Stretford - CWS Sun Flour Mills

New Warehouse, CWS Sun Flour Mills, Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park

The New Warehouse was designed by Francis Eldred Lodge Harris, the Chief Architect of the Cooperative Wholesale Society. He is regarded as a significant pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete as a building material. This article will consider the importance of his legacy as well as discussing in some detail the plans of the warehouse.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) acquired Sun Mills from Messrs. R. Baxendell and Son, flour merchants of Manchester and Liverpool, and took possession of the premises on Trafford Wharf Road in Trafford Park on 30 April 1906.[1] The construction of the mills had only recently been completed.

 ‘The mill was then immediately enlarged. The original warehouse and provender mill were turned into silos whilst the old office, a small warehouse and cottages were pulled down to make room for a new warehouse and provender mill. The Sun Mill had a capacity, which ran at 30-40 sacks per hour. This was increased to 70 sacks in the first three years of ownership’…It was a roller mill, powered by electricity and steam.[2]

The new mill became capable of producing a total of 6000 sacks of flour a week. This meant that the CWS, with its other mills at Dunston (Gateshead), Oldham and Silvertown (London) could produce a weekly output of 30,000 sacks with the acquisition of Sun Mills. The equipment at the new facility at Trafford Park was designed in such a way that it could complete the processing of the grain into flour untouched by human hand, once the grain had left the boats that were brought into Manchester Docks.[3] The Mill was perfectly situated to take full advantage of road, rail and water transport.[4] It commenced operation on 1 May 1906.[5] After alterations, ‘In 1913, it became the U.K.’s largest mill’.[6]

This warehouse was designed by Francis Eldred Lodge Harris who was appointed as architect in 1897 to lead the newly formed CWS Architects Department:

‘The CWS Architects Department was formed on 2 January 1896 at Balloon Street Manchester. To provide the necessary professional expertise, the architect F E L Harris was appointed to take charge in 1897. Henceforth all the buildings erected and the extensions made by the C.W.S. at home or abroad offices, warehouses, flour mills, weaving sheds, boot factories, and so on have been built from the designs and under the supervision of Mr. Harris and his department.’[7]

Harris was born in Bristol on 5 May 1864, the son of James Harris, master carpenter and joiner and Jemima.[8] At the time of the 1871 Census he lived at 7 Sydenham Terrace, Bristol with his parents and by 1881 had moved to 27 Banner Road, St Paul’s, Bristol when he was listed as a builder’s clerk, aged 17, and living with his father and stepmother. His mother had died in 1877, and his father had married Sarah Anne Chidsey in March 1881.

Francis was educated at the Merchant Venturers’ College, Bristol and Bristol School of Art.[9] He undertook his articles as an architect with W.H. Cowlin, Bristol.[10] He was selected for Associate Membership of Royal Institute of British Architects at the 53^rd session of the Institute in 1887.[11] He set himself up as an independent architect with a practice in Chelmsford, Essex in 1889,[12] and it was from here that he undertook his first competitive contract in the North West with a successful tender for the Oldham School Board Offices, built between 1890 and 1893. At the time of the 1891 census he was staying as a visitor at the home of a local grocer in Southend, Essex.[13] He married Ellen Wood at Southchurch, Holy Trinity, Essex in November 1891 and was living in Chelmsford in 1894.[14]

He moved to Manchester in 1897 as the architect to the Co-operative Wholesale Society Limited and was soon given the title Chief Architect.[15] His first project for the CWS was the Silvertown Flour Mill in London (1896 – 1900).[16] He was living at 8 Palatine Road, Withington, Manchester at the time of baptism of his daughter Nellie Marjorie in 1898. He was still living in Withington at 21 Goulden Road in 1901 with his wife and three daughters. By 1911 he had moved to Wilmslow[17] where his wife and children were living at the time of the census. His whereabouts on this occasion have not been located. By 1914 he had relocated to Alderley Edge.[18]

Harris remained in post as Chief Architect for CWS until 1918.[19] By the end of the First World War he had been accepted as a Fellow of RIBA.[20] He was living at Betchton Villa, Betchon, Sandbach, Cheshire at the time of the 1921 Census and died on 5 July 1924 in the Congleton district.[21] His funeral was at St John’s Church, Sandbach Heath, the lychgate of which he designed as a war memorial, and he was buried in the church cemetery.[22] He was known as a man of a retiring disposition who enjoyed his gardens and the grounds of his home.[23] He was survived by his wife and four daughters.

