Former maltings of Bass Industrial Estate

This is an industrial-scale maltings complex completed in 1907 to the designs of A.H. Couchman, Chief Engineer for the brewers Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton of Burton-on-Trent, and believed to be the largest example of its type to have been built in England.

Materials and Construction

The maltings are constructed of red and blue engineering brick with decorative brick detailing and ashlar stone dressings. The buildings have Welsh slate coverings which incorporate metal ventilators. Floors are supported on metal girders and cast-iron columns. Window openings, bridges, lucams and hoist canopies have cast-iron components.

Overall Layout

The maltings complex is a symmetrical rectangular composition of nine parallel ranges aligned north-south, with a central range formed of the power unit, barley store, screens and kiln, flanked to the east and west sides by four multi-storeyed floor maltings. At the north and south ends of the complex are railway tracks, and beyond the tracks at the south end of the complex are five small mess rooms, four of which are located facing the alleyways between the maltings, with the fifth facing the central range.

The Central Range

The central range is made up of the power unit for the site, and areas for the initial reception, storage, and preparation of the green barley to be processed in the floor maltings. From this area, water for steeping, power, and grain to be processed were distributed to the maltings by pipework and a series of power and conveyor bridges linking the component elements of the central range.

At the southern end of this range is a tall four-stage square brick tower rising from a blue brick plinth to support a cast-iron water tank above a decorative brick cornice. Each elevation has tall arch-headed lancets to each level, four to the ground floor and paired openings set within recessed panels to each of the upper stages. The openings have multi-pane metal frames. Delineating each stage are decorative storey bands.

Attached to the east side of the tower is a single-storey boiler house with two wide semi-circular arched openings to the front elevation, set below a shallow gable with barge boards, decorative brickwork to its verges and a circular opening with radiating glazing bars within its apex. It has a louvred ventilator to its ridge.

Attached to the rear of the water tower is a single-storey engine house with double-recessed, semi-circular arch-headed window and door openings and a long clerestory ventilator below a shallow hipped roof.

To the rear of the boiler house is an elegant tapered octagonal chimney, rising from a tall square brick pedestal with a moulded ashlar band to its base. Each face to the pedestal has a recessed central panel, and at its junction with the chimney shaft, a deep ashlar plinth. The chimney shaft has intermediate ashlar bands and a deep oversailing ashlar cap. To the rear of the chimney is a tall cast-iron circular head to the site's artesian well.

The remaining sections of the central range housed the barley screens, the barley kiln used to dry the green barley before steeping and the green barley intake building or granary at the northern end of the range. The barley screens section of the range, where incoming grain was screened to remove husks and harvest debris, is three storeys high, but has been seriously fire damaged with only the exterior walls, hoist platforms and vestiges of interior floor structures surviving.

The barley kiln, immediately to the north of the screens section, is a long, two-storey structure with a five-bay open arcade to each side of the ground floor. Above each of the semi-circular arcade arches is an arch-headed lancet with a cast-iron multi-pane window frame. At the wall head is a dentilled eaves band, and at ridge level, a long ventilator to vent the kiln. Set back within the arcade are the inner walls to the kiln, with arched openings to the base of its deep blue-brick plinth.

Attached at the north end of the barley kiln is the central granary building, where grain was received on site from the rail head running the length of the north end of the site. The granary is of three storeys above a half basement, and is five bays wide and two bays in depth. The largely blind gable walls incorporate paired full-height arch-headed recesses, each with a ventilation opening at its head, and in each gable apex is a single circular opening. The north elevation has a central two-storeyed lucam with a hipped roof set above a deep ground floor canopy supported on curved cast-iron brackets. Each bay to this elevation is delineated by shallow buttress-like pilasters with set-offs. The bays have stacked window openings with segmental-arched heads and sloping sills. The central bay has a double doorway immediately above the blue brick plinth at a level which allowed unloading from railway wagons.

The Maltings Ranges

Each of the maltings ranges (numbered 1-4 and 6-9 from west to east for the purpose of this description) is identically detailed, although ranges 4, 6 and 7 are incomplete, having been significantly damaged by fire. Each range is comprised of granary areas where both barley and the finished malt were stored, steeps where barley was soaked prior to germination, germination floors where the soaked grain was spread to allow germination, and kilns where the barley was transformed into malt. The steeps are located at the southern end of each range, with the germination floors immediately to the north. The twin malt kilns for each range are sited to the north of the germination floors, with the final section of each range, comprising malt storage granaries incorporating a deep ground floor canopy supported by curved cast-iron brackets, located at the north end of each range.

The front section of each range is a five-bay, six-storey building, aligned east-west. The bays are delineated by buttress-like pilasters with set-offs, and all but the central bay have shallow segmental arch-headed window openings to each level. The central bay has no openings to the first five floors, but there is a lucam to the upper floor supported by deep curved cast-iron brackets. Each lucam is clad with wooden boarding and has a hipped roof. The gables to the frontage buildings are of three-bay depth and have shallow stepped corbelled brick decoration to the verges. The central bay to each gable which faces adjacent maltings ranges has openings to each level, that to the fourth floor originally giving access to a metal power transmission bridge supported on curved cast-iron brackets. The flanking bays have window openings to the first three floors and dentil decoration to the top of the windowless upper section.

