The Weaver & Company Ltd flour mill
Built: 1897
Demolished: 1984
These tiles bricks from the Weaver & Co. LTD signage are on display now at Galerie Simpson on loan from Swansea Museum. Come and see these historical architectural features for FREE on Swansea’s High Street.
These tiled bricks are part of a large collection of bricks that made up the huge Weaver and Co. Ltd signage that sat on the top floor of the building.
This huge mill dominated the skyline of Swansea from 1897 to 1984.
Weaver & Company Limited flour mill was a large grain store and processing plant situated near Swansea’s North Dock.
Today the site is occupied by Sainsbury’s supermarket car park.
Weaver’s made flour from imported wheat and then distributed its processed product to the many local bakers in the town and beyond. Such was the importance of Weaver’s in the food chain of the locale that it was targeted by the German Luftwaffe during World War 2 and has been seen by some historians as being the primary draw for the intense bombing of the town in the Three Night’s Blitz of February 1941.
The rather imposing building of Weaver’s was built in 1897 by the French engineer and reinforced concrete pioneer Français Hennebique and was Europe’s first multi-storey reinforced concrete building.
The mill looked very modern architecturally at the time compared to the traditional Victorian splendour of the rebuilt Swansea around Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee that same year.
Miraculously surviving the full might of German bombing during World War II, the company finally closed in the latter half of the same century. The reinforced concrete building proved very difficult to demolish but has now been built upon by the supermarket firm Sainsbury’s.
Further buildings associated with the flour mill have now also been lost to history – their space now occupied by part of Swansea’s main arterial road – Fabian’s Way.
Thank you for reading.
http://www.galeriesimpson.com/artists/13/catrin-saran-james/41/to-market-2015
Catrin
Catrin Saran James 