Mills And Bakery, Royal William Victualling Yard

Mills and Bakery, Royal William Victualling Yard

A mills and bakery with associated stores, built 1830-34 by Sir John Rennie Junior for the Victualling Board. The building is constructed in grey limestone ashlar with granite dressings, featuring limestone and granite ashlar internal lateral oven stacks and chimney, with a slate, tile and copper sheet roof (hipped over the bakery and mansard over the mill). Cast-iron internal columns support timber floors. The design exemplifies late Georgian style.

The building is planned as a square with a northwest mill, a projecting central granary containing engine and boiler house, a central courtyard with a chimney and second engine and boiler house, and a southeast bakery. The composition rises to three storeys in the bakery, four storeys in the mills, and five storeys in the central granary and engine house section, with attics throughout. All elevations feature a granite plinth and banded rustication up to a plat band at ground floor level, beneath two-storey round-arched arcades linked by an impost band and a heavy cornice. The mill section rises a further storey with its own cornice, and the central northwest section extends to the quay with a fourth storey and parapet.

The northwest elevation displays 19 windows across its width. Segmental-arched windows appear at ground floor, with flat-headed windows at first floor and square windows at second floor. Mid-19th century small-paned metal windows with tilting casements are present throughout, though some have been replaced by plate-glass sashes and casements. The southeast front features a rusticated granite three-window pedimented centre with full-height round-arched arcade, a central first-floor hoist door, and a lunette in the pediment. The outer halves of the flanking ranges project forward, with central double doors. This elevation has 15 windows. The sides each have 19 windows and are articulated by granite dressings, with the third bay from the southeast emphasised by full-height banded pilaster strips containing double hoist doors to each floor. The north end displays five return bays that are one storey higher than the main range, with a central hoist section; a cast-iron hoist to the third storey is retained at the east end, with segmental-arched third storey windows having plain surrounds. Incised lettering on the southwest side reads "MILLS" at the north end and "BAKERY" at the south. The northwest elevation is articulated similarly to the sides; the central five-bay granary projects two bays to the quay edge, with an open ground floor on rusticated segmental arches and a floor supported by iron columns. Above are rusticated three-storey round-arched arcades containing flat-headed first and second-floor windows, with the central bay extending through four storeys with hoist doors. The extra storey extends back seven bays toward a striking central round chimney with entasis and a slightly flared cap. The granary features segmental-arched small-paned dormers on all sides. The two central courtyards have matching fenestration. The bakery displays four square stacks with granite tops above the former ovens.

The original internal frame comprises timber beams on stone corbels and cast-iron columns with bracketed iron pillars, and a queen post roof. Stone dogleg stairs with iron balusters are positioned at either end of the mill and on the west side of the bakery. The former bakery retains evidence of a central spine wall with ovens on either side and cast-iron doors, though it is largely rebuilt internally with reinforced concrete. Between the bakery and the chimney is a central section with a fire-proof floor of I-section joists slotted into larger iron beams with parabolic flanges, laid over stone flags. The northwest granary contains cruciform iron columns with slots for dividing boards, with the roof supported by slender iron columns. The central boiler house has two levels of columns bolted together, supporting a fire-proof floor of iron joists slotted into a T-section beam.

The bakery originally contained two blocks of six back-to-back ovens positioned along the spine wall. A fire-proof floor between the bakery and the chimney supported a drying kiln, with a twelve horse-power beam engine and boiler house beneath. A forty-five horse-power beam engine was positioned to the north of the central boiler house, between the east and west mills. The mill became operational by 1834, but original machinery was removed to Deptford in 1839 and the building remained unused until 1843. By 1846, two beam engines drove millstones and biscuit-making machinery. The upper floors of the side ranges appear to have been used for drying biscuits.

The building was damaged by fire in 1929 and partly re-roofed in 1934. The bakery and east wing sustained fire damage in 1960 and were rebuilt in 1962.

The structure is remarkably intact for an industrial building and is probably the largest example of its type when compared with the equivalent bakery at Royal Clarence Yard, Gosport. Together with Melville and the matching Brewhouse, it forms a very fine seaward front to Royal William. The Yard itself represents one of the most remarkable and complete early nineteenth-century industrial complexes in the country and is a unique English example of Neo-Classical planning applied to a large state manufacturing site.