The Burghley Street warehouse

ALSO KNOWN AS SHILCOCK'S MILL AND WHERRY'S MILL

One of the last remaining warehouses from the corn trade in Bourne still stands at the end of Wherry's Lane overlooking the car park in Burghley Street and has had a chequered history over two centuries.

The four-storey grain warehouse was built in the early years of the 19th century but despite its age and architectural interest has not been listed as worthy of preservation although this may change with the current re-assessment of the Conservation Area for Bourne that is now underway.

It was at one time owned by Robert James Shilcock (1823-1908), owner of the Star Brewery but also had other business interests in the town including the corn trade and the mill in South Street, now known as Baldock's Mill, which he leased from 1856 although he employed a manager to run it. During this period the Burghley Street warehouse was used as a maltings or brewery and became known as Shilcock's Mill.

The warehouse was used for flax processing in the early years of the 20th century and ownership subsequently passed to Wherry & Sons who used it to store cotton cake, mollasine meal and other products for retailing to local farmers and for the manufacture of compound animal feed, the products being hoisted to the top floor for mixing before being passed below to the first floor for bagging.

Animal feed production was eventually moved to the South Street warehouse in 1954 and in 1956 the company added an asbestos extension to the building to house a new cereal seed cleaning plant while the original brick section was used for the mixing of clover and grass seed. During this period it was sometimes known as Wherry's Mill.

Wherry's sold the building to Nursery Supplies (Bourne) Ltd which used it for storage and distribution but the firm closed down in 2001 when ownership passed to Warners (Midlands) plc, the local printing firm, but had only sporadic use although occasionally maintained, including re-painting during 2002.

In 2008, the warehouse was bought by South Kesteven District Council for £350,000 as part of the proposed redevelopment of the town centre. In September 2009, the council posted a notice on the north wall announcing its intention to include the building in the forthcoming scheme but no details of how it would be used were given. Various community roles were suggested, such as a block of flats, library and even an arts centre, but none came to fruition because the entire town centre scheme was abandoned in 2010.

The following year the council proposed a more modest scheme for the refurbishment of Wherry's Lane only at a cost of £2.2 million. This would involve turning the warehouse into a complex of fourteen first and second floor apartments with an arcade of seven shops behind and work began on the project in the autumn of 2012.

Work was nearing completion in the summer of 2013 when South Kesteven District Council was taken to task by a local resident for failing to observe its own planning guidelines when restoring the warehouse. He pointed out that the frontage has an established pattern of window design from the period in which it was built but those in the grain hoist section had been replaced with new ones that were totally inappropriate.

“I would have expected them to be made with glazing bars and wide frames to match the original windows but instead they have been done as cheaply and tattily as possible”, wrote Robert Harvey of Beech Avenue, Bourne, in his letter of protest to the council on 29th July. “I do not doubt that windows are required in a position where formerly there were none and I imagine that they are needed to light some new internal corridor but this should have been done with far more care to match what is already there. Were this the property of a private individual and those windows had been fitted I would have expected your office to have been complaining immediately until they were changed.”

Mr Harvey has also condemned the wooden cladding that had been added and said that the shape of the barge boards and the lower course of tiles had nothing to do with a building of this age. “I have no doubt we will grow accustomed to these”, he said, “but there is no hope of ever forgiving the hideous windows.”

Although not listed, the warehouse does stand within the town’s Conservation Area and Mr Harvey claimed that the work breached the council’s own guidelines for property owners in conservation areas which quite clearly stated that where there was an established pattern of window design or glazing and it was considered important for the character or appearance of the building, the new windows should be designed to take account of the existing design and glazing. “But these do no such thing”, he said. “They are hideously out of place.”

He went on: “No doubt planning permission was given but it should not have been and the council should think very seriously about why it was. This redevelopment was an opportunity for the council to take the lead and show other property owners the standard to which they should aspire but in this case they have set a bad precedent.”

The council, however, did not agree, claiming that the overall conversion had significantly enhanced the building and the surrounding area as well as preserving a major, undesignated heritage asset. “It is considered that the scheme has resulted in an overall enhancement of its appearance by removing large unsightly additions and restoring the historic fabric”, said Justin Johnson, the principal planning officer, in his reply on September 16th. “The windows used in the main building are of timber construction and of similar design to the original windows. With regard to the windows in the sack hoist, it is considered that the use of similar windows to that in the main building with glazing bars would have been architecturally inappropriate. The original sack hoist was patched up and unsightly. The sack hoist has been completely replaced with a new structure and it is considered that the windows are appropriate for this element of the building and the timber boarding will weather naturally over time.”

Planning permission was no doubt passed on the nod by the council but if the building had been Grade II listed it is quite certain that this work would not have been carried out without detailed investigation when it would have been subjected to the utmost scrutiny with input from the public and our various conservation organisations, including English Heritage, with final approval needed from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Certainly one aspect of the development that would have occupied their attention yet seems to have escaped the district council is the misalignment of the window on the left in the new bottom row that has disrupted the entire symmetry of the facade, a glaringly obvious detail that certainly would not have received the approval of English Heritage.

As it is, we have a fait accompli and it will therefore be up to the people of Bourne to judge whether work on the grain warehouse is a hotchpotch or a sympathetic conversion although, more importantly, history will make the final appraisal as to whether it becomes an important part of our heritage or a missed opportunity.

PHOTO ALBUM
The Burghley Street warehouse when used by Nursery Supplies and the redevelopment sign erected by South Kesteven District Council in 2009.
The warehouse was put on the market in January 2010 seeking offers to rent and suitable for storage or community use but only for the ground floor, the first, second and third floors of the front section being excluded from any lease for safety reasons. The property was described as being a substantial brick built warehouse of basic construction beneath an asbestos cement covered roof with a concrete floor and a timber, sliding vehicle loading door to Burghley Street.
Work was nearing completion in September 2013 when a complaints was lodged with South Kesteven District Council that the central windows over the former grain hoist were incongruous and out of keeping with the history of the building and the council's own guidelines for buildings within the Conservation Area. However, the council has introduced rather nice touch with the addition of bat boxes on either side of the grain sack hoist near the roof for any bats that may have been disturbed during construction work..
The finished restoration with fourteen flats up for sale.

NOTE: Acknowledgments to Seven Generations of a Family Business - The Story of
Wherry & Sons Ltd., published 2009.

REVISED SEPTEMBER 2013

See also

The Wherry's Lane redevelopment

Robert Shilcock     Flax     Wherry & Sons     The corn trade