The Maltings

THE MALTINGS, SILEBY

Former brewery, empty at time of inspection. Built circa 1860 for William Sharpe, with additions in 1884 and the early 20th century. Red brick with moulded brick and stone dressings and Welsh slate roof coverings, replaced in some areas with 20th-century corrugated sheeting.

The complex is T-shaped, centred on a tower brewery and fermentation building, with a linked range of floor maltings, malt kiln, Union Room and offices to the north-east.

TOWER BREWERY

The tower brewery, incorporating the former engine room and attached fermentation rooms, forms the centrepiece. The brewery tower is square on plan, four storeys and attics, with an attached tall three-storied fermentation building to the right. The tower has shallow segmental arch-headed windows to its gabled front elevation on floors 2, 3 and 4 with paired windows; the ground floor has a taller window to the right and a doorway set at a lower level to the left. All window frames are three-over-three pane sashes with curved heads. The attic floor has an opening to the centre of the gable apex with a boarded shutter. At the centre of the ridge is a decorative ventilation louvre with shallow pyramidal roof. Between floors 3 and 4 and floor 4 and the attic are dark painted bands; the lower band has white lettering reading "THE MALTINGS".

The left side elevation has two ground floor windows and a first floor taking-in door set below a gable hoist canopy carried on angled struts rising from wall corbels. Above the canopy are two further openings, that to the attic floor blocked. To the rear, at the south-west corner, is an integral truncated tapered brick chimney to the former engine room. The fermentation rooms attached to the right of the tower comprise four bays with an altered central ground floor area incorporating a 20th-century metal stair. Ground, first and second floors retain arch-headed window openings, some blocked. Enlarged upper floor windows have flat heads set just below a dentilled eaves course. The rear elevation is now obscured by 20th-century concrete additions.

FLOOR MALTINGS AND MALT KILN

The floor maltings with attached malt kiln at the south-west end comprises three storeys and attics above cellars. The kiln has a tall pyramidal roof with an apex louvre and shallow arch-headed windows to the upper floor of its three exposed elevations. Lower openings have been altered and enlarged. The floor maltings is three storeys above cellars and seven bays, with low shallow arch-headed openings to the front and rear walls to ventilate the malting floors. The openings have some surviving multi-pane cast iron frames with opening lights.

UNION ROOM AND OFFICES

To the north-east, the attached Union Room and offices are set together. The Union Room is a five-bay, two-storied building with attic and basement levels. The north-west elevation has basement, ground and first floor window openings; those to the upper two floors have segmental arched heads and three-over-three pane sash windows. To the centre of the upper floor is a taking-in doorway, and above this is a further doorway set within a gabled dormer. A decorative stepped eaves band is returned at both gable ends. The gable ends have single windows to the gable apexes; the gable to the street elevation has additionally three first floor windows. The offices are contained within a triple-gabled single-storied projection from the north-eastern gable of the Union Room onto the street frontage. The office range has a blind, keyed semi-circular arch to each gable apex, below which are inserted 20th-century shop display windows.

INTERIORS

All interiors are now devoid of original fixtures and fittings, but all retain original working floors. The malt kiln retains an original roof structure, and the floors within the maltings retain tile floor coverings and a central arcade of cast-iron columns. At the north-east end of the floor maltings, the first floor is supported by a web of flanged metal beams within which are set projecting circular plates, suggesting this area housed the barley steep where grain was soaked prior to spreading on the malting floors.

Within the Union Room, tall cast iron columns support timber cross beams, some with metal plates to their lower faces. The roof structure is designed to create an open attic floor, with an underboarded four purlin roof carried on wide collar beam trusses with low angle-braced posts at the junction of the principal rafters and collar beams. The latter support strutted king posts, above which the roof is further stiffened on both sides by longitudinal timber plates notched over the collar beams, which support diagonal braces rising to the uppermost tier of purlins. The Union Room cellar ceiling is formed from shallow brick jack arches supported on low cast-iron columns.

HISTORY

The complex is thought to have been developed in the 1860s when William Sharpe established a small brewery to the rear of the Duke of York public house on the High Street in Sileby. The brewery was enlarged in the 1880s with the addition of the floor maltings and the Union Room. According to sale details of 1906, the complex was equipped with six sets of unions with attemporators in casks and boxes on the Burton principle. The Burton principle refers to a recirculating fermentation system known as the Burton Union, practised in Burton-upon-Trent breweries from the 1830s onwards. The Union system consisted of a row of casks connected to a common trough by way of a series of pipes, allowing excess yeast foam to be expelled from the casks and enabling any expelled beer to be separated from wasted yeast and flow back into the casks to continue fermentation.

The brewery remained operational until the late 1920s, though the floor maltings continued in use for a longer period. The 1906 sale plan and details depict the fully developed brewery complex with stabling, bottling plant, cooperage and storage buildings, as well as the main process buildings which survive today.