Summary
Warehouse, grain silo and loading building for a flour mill of 1889 to 1906, by Sir William Gelder of Hull. Now (2024) converted to flats except for the silo, which is vacant.
Reasons for Designation
The Victoria Mills, Grimsby, a flour mill by Sir William Gelder built between 1896 and 1906, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* the scale of the buildings, the arrangement of openings in the warehouse, and the solidity of the silo all are distinctive of the industrial function of the site; a degree of ornamentation adds to this interest.
Historic interest:
* the buildings are evidence of technological advances that led to the industrialisation of food production.
Group value:
* the mills share group value with nearby listed docks infrastructure and other industrial buildings that contributed to Grimsby’s success as a port in the C19 and C20.
History
Victoria Mills are located on the east side of the south spur of Grimsby’s Alexandra Docks. They were constructed in stages between 1889 and 1906, with earlier maps showing a building named ‘Victoria Flour Mills’ on the same site. The impetus for the new mill in 1889 appears to have been the introduction of industrial steel rollers in the flour milling process; the rollers were a Hungarian innovation that offered considerably higher output than using millstones. The new roller mill was for the firm William Marshall and Sons, who had been milling flour in the Grimsby area since the early C19. Marshall and Sons were the manufacturers of the popular ‘Cytos’ brand of bread and biscuits, which were advertised nationally at the end of the C19. William Marshall and Sons was liquidated in 1929, and in the early 1930s the Grimsby site was taken on by the nationwide millers, Spillers. The new (1889-1906) Victoria Mills complex was designed by Sir William Alfred Gelder (1855-1941) of Gelder and Kitchen, a Kingston upon Hull architectural practice. Gelder was active in politics as a local councillor and mayor of Hull, and he designed many buildings in that city. Gelder and Kitchen specialised in the design of roller mills, including for Joseph Rank (1854-1943), also of Hull, whose firm went on to become Rank Hovis.
Historic photographs, drawings and maps allow the development of the site to be traced. The first mill (as shown on the town plan surveyed in 1887) was ‘H’ shaped in plan, with the open ends of the ‘H’ to the dock in the west and Victoria Street North to the east. A single-storey detached building within the two eastern arms of the ‘H’ fronted Victoria Street North. The map published by the Ordnance Survey in 1908 shows the new mill, which comprised two main blocks (north and south), and some smaller outbuildings to the north. The single-storey detached building from the earlier complex was retained for the duration of the occupation by William Marshall and Sons, though between the surveying of the 1933 Ordnance Survey map and aerial photographs taken in 1937 it had been demolished and replaced by a new block fronting Victoria Street. The 1930s block is not included in the listing. In the later-C20 the entire southern block was demolished, as were various outbuildings. The silo building had its internal timber silos removed in 1993. In 2017, the silo building had become structurally unsound and it underwent extensive repairs, which included re-roofing in Welsh slate. It is currently (2024) empty. The other buildings were all converted to flats in the late-C20 and early-C21.
Details
Warehouse, grain silo and loading building for a flour mill of 1889 to 1906, by Sir William Gelder of Hull, with C20 additions alterations. Now (2024) in use as flats
except for the silo, which is vacant.
MATERIALS: largely red brick in English garden wall bond and stone dressings to the older buildings, with blue bricks to base of the warehouse. Welsh slate roofs. Timber windows are from the conversion to flats in the late C20 and early C21. There are circular pattress plates to many elevations.
PLAN: there are three attached rectangular mill buildings, forming a staggered rectangular shape in plan. The blocks run from the dock in the west to Victoria Street North in the east.
LOADING BUILDING
EXTERIOR: seven stories, under a pitched roof with its gable facing west to the dock. Windows have stone cills and segmental arch brick lintels. The west elevation is two bays wide, with the first six stories each having a single window to their southern bay. The north bay has a single recessed, round-headed opening spanning the ground to third floors, which originally housed a loading conveyor that could access vessels in the dock. The fourth floor of the north bay is solid, and the fifth floor has a window like those in the south bay. The sixth floor has a single window located centrally, spanning both bays. The north and south side elevations are three bays wide, with a single window to each bay of the upper stories, their ground floors have doors and windows that were inserted during the conversion to flats, with steps up to the door in the east bay of the north elevation.
SILO
EXTERIOR: this is the tallest of the four buildings, joined to the west by the dockside loading building and to the east by the eight-storey warehouse. It is under a pitched roof with its gable ends behind parapets topped by obelisk finials. The roof has two flat-roofed dormer windows to each slope. The upper parts of the walls are largely solid, though detailed with giant panels and pilasters. The panels to the east and west ends have round heads under segmental arch brick lintels, those to the north and south have square heads.
The top part of the east elevation is visible over the adjoining 1906 warehouse building to Victoria Street North. Here, the alternating vertical panels that define the bays are under segmental arch lintels of rubbed bricks with prominent stone keystones, with a stone platband running above these. The end pilasters extend above the eaves and clasp yellow-tiled domes to frame the Dutch gable parapet, which has two centrally located bricked up window openings. A stone architrave bearing the lettering ‘VICTORIA FLOUR MILLS’ runs across the panels and pilasters just below the lintels.
The ground floor of the north elevation has a single door in its eastern bay, with steps up to it. The nine bays to the west all have blocked windows. The top of the north elevation has a plain horizontal parapet that rises over the second bay to the east to a semi-circle with ball finials to its ends. This raised section accommodates a doorway, which was formerly accessed by an external staircase.
The west elevation is similar to the east though plainer, lacking the platbands and stone keystones in the lintels. The east parapet gable substitutes the curves of the western one for straight lines. The central of the five bays has three blocked openings in its top two stories and in the gable of its parapet.
The south elevation is completely solid, though has several blocked openings under segmental brick arches at ground floor level.
WAREHOUSE
EXTERIOR: the roof is two parallel pitched roofs in an ‘M’ shape, with gables to the east, and adjoining the larger silo building to the west. The roof has a straight, stone coped parapet. On the east elevation the parapet rises in two stepped triangles with obelisks at the apices to cover the roof gables behind.
The front elevation, facing east to Victoria Street North, is in six symmetrical bays. The building is seven stories, with a window to each bay at each level. The top four stories are decorated with three vertical recessed panels, with the panels in the two central bays extending up into the gables of their respective parapets, which incorporate an additional window.
The windows are round-headed, and have nine lights, except for those to the ground and sixth floors, and those within the gables, which have six lights. The windows have stone cills and elongated stone keystones in segmental arch brick lintels. There is a stone plaque with scrolled pediment in each gable, that to the left (south) reading ‘ERECTED’, and the right (north) ‘1906’. A stone plaque centrally at ground floor level names William Marshall. There are two downpipes, running from hoppers emerging at the base of the parapets, one centrally, the other to the south of the southern bay.
The north elevation is nine bays wide and has is a carriageway under the building. The openings at ground floor level are now a mix of doors and windows, and show signs of alteration.
The south elevation only displays its five western bays as its eastern four bays are covered by the adjoining 1930s block (not incouded in the List entry), the ridge of whose gabled roof meets the warehouse building at eaves level on the sixth floor.
The rear, west elevation is largely obscured by the adjoining silo, though the warehouse is slightly wider and projects a little to the north of the silo, revealing a few blocked openings.
INTERIOR: the warehouse and loading building are now flats. The silo is empty and open to the triangular steel roof trusses which have diagonal struts above and below a collar. The ground floor wall surfaces in the silo are in glazed brick.
