Old Milk Factory (Ice Cremery) adjacent to Greenfield House

8526

Mid C19. Purpose-built milk processing building, subsequently used as egg packing station and joinery workshop.

Three storeys, red brick with four oversailing courses at eaves and verges with short returns along gable front. Slate roof with roof lights. Simple rectangular plan. Gable, roadside, end has tall central opening with segmental arched head infilled with a modern loading door in each storey. The stub of a winch pulley is set above the door openings. Symmetrical arrangement of windows flanking the door; on the first and second floors small-paned metal frame windows in segmental headed openings, on the ground floor modern windows under plain wood lintels. Identical metal frame windows and openings used on the side walls in distinctive regular arrangement. East side wall central window replaced by plank loading door. Gable end facing house had former door entry from the house, now blocked in brick.

Interior: Ground floor subdivided with modern partitions; first and second floors open plan. First floor with massive transverse beams supported on cast-iron columns, second floor has exposed king-post trusses resting on the wall plate.

The top floor was used as Village Assembly Rooms for meetings and entertainment in late C19.

The Milk Factory forms a group with Greenfield House and together with City House (The Post Office) illustrates a short-lived phase of entrepenurial development in Four Crosses in the mid C19. The industrialisation of milk processing was closely linked to the expansion of specialised dairy herds on enlarged farmyards in Domgay and Haughton.