Millennium Mills. © David Secombe 2013.

The Road to East Ham – Micheal MacCumiskeigh:

East Ham. I’m still only in East Ham. I walk down the cracked concrete road under an arborial sky on the road to Vietnam in all its artifice.

The derelict gas works is dressed with imported Spanish palm trees hanging their heads, famished in a cold climate. The wrong choppers and the wrong soldiers. A bellicose nest of English squaddies squat in a huge marquee, drinking tea and intermittently stuffing their faces with carbs and gravy.

Further still from here the final act is played out, the monolith that is Millennium Mills made of indestructible stuff: concrete and thick muscle-studded girders and lots and lots of asbestos. Made of all these things yet held together with an austere elegance. She casts a shadow of disdain across the ticky-tacky Barrett homes that now blister one side of the elegant watery fingers of Albert Docks.

I left the day I arrived, after a morning of basic drilling, Sgt. Lee Ermey’s venom still damp on my face.  I walked back the way I came. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know Kubrick was one of my favourite directors. I kicked my heels walking slowly down the road. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

Micheal – who was a young dance student at the time – was engaged as a ‘marine’ extra on Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam epic Full Metal Jacket, which recreated Saigon and Hue in East Ham. The unit base was at Millennium Mills. Lee Ermey played the drill sergeant in the film, having been originally hired as a military adviser.

English: Spiller’s Millennium Mills, Royal Victoria Dock, London, 1934. Originally published in the “Spillers: 1934 Review” chapter of British Commerce and Industry 1934. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OI OI! This is my first post so I’ll say the usual; If you like the words I type or the images I create and post keep an eye on my site for future postings!

M. SPEW KEY

A while ago I discovered a practice people call urban exploration and was eye balling some serious looking locations on 28 days later. I was always contemplating on partaking but never really had anyone to do it with.. But me and a mate from college spoke about it for a while and finally decided we were gonna head out and scope a site of interest . We decided to hit a place called Millennium Mills , an amazing 1930′s art deco flour mill on the Thames, between the barrier and the O2 center. This place is massive. At ten floors high, it towers above the ExCel centre (which it is directly opposite) and provides a great view of London’s skyline.

As spectacular as this shell is, it’s dangerous. The floors are littered with holes and sheer drops where machinery has been extracted; there is rot everywhere, and the ground felt like it could collapse at any moment AND the air is filled with asbestos. Not only that, but it was tricky to get into as well!

Like a booby-trapped House of Horrors, danger awaits their every step in Millennium Mills. The rotten floors are comparable to thick slices of Emmenthal, riddled with pigeon faeces and yawning holes (where machinery has been removed) that drop eight or nine storeys in some places —Christian Koch, “Urban explorers – the thrillseekers infiltrating unseen London”

It was strange in there; although it was in a state of near disrepair and a million miles away from its heyday, you could still feel the energy of the hundreds of people who would’ve once worked, laughed, ate and spent their whole working lives within its walls… There were chalkboards and clocks still on the walls, boots in lockers and shower rooms. Really quite haunting.

Anyway, here are the images I recorded of this beautiful monstrosity…

I shot these through a Nikon FM2 with a prime 50mm 1.8 lens using Fuji Neopan 400 exposed and developed at 1600iso.

Unbelievably we found a T.V wired up to a car battery which actually turned on.. It even had a DVD in it!

A once thriving mill and now a sole survivor steeped in history:

Spillers Millennium  Mills in London E16

is under threat.

 D.Osborne

 discovers why it shouldn’t be allowed to

disappear.

        Ah, London’s evocative East End Docks.  You can’t help but mention the piercing sirens and whistles of ships and tugs.  Or the exotic spice and oils stored in the rivers wharfs and warehouses that would have permeated the air and entered the bordering streets and lanes straight into Dickens lamenting mid 19^th Century social disgust of the poor: ‘a squalid maze and wilderness of dirt, rags and hunger’.

        Fast forward to 2012, twenty-six years after closure, and for all of the silence that resonates around this huge derelict building, it doesn’t detract from what it was like in its heyday.  Literally frozen in time gigantic metal corkscrew-like structures coil their way up through layers of vast floor space.  Enormous funnels attached to ventilation shafts twist and turn for hundreds of feet, chalkboards with vessel grades hang on the walls and row upon row of odd shaped machinery that can best be described as resembling alien type creatures, have ground to a halt in front of a seascape of smashed windows.

