A topshop or top-shop is a design of building specific to Coventry, Bedworth and Nuneaton in the English Midlands, of the 18th and 19th and early 20th centuries.
Huguenot refugees from France had settled in Coventry and Bedworth.
That trade required close attention to detail; and therefore, in times before artificial lighting, the best possible use of daylight.
The lower floors in a topshop had to be reinforced to support the weight of the loom.
At that site, a beam engine supplied power by lineshaft to a community of topshop weavers.