGen monitors the network around the clock, and residents come straight to AirGen with any issues.
