Rock Bakery, Strand Road, Londonderry

Rock Bakery, Strand Road, Londonderry

Rock Mill is a five-storey former quayside flour mill built in 1846 for Samuel Gilliland, a prominent local merchant who later served as both Town Commissioner and Harbour Commissioner in the 1860s. A similarly sized store was added to the southern half of the building in the 1870s. The whole complex was converted to apartments for students at Magee College (part of the University of Ulster) by SHAC (Student Housing Association Co-Operative) in the 1980s, and is now operated as social housing by Oaklee Housing Association. Despite substantial internal remodelling and extension during that conversion, the building remains one of the few surviving large steam-powered grain mills in Derry and is a good example of Victorian industrial architecture. It is also of particular industrial archaeological significance as one of the first mills in the north of Ireland to adopt roller milling technology.

The mill is constructed throughout in random rubble schist stone with yellow brick dressings and areas of smooth render. It is five storeys high and seventeen openings wide in total, with pitched, hipped natural slate roofs — probably re-slated — over advanced yellow brick corbelled eaves. Fire-break gables project above the roof line between the ninth and tenth, and tenth and eleventh openings as counted from the north end. All rainwater goods are either ogee cast metal or half-round uPVC gutters. All doors and windows are timber-framed; the windows themselves are one-over-one, top-opening, double-glazed casements with concrete cills.

The building clearly shows two distinct phases of construction. The northern nine-bay section was built first as the mill proper. The southern eight-bay section, added approximately thirty years later as a grain store, sits just across the old townland boundary between Pennyburn and Edenballymore. The earlier, northern section has a slightly higher roofline and incorporates a truncated hipped return at its north end, cut back to the line of the main west elevation when the building was converted to apartments. The shortened gable of this return is finished in smooth render with stucco quoins, and has modern window openings to all floors as well as a vented timber door at ground floor level. Six of the nine openings at the right-hand end of the west elevation of this section are entirely abutted by a modern accommodation block, which is detailed to match the stairwell visible on the east elevation. The exposed part of the west elevation here is two openings wide, with a window and door at ground floor and two windows to each upper floor. All openings in this section have segmental yellow brick heads and jambs, except those at ground floor level, which have splayed split-stone heads and smooth rendered reveals.

The north elevation of the mill has a single window opening to each floor, all with segmental yellow brick heads and smooth rendered jambs. A second, flat-headed window at the top floor is probably a modern insertion. On the east elevation, which faces towards the River Foyle, the third opening from the left is abutted by a modern brick stairwell with yellow brick to its quoins and openings. The remaining exposed section of this elevation has windows to all floors, left of centre. Those at ground floor level have flat stone heads and jambs, while those to the upper floors have segmental yellow brick heads and jambs. The exception is the left-hand ground floor opening, which has a wide segmental yellow brick doorway, probably also a modern insertion.

The southern store section presents a slightly more elaborate architectural character. At its north end, a single-bay-wide section is set back from both east and west elevations, rises seven storeys, and breaks above the general eaves line; this was probably the original stairwell providing access between the mill and store. On its east elevation, a wide segmental-headed yellow brick doorway serves the ground floor, with flat yellow brick headed window openings above; the first floor retains a single-pane window, but the openings above have all been infilled and rendered over. On the west elevation, the stairwell section has been substantially altered and is now entirely smooth-rendered. It has a flat-headed doorway at ground floor, circular brick windows to the first, second and third floors, and a segmental yellow brick window to the top floor — the only opening here likely to be original.

The remaining seven bays of the store form a coherent unit, largely identical on both east and west elevations. The walls are random rubble with yellow brick quoins, and a moulded yellow brick cill course runs across both elevations at each floor level, though the actual cills are of concrete, as are the corner pieces where the brick courses wrap around the quoins. Below each upper floor cill course runs a decorative platband made up of three rows of yellow brick underlined by a single course of purple engineering brick. The central bay of both elevations is slightly advanced and features yellow brick quoins and a pedimented gable, also trimmed in yellow brick. The ground floor openings to both elevations are wide segmental yellow brick arched openings: that on the east has been infilled with two modern window inserts, while that on the west now serves as the main entrance doorway. The south gable of the store is largely abutted by a modern five-storey stairwell detailed to match the other modern additions. Only the left-hand end of the original mill gable is exposed here; it has yellow brick cill courses to all floors above ground level (continuations of those on the east and west elevations) and a pedimented gable trimmed in yellow brick, but no external openings.

The historical story of the mill is well documented. A newspaper account from 1849 describes it as containing six pairs of millstones, powered by steam, and divided into three sections for the simultaneous grinding of oatmeal, flour and Indian corn. The 1858 Griffith Valuation lists the premises — a house, offices and steam mill — at a rateable valuation of £115. The mill appears on the 1853 Ordnance Survey map as "Rock Mill (steam)" and on the 1873 town map as "Rock Flour Mill." The southern store block was added sometime between 1873 and 1877, just across the townland boundary into Edenballymore, and the 1877–83 Valuation revision book records it as a store measuring 30 yards by 11¼ yards over five storeys, with a rateable valuation of £95, owned by Samuel and George Knox Gilliland. Samuel Gilliland's name is crossed out in the 1882 entry, presumably marking his death. That same year, Gilliland & Sons ordered their first roller milling plant from Henry Simon. Roller mills offered a more efficient method of extracting white flour from grain than traditional millstones, and this order came only three years after roller mills first appeared in Ireland at Carlow, and just one year after Bernard Hughes adopted the technology at his Divis Street mill in Belfast — making Rock Mill one of the earliest adopters of roller milling in the north of Ireland. The 1892 valuation records almost identical dimensions for the store, indicating no significant additions in the intervening period.

By the turn of the 20th century, Samuel's two sons, George Knox and Robert Gilliland, were running the operations. The rateable value of the steam mill had risen to £159 while the store remained at £95. By this time the Gillilands had also developed the land to the north of the mill as a bakery, trading as the Rock Bread and Biscuit Company. The 1904 Ordnance Survey map captions the complex as "Rock Mills (flour)." No discernible change to the buildings' footprint is visible on the 1932 Ordnance Survey map. In later years the mill passed to the Belfast milling firm of Green and Co. before being acquired by SHAC in the 1980s for conversion to student apartments.

Rock Mill is aligned north to south, set back and running parallel to the quayside with which it was formerly functionally associated — a relationship that reflects its reliance on imported grain, particularly maize and bread-making wheat brought in bulk from North America. The quayside is now a public amenity area, separated from the mill by a steel fence with semi-mature trees. To the south lies a modern housing and retail development. The land between the mill and Strand Road has been redeveloped for housing, and a substantial modern extension has been added as a return to the west elevation of the mill, connecting to this new housing via a four-storey link bridge; together, the old and new buildings enclose a tarmacked courtyard and car park. At the north end of the mill is a second tarmacked car park, beyond which lies a cleared area of derelict ground on the site of the former Rock Bakery.