The Legacy of F.E.L. Harris

Harris designed many buildings for the Co-operative Society all over the country during his time as Chief Architect. These included the CWS Headquarters, (built 1905 – 1909 and recorded as 1907 on the building), situated on Corporation Street in Manchester between Balloon Street and Hanover Street; the Co-operative Bank in Corporation Street, (1908); a considerable number of warehouses, factories and stores for the Co-op and other flour mills at Silvertown, London (1896 – 1900), and Avonmouth, Bristol (1907 -8). He also designed the CWS Soap & Candle Works at Irlam in 1904.[24]

‘Harris, as the Society’s chief architect, was credited by contemporaries as one of the most important enthusiasts for what was, in the first decade of the twentieth century, a new structural medium.’[25]

He was one of the first in Britain to use reinforced concrete construction, as developed by the Frenchman, François Hennebique, and patented by him in 1892,[26] in which plain round bars are used with stirrups at intervals to bind the concrete beam together. The first building for which the CWS used reinforced concrete on a large scale was the Quayside Warehouse in Newcastle, which is the oldest surviving of Harris’s works and today operates as the Malmaison Hotel, a Grade II listed building.[27] The building was finished to make it look as though it had been constructed in Portland stone. It was not the first reinforced concrete construction in Britain; that honour goes to Weaver’s Mill in Swansea, constructed in 1897,[28]and designed by Hennebique.[29] This building method was used for the new building for the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Corporation Street, Manchester. [30]

‘The CWS was a major patron of reinforced concrete construction, both for the frames of its commercial buildings and to a lesser extent as a walling material for industrial installations.’ It was among the foremost clients in Britain to employ this construction method, along with the railways and dock companies. The dock companies were not subject to the local planning by-laws so there was more freedom to experiment. Reinforced concrete was the ideal material for buildings such as warehouses which had to bear heavy weights and required spaces with wide span floors. Building in a radical new material fitted well with the Co-operative Societies radical tradition. The new buildings were also a sound economic option as well as a safe one, as the material was not combustible in constructions that were used for flour milling or soap and candle production.’ [31]

The Plans

Proposals for enlargement of Sun Mills were put forward to Stretford District Council, very soon after purchase, for permission to build a large new warehouse alongside the existing mill warehouse building. Plans were drawn up in December 1906 and dated 15 January 1907.

The plans were accompanied by a Notice of Intention to Build, dated 15 January 1907, which was attached to a letter from the architect to Ernest Worall, Esq. Stretford Council Surveyor, in response to proposed additions to Sun Mill.

The letter covered a proposal to construct a bridge and conveyor over Trafford Wharf Road, an item with which the CWS might not proceed; concerns about the fireproofing of the staircase; and the nature of the water to be discharged via the drains into the Ship Canal.[32]

The plans themselves were stamped as approved on 5 February 1907, subject to the provision of satisfactory fire escape and the Society accepting all responsibility for drainage.

The new building was situated alongside Trafford Wharf Road on the South Side of the road. It adjoined the existing warehouse for the Flour Mill. There was already an existing bridge from the original warehouse crossing over Trafford Wharf Road.

This shows the position of Baxendell & Son, before the new warehouse was constructed.

This map shows the position of Sun Mills before the new warehouse was constructed. There is a building, beneath the ‘ford’ of Trafford Wharf Road, divided into three, which appears on the 1913 Map to have been replaced by the new warehouse.

This map shows the new warehouse, beneath the ‘ford’ of Trafford Wharf Road. Th elongated ‘X’ above the word ‘Mills’ in Sun Mills indicates the loading passage of the new warehouse. This can be seen more clearly in the architect’s block plan below.

