Country England Construction started 1778 | Town or city Liverpool | |
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Heap's Rice Mill was a rice mill founded by Joseph Heap with Joseph Heap & Sons Ltd. in either 1778 or 1780 on Pownall Street in Liverpool, Merseyside. It originated as a rice mill, with warehouses added and later combined into a single building. The rice in Kellogg's Rice Krispies was once ground at Heap's. It is constructed in brick with some sandstone dressings, and has roofs of slate, tiles and corrugated sheeting and a frame of timber and cast iron. The whole building has a square plan, and is mainly in seven storeys.
Until about the 1880s, Joseph Heap with Joseph Heap & Sons Ltd., owned its own vessels, which were known as the Diamond H Line after their house flag. These ships sailed between Liverpool and Australia, via Rangoon and the East Indies. The firm has had several changes of ownership but was still fully operational until 1988 when it transferred to a new site in Regent Road, Liverpool. The Pownall Street site was still partially operational until 2005.
Recent history
The building was due to be demolished until it received Grade II listing in 2014 as English Heritage considered this combination of mill/warehouse type of building to show construction of a mill specifically designed for a use. It also showed alterations as the operation and the technology improved over the years.
The building is currently due to be refurbished into luxury apartments. This £130 million luxury residential development has been criticised by the Gill Darley at the Architects' Journal as facadism, as the developers had threatened to pull out of the redevelopment if they were forced to keep the interior, and as of November 2014, only the façade of the building will remain.