History
The flour mills were built by Joseph Rank on land reclaimed land and opened in 1934. The building was seriously damaged in the Second World War but was rebuilt and back into operation by 1950. The interior of the building has been remodeled several times since and hence its not a particularly easy building to navigate around. Hovis announced closure in early 2018 and the site closed at the end of the year with the loss of 71 jobs. Associated British Ports, which owns the site, intend to flatten the building, with demolition likely to begin this year. It really is a lovely building, especially the original silos, surviving from the first phase of construction with their tiled writing. Its unlikely a new use will be found unfortunately as the building is sited in a working port, but there certainly is potential to turn it onto a hotel for the cruise ship terminal.
I've made a fairly crude plan of the building to make its evolution a bit easier to understand
Original buildings (c 1934)
The Explore
First visited the building just under a year ago with @jsp77 and prettyvacant. Nearly all the lights were on and decommissioning had only just begun. After hearing that Solent Mills is likely to be demolished I decided to have a solo revisit. The entry point I had used previously had been locked up but it didn't take too long to find an alternative way inside and had my usual sleepless night on the floor of an old office waiting for it to get light. After waking up many times, it was finally light enough to get some photos, once inside you pretty much have access to the whole building. Many of the lights still work and it looks like decommissioning work was completed at the end of the summer. I missed out some of the sections I had visited previously, including the silos, power house and most of the parts which are now in darkness. There is now a fair bit of mould about, which is especially annoying when you grab a door handle and take off a handful of crap. I'm surprised more people haven't visited this place, especially when places like Cottam and Britvic had similar amounts of coverage about their closure. It's a lovely old building with a lot to see and it's not a hard place to get into if you're careful.
A real shame they stuck a load of cladding over the large art deco silos, the red brickwork and white concrete details was stunning
E Mill
This was the only one of the three roller mills which had windows and full working lights, so I didn't spend much time in the others this time
E Mill, Seals floor
E Mill, Seals floor
E Mill, Sifter floor
E Mill, Purifier floor
E Mill, Purifier floor
E Mill, Spouts floor
E Mill, Roller floor
E Mill, Roller floor
The Roller floor control room in F Mill
The G Mill roller floor as it looked in February 2019
The same view now
Multipurpose block
View attachment
Multipurpose block, General view
Machinery in the multipurpose block
Hoppers in the multipurpose block
Warehouse
Warehouse, Top floor
Warehouse, Sixth floor
Warehouse, Sixth floor
Warehouse, general view
Warehouse, general view
Labs & Offices
It was really frustrating to find these cleared out ,they were filled with equipment when we peered through the windows but appeared to be locked up, I wish we'd tried a bit harder to find a way in now, but they were still nice to see.
Staff kitchen
Upper labs
Lower labs
Test bakery
Test bakery
The flour mills were built by Joseph Rank on land reclaimed land and opened in 1934. The building was seriously damaged in the Second World War but was rebuilt and back into operation by 1950. The interior of the building has been remodeled several times since and hence its not a particularly easy building to navigate around. Hovis announced closure in early 2018 and the site closed at the end of the year with the loss of 71 jobs. Associated British Ports, which owns the site, intend to flatten the building, with demolition likely to begin this year. It really is a lovely building, especially the original silos, surviving from the first phase of construction with their tiled writing. Its unlikely a new use will be found unfortunately as the building is sited in a working port, but there certainly is potential to turn it onto a hotel for the cruise ship terminal.
I've made a fairly crude plan of the building to make its evolution a bit easier to understand
Original buildings (c 1934)
- Old silo - original grain storage silo
- Middle Silo - constructed shortly after the old silo as an afterthought
- Power House - Some nice tilework inside by the generator has sadly long gone
- E Mill - Although it survived the war intact, the interior was remodeled and top floor rebuilt, probably in the 70s
- Workshops & Offices - These have been modernized and have now been cleared out
- New Silo - fairly bland modern grain silo
- A,B and C Mills - These mills probably closed around 2000 and have had virtually all their machinery removed, but there's some great peely paint and stuff. Can be accessed from floor 3, between G Mill and the warehouse
- G Mill - This was constructed within the old ABC Mills around 2005. It was intact on my first visit a year ago but the majority of the machinery has now been removed
- F Mill - All the machinery is still intact and is slightly more recent then that in E Mill
- Multipurpose bit - wasn't given a proper name on the plans I found. Contains various different machinery including cookers and hoppers
- Warehouse - contains lots of circular storage silos for the milled flour
- Labs and Offices - now cleared out but the labs are still quite nice
The Explore
First visited the building just under a year ago with @jsp77 and prettyvacant. Nearly all the lights were on and decommissioning had only just begun. After hearing that Solent Mills is likely to be demolished I decided to have a solo revisit. The entry point I had used previously had been locked up but it didn't take too long to find an alternative way inside and had my usual sleepless night on the floor of an old office waiting for it to get light. After waking up many times, it was finally light enough to get some photos, once inside you pretty much have access to the whole building. Many of the lights still work and it looks like decommissioning work was completed at the end of the summer. I missed out some of the sections I had visited previously, including the silos, power house and most of the parts which are now in darkness. There is now a fair bit of mould about, which is especially annoying when you grab a door handle and take off a handful of crap. I'm surprised more people haven't visited this place, especially when places like Cottam and Britvic had similar amounts of coverage about their closure. It's a lovely old building with a lot to see and it's not a hard place to get into if you're careful.
A real shame they stuck a load of cladding over the large art deco silos, the red brickwork and white concrete details was stunning
E Mill
This was the only one of the three roller mills which had windows and full working lights, so I didn't spend much time in the others this time
E Mill, Seals floor
E Mill, Seals floor
E Mill, Sifter floor
E Mill, Purifier floor
E Mill, Purifier floor
E Mill, Spouts floor
E Mill, Roller floor
E Mill, Roller floor
The Roller floor control room in F Mill
The G Mill roller floor as it looked in February 2019
The same view now
Multipurpose block
View attachment
Multipurpose block, General view
Machinery in the multipurpose block
Hoppers in the multipurpose block
Warehouse
Warehouse, Top floor
Warehouse, Sixth floor
Warehouse, Sixth floor
Warehouse, general view
Warehouse, general view
Labs & Offices
It was really frustrating to find these cleared out ,they were filled with equipment when we peered through the windows but appeared to be locked up, I wish we'd tried a bit harder to find a way in now, but they were still nice to see.
Staff kitchen
Upper labs
Lower labs
Test bakery
Test bakery
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