Maltings and kiln Number 1, Mistley Quay Handling and Forwarding Company Limited (EHER 15059)

No. 1 malting was one of seven malthouses built in Mistley by the company Free Rodwell in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Number 1 Maltings in Mistley Quay was built around 1896.

Huge red brick-built twin gabled maltings complex with yellow stock brick pilasters and Welsh slate roof. The main building is of 17 bays and has 3 storeys to the High Street and eight storeys to the quayside. Three bays break forward on the roadside facade and the building has louvered 3 light ventilator windows along both long axis; plain wooden taking-in doors to the north and south, and some modern 20th century casements beside the High Street. A pair of pyramidal kilns stand to the east; these are five storeys and have 3 bays. Lying between the kilns and a second three storey, five bay block is the base of former octagonal boiler chimney. At the east end of the complex stands a later four and a half storey gabled range. Offices have been created at the west end, but the Listed Building entry describes a number of contemporary features including Robert Free’s patent cast iron self emptying steeps, quarry tile drying floors, wedge wire kiln floors and in-situ line shafting. Barley was probably delivered and then steeped at the east end of the building; it then moved towards the kilns and was stored in the western block beyond the boiler chimney. The malting was built by Free, Rodwell and Co between 1896-7; it is in a sound structural condition, but only part of the premises is currently being used. The steam engine which powered the belt drives and other machinery is now preserved at the Industrial Steam Museum, Forncett St Mary, Norfolk. ARCHAEOLOGICAL POTENTIAL: High, many important features survive in-situ and the method of operation can be deduced from the internal remains. SITE SIGNIFICANCE: Mistley became a major centre of the late 19th century malt industry and retains some of the best preserved maltings in Britain. The site also includes a purpose built quay, an architecturally ornate railway station, stock brick-built offices and workers terraces. Individual buildings enhance the importance of this outstanding Victorian development and demolition should only be permitted in exceptional circumstances. Robert Free was one of the leading entrepreneurs of the late 19th century industry and his pioneering ideas are reflected in the surviving internal features within this building. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Given its regional and national importance, Maltings No 1 should be Listed Grade I. MANAGEMENT: The building is in a fair structural condition, but only a very small area is currently being used. A sensitive scheme of adaptive reuse should be sought and the malting should be recorded (RCHME Level 3) in advance of any proposed conversion. The record should include floor plans, sections, detailed drawings of particular features and machinery, and full photographic coverage. The preserved steam engine should also be inspected. Where possible a number of the original features should be retained in order to demonstrate the former industrial use of this building; the steeps may be nationally unique. Other items should be offered to a museum. <1> May 2004. Building survey. The buildings included in this phase III survey, the maltstore, malt kilns, germinating floors and western warehouse, form approximately half of No.1 Maltings. In form and character they largely reflect structures recorded in 2001 by Garwood. Both surveys included buildings from the little known pre-1896 maltings. Together they form a single working unit, with each element part of a functional system working towards a single end goal. Contemporary literature mentions "mechanical provision from the outset" to Free's Mistley maltings and many of his devices were patented in the decade before No. 1 was constructed. So their inclusion from the outset, even at a proto-type stage, in his so-called 'flagship maltings,' seems logical. An article in The Brewer's Journal (1897) mentions a mechanical grain elevator that fed from ship's holds via a hopper and into the 'rough barley store'. Conveyers are referred to in a pamphlet produced by Robert Free (1888) as a "mechanical means of conveying raw barley and finished malt". In addition, the complex was fitted-out with more traditional industrial features such as taking-in doors and hatches, providing pre-industrial malting characteristics that could be used in tandem with the new technology that was still in its early stages of development, to augment the process. Hence banddriven grain elevators, conveyors and hoists worked alongside manual shovelling through the floors and in and out of the kilns through hatches. The floor hatches were probably tiled-over and wall hatches sealed when electricity, a more reliable method of power, was introduced into the plant in the 1930s. The malt kilns, like their counterparts the barley kilns, were equipped with Free's patent systems from the start. This included the kiln itself (larger than the barley kilns to raise a higher temperature), a damper mechanism using copper thermostat rods, wedgewire floor and Blackman extractor fans. It is not known whether iron fixings on the walls of the kiln floors relate to Free's patent malt-turner, supposedly installed here. No such features are believed to survive elsewhere. The western warehouse, an earlier building contemporary with the old barley store recorded in the earlier survey, was never adapted into the mechanisation and worked alone in the process. Presumably more than enough capacity was available after the new malting was built, to allow space for its uppermost floor to be converted to the malting office. In addition, mechanisation of a relatively small building may not have been viewed as practical at the time. <2> See also: <3> - <12>