Phil Gillam: Flaxmill is tripping the light fantastic
In their Boxing Day meeting with Accrington Stanley, Shrewsbury Town’s players lacked sparkle, it seems. And Town were again less than dazzling against Sunderland on Saturday.
Sounds as if the lads need to reignite their teamwork and find some luminosity.
But elsewhere the pride of Salopians has been shining brightly – as a new light installation at Shrewsbury’s Flaxmill Maltings has been attracting a lot of attention.
The light show at the world’s oldest iron-framed building – the Grade I listed Main Mill – is clearly visible from the street, and will continue through to the end of January.
Entitled 'As Shadows Return' – the installation uses silhouettes behind the windows to represent the workers and machinery that would once have been seen at the building.
And it marks the completion of the first phase of the £28 million restoration at the mill in Ditherington, a truly massive project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic England, Shropshire Council and the Friends of Flaxmill Maltings.
No chance of getting bored with this illumination either – as the lights will be turned on every day from sunset until late but will continually change to maintain interest from onlookers.
There’s something about the silhouettes in the windows that remind me of how the young Macaulay Culkin employed similar techniques to fool the incompetent bandits in the festive favourite, Home Alone. You remember the scene.
This intriguing light show at the Flaxmill has been commissioned by Historic England and created by Shrewsbury-based and world-renowned light artist Andy McKeown.
It’s funny to think that – for years – this extraordinary building was virtually ignored, almost forgotten.
Throughout the 1990s and beyond, many local people will remember it being a rat-infested wreck.
Bored youngsters would throw stones through its windows.
Derelict
The place was dark and derelict and boarded-up - a place to be avoided.
No-one, for a long time, really gave it a second look.
Yes, there were of course a few historians out there that took a different view of it, but for the general public, it was just a sad old place that might very well have been destined to have a date with the bulldozers.
But this amazing structure is actually a real gem – and is on its way back to becoming something Shrewsbury can really take pride in.
It dates back to 1797 (the year in which Joseph Haydn premiered his latest work in Vienna, Nelson was wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, causing the loss of his right arm, and Napoleon’s forces conquered Venice).
The building operated as a flax mill until 1886 and then as a maltings from 1897 to 1987.
Another shift in fortunes, saw it used as a temporary barracks during World War Two.
But more than all this...
Its iron frame was truly pioneering, the work of British engineers who were determined to overcome the problem of timber-framed mills and factories being destroyed when fires broke out. Its design is now seen as the fore-runner to the modern skyscraper.
So it’s not too fanciful to see what is now being called The Flaxmill Maltings as the great grand-daddy of all those towers that make up the New York skyline.
The light installation serves to remind us of all this.
Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, says of the light show: “This installation captures the building’s incredible history and the stories of the people who worked there.
"From its innovative design to the arduous working conditions, including those of the children who lived in the Apprentice House, the mill has a complicated past. ‘As Shadows Return’ is a dynamic and evolving piece, to take local people and visitors on a journey through its history.”f you have a moment, go and check it out - and pay silent tribute to a place that has seen so many changes.