        If you turn left out of Pontoon Dock station on the DLR in London, E16, walk 5-minutes east on the North Woolwich Road; you’ll come to Mill Rd on the right.  At the end, past some of the original houses built for mill workers, is a roundabout to nowhere with a listed 19^th Century soaring chimneystack in the middle.  In front is where some memories are not lost.  You’ll see at close hand the last remaining mill of the Royal Docks: Spillers Millennium Mills.  She sits patiently and serenely on a forty-acre site surrounded by Pontoon Dock.  There are no plaques or commemorative inscriptions here to honour the impressive history of this area.

By the fact that she’s still standing since 1932 is celebration enough but for how long?   The smell of fish that drifts through the air, as lazily as this building sits, doesn’t seem to be coming from the river.  Even in today’s dilapidated state, Millennium Mills has generations of history propping it up.  Visit the urban exploration forum www.28dayslater.co.uk  The ‘industrial archaeologists’ brave enough to defy the asbestos warnings have photographed every detail of this building, inside and out.  They show us that there’s still plenty of life hanging around the old girl yet.

        They are known as the ‘Royal’ group of docks.  It has the largest area of enclosed dock water in the world.   Its total area is over a thousand acres of which two hundred and thirty are water.  Eleven miles of quays and over fifty ocean-going vessels could come in at one time.  Forty shipping lines used the docks, destined towards the 4 corners of the world.  One hundred and forty miles of lines were built on the docks and Victoria Docks rail sidings are among the largest in the world.  A group of mills were nestled in amongst this archive of the past: Empire, Spillers Millennium, Premier and Co-operative Wholesale Society.  You can’t miss Millennium Mills.  It’s a massive relic of a building and a unique ornament on the landscape.

In 1899, Hungary produced the best flour in the world.  That was until flour millers, W. Vernon & Sons, in Birkenhead, took a coveted award and established for themselves world fame and supremacy with their ‘Millennium’ flour.  They joined forces with Spillers, an established milling company, and brought the flour to the south of England.  In 1933, they built a giant complex of reinforced concrete granaries; it replaced several of the old mills built in the early 1900s.  They painted her name in big red letters that remain to this   day.

As the grain ships arrived in the Thames, it would have drawn the wheat by suction from its hold at the rate of two hundred tons an hour. Grain was stored in cylindrical ‘grain hoppers’ that shot up taller than the mill itself. Two pneumatic grain elevators, complete with hoses, survive north of the building.  Spillers became a colloquial household name as it utilized the huge trade in animal feed.  Bonio Dog Biscuits were being produced here up until the 1980s.  Gary Spencer, who worked in the mills in the early 1960s, laughed when I mentioned health and safety.  I showed him a picture of a sign that said, ‘Man Only Lift’. ‘I remember that lift well.  It was called a ‘man hoist’ and it was a frightening thing to travel on.   It was a wide leather belt that was always moving, you stepped onto a shelf and grabbed the handle and up you went’.  The ceiling height in the area was about twenty feet. You went through a hole in the ceiling and stepped off, then round the other side of the wall where the down belt was and you just stepped on and went down.  I’ll never forget the horrible taste you got in your mouth due to the flour they used for making dog biscuits’.

        There have been several attempts to regenerate the whole of the Royal Docks.  Plans in 2002, by the London Development Authority (LDA) who own the building came to nothing.  In 2012 things are working in a much more positive way.  The transport infrastructure is in place: London City Airport, DLR, Crossrail and better road networks.  Robert Beasley, head of Marketing and Communications at the LDA is as expected, optimistic: ‘There is an alignment between the landowners and the planning authority to make it more like a development corporation, there’s a commitment to push things through and we are much more active in getting investment’. 

Newham Council, along with the LDA and the Mayor of London’s office, who own most of the land, are working closely together to make sure it happens.  Its working name for the mill site is Silvertown Quays.  No doubt the Governments announcement that the Royal Docks will be one of the four key areas targeted for its regeneration ‘Enterprise Zone’ initiative will help to keep the wheels in motion.  But what does this mean for Millennium Mills?  The LDA will not receive any funding from the cash pool for the mill site.  Discounted business incentives, reminiscent of Canary Wharf days are in place, and but will this hook prospective developers?  Twenty-four international investors expressed interest last year, but there are still no takers.

