Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History The Great Float Flour Mills

In the 1930s Merseyside was the second largest flour milling centre in the World, with the bulk of the mills located around the Great Float in Birkenhead and Wallasey. The Great Float was designed as one large dock, running from Poulton Bridge to Tower Road, however the Duke Street Bridge had to be built to maintain ancient rights of way, so the Great Float was divided in two: the West Float on the Poulton Bridge side and the East Float on the river side. The Birkenhead mills were built on the West Float and the Wallasey Mills on the East Float.



The first mill was built on the East Float by Robert Buchanan in 1894, this was soon followed by mills built by W Vernon & Sons (West Float), Paul Brothers (Homepride Mills) and Spillers & Bakers (both East Float). One of the last mills built was Ocean Flour Mills which was built in Birkenhead in 1913 for Joseph Rank Ltd.



Ocean Flour Mill was built next to Gill Brook Basin, the site of William Lairds first shipbuilding yard. The mill was separated from Vernon’s Mill to the west by a basin called Rank’s Creek. A post war extension to Vernon’s Mill was built on the site of the Canada Works of Thomas Brassey.



The six storey buildings on the East Float were originally built as granaries, and were the first granaries in the world to have hydraulic grain elevators and hoists. By 1900 most of the granaries had been converted to mills.



Buchanan’s flour and cattle food mills lined both sides of the dock road and were connected by numerous high level covered walkways.

The mills were highly automated for their day, using hydraulic grain elevators to lift the grain from the ships and barges to the top of the granaries. Numerous spiral chutes carried the grain back down to the milling areas. The mills were dusty and dangerous, flour dust in air is an explosive mixture and fire was a constant worry in the mills, to such an extent that if it was necessary to interrupt the water supply to a mill, then fire engines had to stand by outside.



The Homepride mills and granaries, owned by the Paul Brothers of Upton, consisted of four buildings, again joined by high level covered walkways, these were built on either side of a narrow dock. This dock, which opened into the East Float, was used by barges which brought grain from ships berthed elsewhere in Birkenhead and Liverpool. Barges were moved about the docks by a series of hydraulic capstans.

During the second world war, the mills were badly damaged by bombing and fire, part of Buchanan’s mill being totally destroyed. The mills retained the scars from the war right up to their demolition.



The last remaining East Float buildings are the granaries of the Liverpool Grain Storage Company, now converted into flats, these were part of the Homepride mill complex. The last mill was operated by Spillers in the Homepride mill and was demolished in 2000.



The last Mill operating on the Birkenhead side was the Ocean Flour Mill, operated by Rank Hovis, which closed in 1988. Click here to see all that remains of Ocean Flour Mill today.

The mills were often demolished by blowing out the base of the building and allowing the rest to collapse inwards. This process went wrong when the newer part of Vernons Mill was demolished. When the base was blown out, the building just dropped down intact, leaning at an angle of about 10 degrees.

[picture to follow when I find it!]

There is a video of one of the mills on fire, and views of the docks here.

excellent report mate, what this site is about. Thanks for sharing.

Fantastic little bit of history. My vague memories of the mills were when I went for swimming lessons at Guinea Gap (before the refurb). It was like entering another world going along the dock road. I also remember the smell that used to sometimes drift over from Spillers. And of course being able to see the top of the Rank building from my Nan's front bedroom window on Norman Street.

I also remember travelling that route to Guinea Gap Baths, on a Sunday morning with my father. This must have been about 1960 when we were living in Manor Hill.

The instructor was called 'Tony' (probably had another name, but I don't remember ever hearing it).

A Luftwaffe bombing target map showing the mills as targets outlined in red:

wow that's an amazing piece uptoncx

Got to Rate you 5 stars for that one

Here are some Mills on the East Float - Wallasey, putting up a fight.

Thank you uptoncx for a very interesting post - my father worked at Buchanan's Flour Mills for 40+ years before retiring about 1974 - I had many visits there as a child

wow 10 out of 10 for the report well done

Enjoyed reading that. Thanks

Some pics from a 1950s M D & H B handbook on the 'Port of Liverpool'.

Good stuff Bri

There used to be an old dear lived in Livingstone Street and her tale was that when her husband joined up to fight she moved her bed downstairs into the front parlour. When the flour mills got bombed she was in bed and was woken up by a flag stone coming through her front window and landing in her bed beside her and missing her completely but collapsing the bed somewhat. This tale used to come out now and again when the old 'uns were talking about the war and she wasn't the only one to tell it so I would say it was quite true.

This is facinating to me as my father was a director of Spillers and what was then called Area General Manager (some sort of CEO nowadays no doubt) from 1947 till the late 60's with offices in The Cunard Bulding. He was in charge of all the operations in the Northwest. There were four other areas based in Southwest (Bristol & Cardiff), London, Hull and Scotland. Spillers HO was then Old Change House London.
Vernon's and Paul Bros were part of Spillers along with UVECO in Dock Road Wallesey. I think Buchannan's belonged to Ranks.
Unfortunately all the photos and documents relating to Spillers during mt father's time were lost (read destroyed) when his house was demolished.
I will try find out more. However the following will give some insight into Spillers as of 1934

Spillers 1934 Review

Master Bun the Baker's son !!

Thanks for the extra information and the link to 'Grace's Guide' which I'd never seen before. It led me to lots of other companies I was interested in, mainly to do with previous jobs.

Bri