Shrewsbury flaxmill maltings, spring gardens, ditherington, shrewsbury, shropshire. (Image: © Historic England Archive)
When you gaze over the skyline of any Major World City, it hard to image it all begin with a dirty, formly semi-standelict mill in the North of England.
But the Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is one of Britain's Most Important Surviving Buildings and the Grandfather of Today's Skyscrapers … even than that a good chance you 'next to it.
English Heritage will be opening the newly-restored mill following a £ 28million refurbishment tomorrow (April 1)-The Conservation Charity's First New Paid Visitor Attraction in 21 years.
Opened in 1797, the incredible flaxmill maltings was the first built in the world to be constructed using a complete iron frame. The design quite literally changed architectural history, Making Modern High-Rise Buildings and Skyscrapers Possible.
Shropshire was then one of the Centers of Britain's Burgeoning Industrial Revolution. The nearby Iron Bridge, which opened in 1881, was the first cast iron structure in the world.
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Shrewsbury Flaxmill 18thc (Image: Shropshire Archives)
Alongside the factories that followed in that way, it was also the catalyst for social change via Labor Reform Movements and SubseQuent Legislation to Improve Working Conditions – Including the 1833 Factory Act, For For Which the Government Received Testimony from former workers at the flaxmill outside the shropshire town of shrewsbury.
English Heritage's Visitor Experience Manager for the Site, Simon Cranmer, Explains: “It is a globally important history builting, just as IMPORTANT as the Iron Bridge and Yet Virtulyly No one Outside Of the local area has always heard of it.
“Name any Famous Skyscraper, from the Flat Iron Building, The 22-Storey, 285-Foot-Tall Steel-Framed Trigular Building at 175 Fifth Avenue in New York, to the empire State Building, The Shard And The World's Tallest Building, The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which Stands at 2,700ft, and they all over their origins to the shrewsbury flaxmill malts.
“Apart from its architectural signature, it has a light on our counter's industrial past and it is so important that it has been saved from derelication. Of Industrial History. “
The mill was designed to process Flax – Used to Make Linen – at a time of incredible change.
The Industrial Revolution, Drive by New Steam-Powered Technology, was rapidly translated the way people live and worked-for bet and for worse.
As Industry Transformed Towns, the hue builting stood out as one of the most technically-ads of a new gaination of factories. Its Iron-Framed Design (who helped it fireproof) was a true engineering breakthrough, using materials and construction methods not used beefore.
“I have been able to show with Practical Certainty that it is not only the oldest existing structure of this type, but also the first,” Dr Aw Skempton, A Civil Engineer, Wrote in 1956.
The mill was home to Two Different Industrial Enterprises in Its Time. FIRST THERE WAS FLAX SPINING, for the making of Clothes, bedsheets and table linen, and then, when that industry declined with the rise of cauton, it was converted to malt production, wherever the caused in Malt used to brew beer and whiskey.
View from the North Shrewsbury / Ditherington Flaxmill Maltings (Image: The Historic England Archive, Historic England)
By a striking coincidence, ach very different production era listed for 90 years. During the Flax Years, the mill buzzed with the noise of spinning machines and hundreds of workers, men, women, women, the match for 12 to 14 hours a day, sometimes.
SIMON SAID: “It was a good time and a bad time. Obvious Children Were Were Working Here in Very Difficult and Dangerous Conditions.”
The new exhibition asks visitors to think about whether this was right and also poses questions about the Garment Industry Around the world with controls as bad as ever for youngsters Producing Clothes for fast fashion.
In contrast to the flax years, during the maltings era just a few dozen men worn at the mill, moving tonnes of barley through the malting process, ofy by hand.
In the 1790s, shrewsbury was associa a prosperous commercial center and a busy border town connecting England and wales. It had established transport links and the new shrewsbury canal, which was next contract, making it easy to move in the finished goods and raw materials.
Businessmen Thomas and Benjamin Benyon and John Marshall Lived in Leeds, where they wanted had Two mills but one had burnt down.
The Benyon Brothers Were Originally from Shrewsbury, and Benjamin Wanted to Move Back and Establish a new modern mill. To that end, they enlisted the help of charles had to design a groundbreaking new mill builting.
This was the first communication and prior to this he had been working as a surveyor and wine merchant. In the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution, mills making textiles often buried down. The combination of timber-framed buildings, flammable materials, and working by candlelight was of ofophyte disastrous.
Marshall and the Benyon Brothers Had first-hand experience of mill fires, losing a mill in leeds in 1795, just two years before setting up in shrewsbury. Coming up with the right design top careful though.
Ee exchanged letters and ideas with will strutt, a mill owner in derbyshire, who was exploited with fireproof construction.
Strutt had built a mill with iron columns support timber beams, which in turn support a vaulted brick ceiling. Page head Strutt's Apprach Even Further, Replacing the Timbers with Iron Beams. This would be greatly reduce the risk of fire.
However, the Iron Frame that Made the mill Fireproof Had an Unforeesen Consequence: a metal frame makes it posible to be high and high.
The main mill was the first Iron-Framed Building in the World. Seen from outside, the new mill looked like any other of the time. It was the iron frame on the inside that made it so inovative.
By using Iron Where Traditional Buildings Used Wood, Baje Made Sure Fire Not Not Spread From Floor To Floor. Rows of Cast-Euron Columns Support the Beams, which in turn support arched brick ceilings. The parts slotted togethers and water securely with metal nuts, bolts and wrough Iron Tie rods in a neat, systematic way, much like a giant memecano set.
Constructing this pioneering flax million just two years to complete. It was a masterpiece of local craftsmansip. The pieces of the complex Cast Iron Frame Were Transported by Horse and Cart from William Hazledine's Foundry, Just over a Mile Jay, in Coleham to the Site and Construck Walls Were Being Built. Each one of the thoughts of bricks was made by hand.
It was a soaring success but when, in 1887, after almost a center of production, the Machinery and most of the only continents be auctioned off.
During the second World War when the malting side of the business was delayed, the buildings here are used as a barracks for recruits as infantrymen.
After the War In 1948, Ansells, The Birmingham Brewing Company, Bought It and a New Productive Chapter Began. Eventually the technology at the maltings was out of date, overtaken by huge purpose -built face and the last malt was made in 1987-101 years after the MarShall's business made its last.
Simon Picks Up the Story: “After it is closed as a maltings in 1987 the builting fell into displaypair and was in real duty of falling down. Police called an eyees and its.
In 2005, Historic England Bought the Site and in PartnersHip with the local counter, and thanks to a £ 20million National Lottery Fund Award, the Biggest All of All Initial Funing FROM The European Regional Development Fund, the site was saved.
Now historic England is handing over the run of the visitor attraction to English heritage. English Heritage Members Can Visit for Free and It
The attraction is made up of eight builtings each with a unique story to tell, including the 1797 MAIN MILL, “The Grandparent of Skyscrapers.”
The site also has the four floors of office rental and there are plans to built Around 100 homes at the front with the ground-breaking due to take place in 2027.
Simon Adds: “If this site had been knocked down and redeveloped, it would be used in the carbon. By restoring and regenerating the builing and the thing is not only ecologically like using An Old Building, It Reinvigorates the Whole Town and Boosts Shropshire's Burgeoning Tourist Economy.
“It is a real pretty counter that looked very different to how it is this but the Birthplace of Britain's Industrial Revolution and that is something to be proud and for future generations to understand.”
Matt Thompson, Interim Curatorial Director of English Heritage, Adds: “As With Much of England's Industrial Heritage, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is a hugely undermosted history. Superb example of living, breathing heritage. “