Sherwood Road Maltings (Worksop)
Sherwood Road Maltings, Worksop, Nottinghamshire
A Piece Board
By Amber Patrick
In 1976 Albrew Maltsters (Allied Breweries) closed its Station Maltings in Sherwood Road, Worksop. The malthouse had been built in about 1875 for the Sheffield Brewers, Thomas Berry & Co. In 1923 Berrys were taken over by Tennant Brothers of Sheffield who then sold the maltings to the brewers Glossop and Bulay of Hull by 1928. In 1931 the maltsters C E Seed of Clayton, Bradford, West Yorkshire purchased the maltings. They in turn were taken over by Ramsdens in 1963 who in 1964 were taken over by Tetleys, part of Allied Breweries, and so the maltings became part of the Albrew Maltsters estate.
After closure, the building remained empty for a couple of years but in the autumn of 1978 the site including the malthouse was advertised as for sale. By December 1978 planning permission had been given for the demolition of the malthouse and the construction of a church. As no plans existed, permission was given for the malthouse to be surveyed by the local Nottinghamshire Industrial Archaeology Society. Members were given permission to take any loose material from the building. Most people opted for the timbers making up the malt storage boxes as they would make good bookshelves. There were no traditional wooden malt shovels, but there were a few metal shovels and those went to some members. I declined those two items in favour of a sack with C. E. Seed on it, and a blackboard, a piece board which is the subject of this short article.
It had always been a floor maltings although there had been changes. Fires had resulted in the loss of the original barley storage section and the replacements at closure were round metal silos. The kilns were also replacements for the original ones and had been modernised by the installation of turners. The steeping cisterns on the middle germination floor of this three floor maltings were original as were the three concrete germination floors.
The piece board was not on one of the floors but in a lobby adjacent to the kiln – no doubt where the maltsters had their cubbyhole. It was not dated so there is no way of knowing whether the details related to the last piece to be worked. Even so what it does indicate is how the maltings operated. It was worked on the piece system (not the strip system). According to the board there were three pieces to each floor: young, second and old. The young piece would have been adjacent to the steeps, the second in the middle and the old adjacent to the kilns and so ready to be loaded once the required extent of germination had been reached. The only entry is for the “Old Piece” which had an age of “2” – it is not evident as what the two was, but it was probably two days although that seems rather short for the ‘old piece’. There were three positions: Present, New, and Position. The figures in these probably refer to bays or more exactly the section between one column and the next.
Thus it would seem that the piece was to be reduced in length from 6 bays (columns) to 4½ and therefore thickened up. Across the top was an interesting notation “stick plough between pillars [columns] and wall sides before raking – turning”. The ‘work’ was divided into that for the morning and afternoon. T indicates turning and R indicates raking. It is also worth noting that the work was also indicated for the second piece. Turning probably meant turning with a malt shovel – in the morning, and raking with a plough in the afternoon. Whether this was just standard or indicates that the second piece had become the old piece cannot be determined. The next question to answer is what was a stick plough? An ordinary duck foot plough has three prongs and therefore it might be reasonable to assume that a stick plough had only one prong!
As can be seen from the photograph of this germination floor there was plenty of space between the wall and the columns so why was a stick plough used and not an ordinary one? It might be that it was just used to clear along the bottom of the outside walls to make turning and raking easier and possibly around the column base but why only the outside columns? Certainly if the germinating barley is not moved from around the columns and from against the walls, then it will mat together and compromise the germination. It may be that for whatever reason the rootlets of barley between the walls and the first row of columns were more inclined to mat together. Also and notably, the piece was reduced in length from six to four and a half bays which may have been because of a temperature variation or more probably it indicates that it was ready to go onto the kiln.
Before the introduction of power shovels there was clearly a lot of hard work in physically moving the germinating grains down the floor towards the kilns. Richard Wheeler tells us there were two methods. Which one was used would depend upon the skill of the maltsters.
Method one where little or no skill was required: Move the back of the piece to the next section by filling a wooden wheel barrow and wheeling it over the piece to the front, that is into the next section and emptying it there. This would be repeated until the whole of the piece was moved to its next position.
Method two where there was a skilled maltster: Firstly turn the piece more frequently with a shovel and in doing so move it forward a bay or a bay and a half to two bays. A skilled maltster could achieve this surprisingly quickly. It was less damaging to the germinating grain. However it was only practicable if the maltsters were skilled and efficient shovellers.
I have to thank Richard Wheeler (retired Tuckers Maltings) for suggestions as to what a stick plough was and how information on the piece board was put into practise in an old traditional floor maltings.
Amber Patrick