Extending from the rear of the frontage buildings are four-storey, ten-bay germination floors. The bays have stacked window openings set between full-height pilasters. The main section of each germination floor building has parallel pitched roofs with a central valley, aligned north-south whilst the three northernmost bays are contained within a gabled range aligned at right angles to the southern bays. The fourth bay from the north end has a gabled hoist cathead above a fourth floor platform with a latticed metal enclosure, supported on deep curved cast-iron brackets. These gables, where they face adjacent ranges, were designed to support conveyor bridges and pedestrian access ways at third and fourth floor levels. The surviving two-storey conveyor bridge structures span the alleys between the maltings ranges, and incorporate five two-light windows within boarded side walls.

To the north of the germination floors in each range are pairs of malt kilns, their louvred roofs aligned east-west. The kilns are located behind paired gables, each of three bays, the bays defined by pilasters. There is dentilled brickwork to the head of each bay, and a circular window to each gable apex. There is a window opening to the head of each central bay, openings to the two innermost bays of each gable, and low semi-circular headed arches to basements below the kiln floors. The kilns have ridge ventilators with shallow hipped roofs, but some have been replaced by later 20th-century cylindrical ventilators.

The northernmost section of each maltings range is a seven-bay, two-storeyed granary or malt garner for the storage of kilned malt, set beneath parallel hipped roof structures. The bays are delineated by pilasters, with alternating bays with openings, including low arched openings to basement areas. At the end of each range is a deep single-pitch canopy with boarded sides supported on curved cast-iron brackets. The canopies cover the centre three bays of the five-bay north end elevation of the maltings ranges, the middle bays of which house the double doorways from which the finished malt was dispatched.

Interior Structure and Features

The design of the maltings complex was strongly influenced by functional imperatives – storage and load-bearing capacities, together with spatial interconnectivity and both vertical and horizontal grain transportation capability. The structural characteristics of the interiors were determined by these imperatives, with load-bearing floors comprised of metal beams supported on cast-iron columns. Some beams of deep section are riveted, others are rolled steel joists. In the lower floors at both ends of the maltings ranges where barley was stored, steeped or germinated, the floor beams are supported on triple arcades of metal columns. At second floor level, the granary floors at the north end of the ranges have a single row of columns, whilst the germination floors and steeps retain triple column arcades to all floors. The three germination floors within the maltings are tile covered, with timber floors elsewhere in the ranges. The roof structures are carried on queen post trusses with collars and angle struts. Where the roof structure includes a roof ventilator, it is supported by short posts rising from the truss collars.

Fire Damage and Alterations

The central range of the maltings complex, together with substantial areas of ranges 4, 6 and 7 were severely damaged in a 1976 fire. All timber floor and roof structures in the germinating floor and steep areas of ranges 4, 6 and 7 were lost. The kilns in ranges 4 and 6 suffered partial roof collapses, and the bridges between blocks 4, 5, 6 and 7 were burnt out, with only sections of metal frame remaining. The barley screens area of the central range and the attached bridge structures suffered similar levels of damage. However, five of the eight malthouses remain externally intact, as do the water tower, boiler and engine houses, barley kiln and the green barley granary.

The interiors of the remaining maltings ranges have undergone varying degrees of alteration as a result of the adaptive re-use of much of the complex, following the cessation of malting. These alterations include the creation of a limited number of new internal and external openings in some ranges, the replacement of cast-iron window frames with modern components, and the removal of the kiln floors.

Surviving Equipment and Fittings

Internal fixtures and fittings survive in varying degrees in the different ranges, with ranges 1, 2, 3 and 9 retaining the highest proportion of internal material. Many of these features are integral to floor and roof areas, and include chutes, drainage and waste holes and covers, floor hatches and mechanisms for adjusting roof ventilators. Storage equipment, such as barley steeps, water tanks, and associated pipework survive in the most complete ranges. Most of the ranges retain sections of line shafting and hoist mechanisms, particularly in the surviving lucams. A small number of belt or bucket conveyors and barley conduits remain in situ. The most altered areas are the kilns, where furnaces and kiln floors have been removed. Ranges 3, 8 and 9 retain kiln features, including, in range 9, the only surviving area of perforated tile kiln flooring. Range 1 contains the largest number of surviving fixtures and fittings of any of the maltings, whilst the water tower retains significant elements of its water storage and distribution equipment, together with an iron spiral staircase and other timber stairs giving access to upper levels and the water tank at the top of the tower. All of the power plant, including the steam engines and boilers have been removed. A full inventory of surviving fixtures and fittings, and plans indicating their locations are contained within the historic buildings report prepared by the agents for site owners in June 2007.