Victoria Mills

Victoria Mills

Warehouse, grain silo and loading building for a flour mill built between 1889 and 1906, designed by Sir William Gelder of Hull, with twentieth-century additions and alterations. Now in use as flats except for the silo, which is vacant.

The buildings are constructed largely in red brick in English garden wall bond with stone dressings, blue bricks to the base of the warehouse, and Welsh slate roofs. Timber windows date from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century conversion to flats. Circular pattress plates appear on many elevations.

The complex comprises three attached rectangular mill buildings arranged in a staggered rectangular plan, running from the dock to the west to Victoria Street North to the east.

The loading building stands seven stories high under a pitched roof with its gable facing west towards the dock. Windows have stone cills and segmental arch brick lintels. The west elevation is two bays wide, with the first six stories having a single window in their southern bay. The north bay contains a single recessed round-headed opening spanning the ground to third floors, which originally housed a loading conveyor to access vessels in the dock. The fourth floor of the north bay is solid, while the fifth floor has a window matching those in the south bay. The sixth floor has a single centrally placed window spanning both bays. The north and south side elevations are three bays wide with single windows to each bay of the upper stories. Ground floors have doors and windows inserted during the conversion to flats, with steps up to the door in the east bay of the north elevation.

The silo is the tallest building, joined to the west by the loading building and to the east by the eight-storey warehouse. It stands under a pitched roof with gable ends behind parapets topped by obelisk finials, and two flat-roofed dormer windows to each roof slope. The upper walls are largely solid, detailed with giant panels and pilasters. The panels to the east and west have round heads under segmental arch brick lintels; those to the north and south have square heads.

The top part of the east elevation, visible over the adjoining 1906 warehouse, displays alternating vertical panels under segmental arch lintels of rubbed bricks with prominent stone keystones and a stone platband above. End pilasters extend above the eaves to frame yellow-tiled domes within the Dutch gable parapet, which has two centrally located blocked 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; nine western bays 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 at its ends, accommodating a doorway formerly accessed by external staircase.

The west elevation is similar to the east but plainer, lacking platbands and stone keystones in the lintels. The east parapet gable substitutes the curves of the western one for straight lines. The central of five bays has three blocked openings in its top two stories and gable parapet.

The south elevation is completely solid, though with several blocked openings under segmental brick arches at ground floor level.

The warehouse has a roof in 'M' form from two parallel pitched roofs, with gables to the east and joining the larger silo building to the west. A straight stone-coped parapet runs across; 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 has six symmetrical bays across seven stories, with a window to each bay at each level. The top four stories are decorated with three vertical recessed panels, those in the two central bays extending into the gables of their respective parapets, which incorporate an additional window. Windows are round-headed with nine lights, except those to the ground and sixth floors and those within the gables, which have six lights. Windows have stone cills and elongated stone keystones in segmental arch brick lintels. Stone plaques with scrolled pediments occupy each gable: the left (south) reads 'ERECTED' and the right (north) '1906'. A stone plaque at central ground floor level names William Marshall. Two downpipes run from hoppers emerging at the base of the parapets, one centrally and one to the south of the southern bay.

The north elevation is nine bays wide and has a carriageway running under the building. Ground floor openings are now a mix of doors and windows showing signs of alteration.

The south elevation displays only its five western bays, as its eastern four bays are covered by an adjoining 1930s block (not included in this listing). The ridge of that block's gabled roof meets the warehouse at eaves level on the sixth floor.

The rear west elevation is largely obscured by the adjoining silo, though the warehouse projects slightly to the north of the silo, revealing a few blocked openings.

The warehouse and loading building are now fitted as flats. The silo remains empty and open to triangular steel roof trusses with diagonal struts above and below a collar. Ground floor wall surfaces in the silo are finished in glazed brick.