        This isn’t just another flattened brown filled site.  Whoever invests has to restore a massive building first and also a grade II listed building: Silo D that is on the ‘at risk’ register with English Heritage.  Little is being done to preserve this fine example of the post-industrial age.  There is also a planning law in place that won’t be easily overlooked.  Because City Airport’s takeoff and landing routes go straight up the middle of the dock, it would be extremely unlikely to get planning permission to build anything as high or as big as the mill is now.  So does this mean the building is safe?  Not necessarily. The current planning application for the site retains the central portion of the building.  The LDA have assessed that anyone redeveloping the site would incorporate the core of the mill building into their design but there are no assurances of this, only speculation: 

‘They may take out the back but essentially, the core frontage would not be changed’ said LDA’s Robert Beasley.

So it stands to reason that they could take away the entire building and keep just the wall that faces the Thames intact.  I’m assured this won’t happen because structurally, Millennium Mills is a solid and sound building.  And why would a developer ignore that?  They might ignore it because the ‘at risk and particularly good example’ of 1920s modernism, Silo D, is being ignored, remember.

English Heritage isn’t interested in this iconic building.  They feel it doesn’t have enough architectural interest and isn’t special enough in a national context. I pointed out the areas two hundred years of mill history and it being a sole survivor to Delcia Keate, Senior Designation Advisor for English Heritage, ‘There are better examples, nationally.’  But shouldn’t it be assessed? ‘It’s unlikely to meet the criteria’.  What are the criteria?  ‘Date, engineering, innovation’.  It’s the last remaining mill in the Royal Docks; does that not fit any criteria?  It seems not. ‘Something over and above what is there, it must have intrinsic interest’, she says.

As our conversation came to an end, I’m told that I’m welcome to make a formal application.  Anyone can.  A formal application for Millennium Mills has never been submitted to English Heritage.  It was merely suggested.

The informal view was a report made by Edmund Bird, who is the Heritage Advisor for Design for London, which is a branch of the LDA.  Ben Hull, Listed Buildings Officer for Newham Council, confirmed it’s an odd decision from English Heritage, but they were taking the same cursory line, ‘As English Heritage have had a look at it, I suspect it would affect a formal application. We have many buildings that are of higher priority. It’s not that we don’t want to restore it, were just not sure it’s worth it’.  The Royal Docks Trust refused to take a formal view.

Trust Secretary John Parker said, ‘We support the community and feel the more development the better. We take no corporate line on the mill site’. 

Newham Council’s feedback to the LDA on the mill site is that its most pressing issues are jobs and homes.  Therefore any development must include commerce as well as residential.  Britannia Village is next door to the Millennium Mills.  It’s perceived as being a new town but it doesn’t function as a community.  There are no shops; it’s an overspill from Canary Wharf and returns to a ghost town on weekends as a lot of people retreat to the country.

Who’s to say that this new town, Silvertown Quays, won’t turn into to a soulless white elephant too?  The local community centre, Britannia Village Hall, has worked hard to bring back some semblance of community.  Local residents were unanimous but skeptical of a proposed new development on the mill site,  ‘I’d be worried if another development happened’ said one local resident of many years ‘Were already isolated here, if they don’t get it right and think ahead twenty years, it’s a disaster waiting to happen’.

Others agreed that something should be done with the building, while incorporating its history.  ‘We have so many other issues that seem to come first’ said manager Dave Mann, ‘the poverty and injustice was unbelievable around here years ago, it’s important to introduce an understanding of this areas history and heritage’.  As I left the hall, residents spoke of drawing up a petition to try to preserve the history of Millennium Mills.

        Nearby is the award-winning Thames Barrier Park.  Its underbelly is the remains of the previous mills, demolished years ago.  So there’s no chance of keeping the mill site as an open green space, perhaps turning the mills into a giant greenhouse surrounded by allotments, as one resident suggested.  Barrett’s is planning a big residential complex next door to the park and there’s planning applications in for Monaco Wharf so perhaps a community could be developing.

The areas surrounding the Mill are the most deprived in London: Canning town, Customs House and North Woolwich.  ‘Millennium Mills and the surrounding acres it sits on has Canary Wharf as its level of expectation’ says LDA’s Robert Beasley, ‘There’s a sense that we have the impetus to see actually see this stuff through.  We’ll get down to a chosen partner from a global audience and a deal signed next year’.  All very promising news as the LDA slashes its workforce and is about to be abolished in March 2012.

