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| Joseph Rank's Premier Flour Mills, Victoria Dock, London |
In my previous article, I
introduced mills owned by Seth Taylor and JH Robinson based in what is now
referred to as London's Dockland. A little further up the Thames there were a
series of mills on the Embankment in the region of the Albert and Battersea bridges.
Visits to these mills were organised as part of nabim's London Convention in
1887, as reported in The Miller on
June 6th.
The first of this group mentioned
in the report was the Albert Bridge Flour Mills at Battersea. Built for Messrs.
Marriage, Neave & Co, they were built on the south bank of the Thames
between the Albert and Battersea bridges. They opened for work on 9th
July 1884. The building was divided into three main portions, but in reality
seven independent sections, separated by fireproof walls.
It was built in the Queen Anne
style and with its octagonal tower it had quite a baronial appearance.
The architect responsible for
this building was Mr F Bath, ARIBA, FSI of London and Salisbury.
As well as designing a most
economical internal arrangement, his exterior of the building caught your eye
from every angle viewed. The engravings capture the magnificent architecture,
supplemented by an illustration 10 years later from the Simon catalogue.
The octagonal tower consisted
primarily of a chimney shaft, with a spiral staircase winding round and
enclosed by the octagonal outer wall. This allowed easy access to each of the
floors by galleries which were outside the three buildings and provided the
only communication between them. On top of the tower was an iron water tank
that held 25,000 gallons of water in case of fire. From the tank to the ground
a main pipe ran with hoses on each landing that could be coupled up in case of
fire. This arrangement was supplemented by an abundant supply of buckets!
The roller floors on the first
and third floors were described as having six sets of the largest four-roller
mill type for the breaking process, the remaining rolls were smooth for the
reduction of the semolina and middlings into flour, a process effected in ten
operations. The wheat and its resulting semolina and middlings passed through
42 pairs of rolls, 30 and 31 inches in length, before it appeared as flour at
the three "Eureka" flour packers on the second floor. The plant was
installed by Mr H Simon and was said to produce a product of good quality.
The final mill mentioned on the
list of convention visits was the Royal Flour Mills on the Albert Embankment. These
were situated near the southeast end of Vauxhall Bridge, and were the property
of Mr Peter Mumford. ‘The Miller’ regarded the eternal
view of the mill as presenting unusually good architectural features and described
it as an imposing feature on the Albert Embankment.
The building had a 76 foot
frontage to the River Thames and was 80 feet high from ground to the ridge of
the roof. On the river frontage there were two lucams of two storeys for
loading and unloading the barges and hoisting to the top floor. Another lucam
was on the south front for hoisting from wagons. In 1875 only two years after ‘The
Miller’ started publishing, it gave a full description of the mill on the
millstone system.
Read more from our online edition of 'May 2017, Milling and Grain magazine' - HERE.