The plans held by Trafford Local Studies consist of five sheets of drawings. These are:

• Back Elevation and Block Plan
• Front Elevation and Side Elevation
• Longitudinal Section and Cross Section
• Ground Floor Plan and First and Second Floor Plan
• Third and Fourth Floor Plan and Fifth and Sixth Floor Plan

The various aspects of the building on the five sheets of plan drawings have been photographed separately for the convenience of the reader of this article.

The yard and buildings behind the new warehouse were accessible through a covered passage on the right-hand side of the building at the point where it was attached to the existing silo. Rail lines ran inside the covered loading area at the front of the new warehouse on the ground floor through an entrance on the side elevation which can be seen on the plan below.

The front face of the warehouse was an elegantly designed, seven storey building, with a small tower at the left-hand side to match the one on the existing silo building. On the front and side face of the left-hand tower were roundels, perhaps to represent the sun in Sun Mills.

In order to create light working and storage spaces inside the building there were thirteen windows on each of the top three floors, eleven on the first and second floor to accommodate the opening for a proposed bridge over Trafford Wharf Road, and ten on the ground floor to leave space for the access to the loading way indicated on the block plan above, and to the yard at the rear of the building.

Pilasters separated the pairs of windows. The side elevation shows the position of the proposed bridge over Trafford Wharf Road at the front and connecting bridge at the rear. Later images of the completed building show that the bridge over Trafford Wharf was not constructed.[33]

The rear of the building had two sliding access doors on each floor to the centre of the building, by which goods could be lifted. There was also a glass roofed veranda running at top of the window line at ground floor level from the loading way entrance almost to the end of the building.

The sections show that the internal structure was constructed using cast iron columns supporting iron girders. This style of construction was commonly used in mill buildings in order to achieve wide open spaces without the need for internal walls. It can be seen from the floor plans below that the floors of the storeys were to be constructed of one inch of maple on a three-inch plank base.

The letter from the architect regarding fire escapes (above) explains that it would not be expected that there would be more than two or three workers operating on each floor at any one time on average.

The base was of concrete with four-foot square concrete pillars to support the ground floor and the pillars at the back of the building, with a hefty iron girder supporting the floors and pillars at the front over the covered loading bay.

However, there is no evidence in the plans for the large-scale use of reinforced concrete as the main element in the construction of this warehouse. However, it may have been used for the walls and the pilasters and a report of the demolition of the mill in 1980 stated that, ‘Thousands of tons of reinforced concrete went crashing to destruction…’.[34]

The ground floor plan makes clear the arrangement of the covered loading place and the loading way as planned, running through to the yard at the rear. There are two sets of buffers at the right-hand side of the loading place.

The End of Sun Mills

Trafford Park and its essential industries became a target for bombs dropped from German aircraft during the Second World War. An air raid shelter for staff at the Mills was designated in the CWS Packing Building, next to Sun Mills to the East on Trafford Wharf Road. [35]

In December 1940, bombing raids known as the ‘Manchester Blitz’ took place. According to one source, the Hovis Mill, to the West of Sun Mills on Trafford Wharf Road, was flattened, and the nearby CWS Flour Mill was badly damaged.[36] The CWS buildings in and around Corporation Street in Central Manchester, which Harris had designed, were also damaged in the raids on 22 and 23 December 1940.[37]

The Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Sun Flour Mills were substantially damaged by fire in May 1974. The fire started when contractors were cutting steel girders on the ground floor and quickly spread to the roof of the seven-story building.[38] The mill building was eventually acquired by the Spillers Group.[39] After the mill became financially unviable it was closed in December 1978.[40]

In May 1980 another massive fire broke out at the derelict Sun Mills which sent burning embers a quarter of a mile across the Manchester docks and set fire to some railway wagons. Twelve fire wagons, a turntable ladder and two hydraulic platforms were needed throughout the night of the fire to quell the blaze.[41]

Demolition of the mill buildings took place in August 1980 with a celebrity footballer, Bobby Charlton, pressing the button to ignite the two thousand explosive charges which brought down the grain silo, the last standing building on the site.[42]

The site of Sun Mills is currently (2025) occupied by the Premier Inn, Old Trafford, between Sir Alex Ferguson Way and No. 1 Old Trafford. The area in which the Sun Mills buildings were situated is included within the Old Trafford Regeneration Scheme 2025.[43]

Author: Richard Nelson, Volunteer, Trafford Local Studies

Further Research

You can find more building plans and archival records using the Trafford Local Studies catalogue

Sources

[1] Manchester Courier, 13 Apr 1906, p.8.