         I sat and admired Millennium Mills from across the river at the Excel Centre.  I remembered the Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales’, eager affirmation last month: ‘London is moving east’.  I imagined the washed out Jean Michael Jarre concert from 1988 ‘Destination Docklands’, just after the mills closed.  He projected laser images that beamed through torrential rain onto the walls of the Millennium Mills.  Terry Gilliam filmed Brazil here too and numerous television and video productions are always using Millennium Mills as a haunting backdrop.  I asked a passing youth, who didn’t know any of the mills history, what would he like to see being done to the structure; he suggested a giant rave building.  I reminded him, as he puffed away on a joint, that the life expectancy of men around here, a hundred years ago, was less than thirty years old.   And a lot of them would have worked in Millennium Mills.

        If progress has its way, the last remaining mill of Britain’s grand industrial age in the docks of London, will be gone forever.  I fear her days are numbered.

Sat on the DLR earlier that day, with a view of the death trap we were about to delve into, I quickly realised that I was no longer a teenager larking around in the local abandoned sports hall, but I was a fully grown man about to play cat and mouse with security in a century old decaying industrial site, the Millennium Mills. “This only scratches the surface of what urban exploration is about,” says my companion for this venture, Patrick, who introduced me to this community of thrill seekers and outright lunatics.

Urban exploration defines a hobby which breaks down the barrier between urban life and adventure. Typically, if you wanted an adventure, you would look to the more rural areas. This new wave of explorers have looked no further than their front doors, finding adventures in the most unlikely of places. From the depths of the sewers to the tip of a crane, as you discover the prowess of these explorers, the original view of them as juvenile, irresponsible thrill seekers is replaced with one which regards them as documenters of urban life, and the unseen decay which surrounds us. I would soon discover this significance first-hand.

Evidence of the extremists within this movement, such as the Craniacs who recently scaled a 240ft crane in the Docklands, or groups who kayak London’s sewer network for the sheer thrill of it, often surfaces on the suitably named forum, 28 Days Later. This forum acts as both a documentary of this subversive hobby, a meeting point for the community and a means of entry into it, the latter becoming true for me as I discovered Millennium Mills, amongst other abounded buildings, and those who had already conquered them. A shroud of anonymity surrounds the site as members adopt shady aliases and faces are censored in photos of those involved in trips. This mysterious nature enhanced both my excitement, and my dread for the impending adventure.

Maybe the idea of there being a forum dedicated to this activity made it seem more accessible, or maybe I’m just hopelessly impatient, either way, I joined up with the expectation of instant arrangements for a daring trip. It turned out that you have to build a reputation for yourself, submitting reports of your devious ventures and generally getting in amongst the rabble before you can even dream of such ease of access. 28 Days Later consequentially became a research tool for me and Patrick, as we began to research local abandoned buildings and converse with members who would give us friendly advice. One member said, “We all have to start somewhere, but don’t bite off more than you can chew.” Ironically enough, Millennium Mills soon grabbed our attention.

Disused since the eighties, Millennium Mills is South London’s’ very own post-industrial icon, and conveniently enough for me, is now being used by film director Danny Boyle, making it that little bit more impenetrable. Patrick and I were about to become two of the countless urban explorers who have targeted this place. Our spirits were somewhat subdued as we approached Royal Victoria Docks. “We’re never going to get in,” said Patrick in a defeated tone. The notorious 8ft fence topped with viper-spikes loomed ahead of us. I had read about it in other’s reports on 28 Days Later, one read; “Due to an idiotic departure over the wooden fence when Secca drove by, I panicked and impaled both my hands on the blunt spikes.” Despite the initial apprehension, we overcame the first hurdle without injury, and after tracking down the L-shaped hole which led into the mill, undertook the next harrowing part of the journey.

