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Friends of the Flax Mill and Maltings
This is the homepage for the Friends of the Ditherington Flax Mill and Maltings.
Aerial Photographs of The Flax Mill and Maltings
An oblique aerial photograph of the Ditherington Flax Mill taken on the 5th of April 2009 as part of the English Heritage funded Shropshire Aerail Survey 2008-20011.
These two aerial photgraphs show the Flax Mill as it looks now, with the elaborate scaffolding erected a couple of years ago , and in the mid 1990s, before the shed to the NW of the North Silo was demolished.
See the Album on the left hand side for all the 1995 Aerial Photographs.
The Ditherington Flax Mill and Maltings
An oblique aerial photograph of the Ditherington Flax Mill taken by Chris Musson on the 4th of April 1995.
In 1796-7, a revolutionary flax mill was constructed alongside the newly built canal at Ditherington. It was built by John Marshall of Leeds, the pioneer of the mechanisation of flax spinning, in conjunction with his Shrewsbury business partners, the Beynon Brothers, and Charles Bage. Bage was one of the brilliant circle of scientific engineers, industrialists and intellectuals who were giving the county its technological cutting edge. In order to build a fireproof building, Bage devised a complete iron frame, and the Main Mill building he designed at Ditherington is the world's oldest iron-framed building. The Flax Warehouse, built in 1805, and the Cross Mill, rebuilt in 1811, are respectively the third and eighth oldest iron framed buildings in the world. The Flax Mill was owned and operated by three generations of the Marshall family until it closed in 1886. In 1897 the complex was acquired by William Jones, himself a pioneer in the industrialisation of the Malting process, and he converted it into a maltings. The business faltered, but did not close, in the mid 1930s, and during the Second World War the complex was used as an army barracks. After the War, the Malting business revived, and, as part of its efforts to keep up to date, built two concrete silos on the site in the 1950s and 1960s. The Maltings closed in 1987, and the site has remained largely empty since that time.
The Maltings used as a Barracks in WWII
The Shropshire Regimental Museum's Oral History project recorded the memories of several of those who found themsleves living in the Maltings during the Second World War.
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Visit the Friends' own Website
The Friends of the Flax Mill Maltings now have their own website. Click on the link to visit it.
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Ditherington Mill complex
In 1796-7, a flax mill was constructed alongside the canal at Ditherington, part of which, the main mill, was the world's first multi-storey iron-framed building. The Flax mill was converted to a Maltings in c 1897. The Maltings closed in 1987. The compl