[2] CWS Sun Flour Mills, Manchester – The Mills Archive [Accessed 16 May 2025].

[3] Manchester Evening News, 11 May 1906, p.7.

[4] Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 11 May 1906, p.1.

[5] Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 11 May 1906, p.1.

[6] CWS Sun Flour Mills, Manchester – The Mills Archive [Accessed 16 May 2025]

[7] https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/partnerships/cws-architects-department [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[8] Census 1871.

[9] Obituary of Francis Eldon Lodge Harris, RIBA Journal v31, 1924, p 651. [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[10] Obituary of Francis Eldon Lodge Harris, RIBA Journal v31, 1924, p 651. [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[11] Building News, 11 Nov 1887, p.712) [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[12] Obituary of Francis Eldon Lodge Harris, RIBA Journal v31, 1924, p 651. [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[13] 1891 Census.

[14] Kelly’s Directory of Essex, 1894.

[15] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258. [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[16] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258. [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[17] Slaters’ Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory 1911.

[18] Kelly’s Directory of Cheshire, 1914.

[19] https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/partnerships/cws-architects-department [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[20] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258 [accessed 22 May 2025].

[21] https://new.millsarchive.org/2020/05/05/francis-eldred-lodge-harris-1864-1924/ [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[22] For image of gravestone (657725) see https://www.gravestonephotos.com [Accessed 6 Jun 2025].

[23] Obituary in CWS internal magazine, 1924, copy courtesy of Kaye Welfare.

[24] https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/architects/francis-eldred-lodge-harris [Accessed 16 May 2025].

[25] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258) [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[26] https://new.millsarchive.org/2020/05/05/francis-eldred-lodge-harris-1864-1924/ [Accessed 16 May 2025]; Wikipedia François Hennebique - Wikipedia [Accessed 25 May 2025].

[27] https://www.malmaison.com/locations/newcastle/ [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[28] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258) [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[29] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_building [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[30] Manchester Guardian, 23 Apr 1907, p12.) [Accessed 21 May 2025].

[31] Edwin A.R. Trout, Francis Harris and the CWS Architects’ Department: early enthusiasts for reinforced concrete, Construction History, Vol 37, No. 1 (2022) pp.111 – 132, Construction History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/27258258 [Accessed 22 May 2025].

[32] Trafford Local Studies, PLA/2/STR/1907/2/1715, Sun Flour Mill.

[33] Image of Sun Flour Mills and Wharf, Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park, 1929. Trafford Local Studies, LHC/1991.

[34] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 7 Aug 1980, p.9.

[35] Factory Shelters – Sketch Plans, Trafford Local Studies, STR/10/2/5/27.

[36] https://www.trucknetuk.com/t/mainly-rank-hovis-spillers-milling/225912/109?page=6 [Accessed 1 Jun 2025].

[37] Film held by Imperial War Museum: Manchester Took it Too by CWS, http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/3060 [Accessed 1 Jun 2025].

[38] Manchester Evening News, 15 May 1974, p.4.

[39] Robert Nicholls, Trafford Park – The First Hundred Years, Chichester, Phillimore & Co., 1996.

[40] https://new.millsarchive.org/mills/index/?action=show&which=13258 [Accessed 10 Jun 2025].

[41] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 15 May 1980, p.15.

[42] Stretford and Urmston Journal, 7 Aug 1980, p.9.

[43] Old Trafford Regeneration – Programme Feasibility and Options Paper, Executive Summary, 6 January 2025, Trafford Council. [Accessed 21 May 2025].