Emerging clumsily in a cloud of dust, we caught our first glimpse of the interior. Shattered glass and discarded work tools littered the floor, a sight accompanied by an overpowering musty smell. “This is heaven for explorers,” whispered Patrick, a seasoned urban explorer himself. Like youths sneaking out of the house late at night, we crept along the side of the building, keeping as close to the wall as possible and ducking whenever we saw the light of a nearby SUV glare through the room. Danger lurked round every corner for the duration of our time here, holes in the ground where machinery used to be could send us plummeting nine storeys to our death, as could flooring which felt like it was giving way beneath our feet. This place really was the “House of horrors” one person had described it as in their report. Nevertheless, this was definitely the biggest thrill I’d experienced in a while, an educational one at that, which really exposed the largely unnoticed neglect in one of the richest cities in the world. From the roof, we took a moment to gaze towards the skyline, the o2 Arena in particular a powerful sight, drawing attention to just how much of an anachronism the Millennium Mills really are. These explorers have exposed a beauty in something society dismisses as ugly or an eye-sore, but before I could get too reflective, I was about to discover just why this isn’t the average person’s cup of tea.

The five-foot ‘leap’ we had been anticipating was now imminent, a steep three-storey drop stood between us and the next mill, linked only by two wooden planks which we assumed we should cross. At this point I retreated, wondering what Patrick has dragged me into. He reassured me, “It’s fine, just stay low and don’t look down.” I looked on as he demonstrated this to me, leaving me with no option but to do the same. Whether I had enjoyed the thrill, or was just glad to have not woken up in hospital, was unclear at the time, but that strange satisfaction was there again, becoming my main drive to carry on through the Mills and make it out.

Despite knowing Patrick for some time, I had never delved into his interest in urban exploration. It rose to the surface in his teens, where he would explore local abounded buildings for the thrill. “Most of my mates at the time only did this to get drunk and break everything, they weren’t in it for the same reasons as me.” His thrill seeking hadn’t been without injury though.; on a visit to an abandoned mental asylum in Essex, he broke his ankle in an awkward fall as he jumped down a broken flight of stairs. “I was just a kid back then, I was wreckless. Now I know the risks, legally and physically. It’s more about the sight and experience of the places themselves now, rather than all the illegal things I can do in there. I approach it maturely now.”

Ignorantly, the law was something which I hadn’t really considered before this trip, all I knew was that we would avoid security at all costs, and for anything else I would rely on Patrick. A conversation with HiddenShad0w, a member of 28 Days Later, educated me on the matter. “Often, explorers will use ingenious methods of entry to sites, sometimes getting in through tunnel systems under fences, or through ventilation systems.” Typical of any underground activity, there is a great deal of taboo involved; taking keepsakes, whether it be a twenty year old pair of boots, or tattered documents, should never be taken as this could give the Police reason to charge you with burglary. Similarly, forceful methods of entry were a no-go, in order to avoid breaking and entering charges.

Millennium Mills, Royal Victoria Dock, London, E16. Photo © Roger Dean 2010

The Road to East Ham – Micheal MacCumiskeigh:

East Ham. I’m still only in East Ham. I walk down the cracked concrete road under an arborial sky on the road to Vietnam in all its artifice.

The derelict gas works is dressed with imported Spanish palm trees hanging their heads, famished in a cold climate. The wrong choppers and the wrong soldiers. A bellicose nest of English squaddies squat in a huge marquee, drinking tea and intermittently stuffing their faces with carbs and gravy.

Further still from here the final act is played out, the monolith that is Millennium Mills made of indestructible stuff: concrete and thick muscle-studded girders and lots and lots of asbestos. Made of all these things yet held together with an austere elegance. She casts a shadow of disdain across the ticky-tacky Barrett homes that now blister one side of the elegant watery fingers of Albert Docks.

I left the day I arrived, after a morning of basic drilling, Sgt. Lee Ermey’s venom still damp on my face.  I walked back the way I came. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know Kubrick was one of my favourite directors. I kicked my heels walking slowly down the road. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

[Micheal - who was a young dance student at the time - was engaged as a 'marine' extra on Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam epic Full Metal Jacket, which recreated Saigon and Hue in East Ham. The unit base was at Millennium Mills. Lee Ermey played the drill sergeant in the film, having been originally hired as a military adviser. R.D.]

Now it’s got a new home – at Millennium Mills in the Royal Docks. It looks slightly surreal as part of the bleakly desolate Silvertown scene.

This photo was taken at Pontoon Dock DLR station, on a route I hadn’t travelled for about a year, so I’ve no idea what it’s doing, why it’s there, or how long it’s been there for. Is it only a temporary visit? Where might it pop up next? And what do you do with an old pier? All suggestions gratefully accepted.