West Barns, Beltonford Maltings

NT67NE 135 6516 7805

The British Malt Products establishment at West Barns embodies many fragments of early industrial buildings, but they have been pulled down, rebuilt in different forms, adapted to varying purposes, and combined with each other and with later structures, and at the same etime only very vague memories survive as to their earlier character. Architectural analysis of the whole would be an enrormous and largely uselss task, and it must suffice to draw attention here to two features wghich are recognisably parts of older installations. One of these is the chamber for an undershot wheel worked by water carried by the lade from Beltonford; no evidence as to the sire of the wheel could be found, and it was said to have been replaced by a turbine before 1914. The waterstill runs through in a wooden trough 5 feet wide to a depth of 1 foot 8 inches. The other feature is the stump of a chimney, now inside one of the buildings. The base is of masonry, about 4 feet square. This is intaken with a weathered scarement course and the upper part continued in brick. Visited 25 August 1965.

A Graham 1965-6.

Maltings, West Barns [Location cited as NT654781]. Early 19th century and later. Group of altered rubble-and-brick buildings, with asbestos-clad additions dominated by a circular-section brick chimney. There is a substantial lade, still flowing, with and aqueduct over a minor road at the rear of the complex. Now gutted and empty.

J R Hume 1976.