Warminster Maltings, Britain’s oldest working maltings, is 170 years old this year (built in 1855). As the only stand-alone ‘floor maltings’ remaining in the UK, its survival is quite remarkable. But having achieved this, the business, the only malting company in the western half of the country, is now set fair to continue making malt for a long time to come. Here the team explain how they undertook a brilliant project of repair and restoration.

Following its acquisition by Robin Appel in 2001, repairs and restoration work began soon after. That the Grade 2 Listed malthouses were in such a poor state of repair could not be excused, but it could be explained.

As a working maltings, the site had been on the condemned list for the previous 30 years but had always miraculously escaped. However, the introduction of Progressive Beer Duty in 2002 suddenly gave the business a whole new lease of life.

The arrival of a whole swathe of new-build Craft Breweries brought with them a demand for malt products which exactly matched the Warminster business model. Individually, all orders were very modest – no more than 1 tonne per week, or per fortnight – but very precise: a range of different malts, malts that needed to be crushed, packed in 25kgs sacks, and delivered fresh ready for the mash tun. At the time, this was not a market that most of the UK malt capacity was geared up for.

This meant the Warminster business was quickly profitable, generating sufficient funds to start work on the buildings.

This began at the front of the building, in the summer of 2003, creating new office space, and supporting facilities, along with space for visitors, mostly prospective customers, which had now become a frequent occurrence. This first project turned out to be one of the most expensive, not least because the roof of kiln 1, immediately adjacent, but not part of the plan, chose to collapse at the same time. So that had to be rebuilt as well.

You could say the 24 years long programme of works was punctuated by four major roofing projects, eleven separate roofs in all. The second of these was in 2009, when all four roofs of the germination floors were stripped, enabling repairs to all the ‘A’ frames and rafters, which were all in a very poor state. Strict instructions from Historic England demanded that the original timbers, as much as possible, had to be retained. So, much bracing of new with old was required, in order to make the structures safe.

The third roofing project was what is termed as ‘The Old Store’, where the barley is stored above the steeping cisterns. This full width slate covered roof also included ‘The Sweater Kiln’ (for drying barley) immediately adjacent, a late Victorian ‘add on’ to the original complex. This project presented the opportunity to install 4×35 tonnes malt storage bins in the long redundant kiln, a hugely valuable addition to the somewhat cramped capacity.

At the same time as these major projects, involving outside contractors, much other work was also continually taking place, carried out by the Maltings’ own staff.

This included all the windows which were fabricated on site, including restoring the wooden mullions, each exactly 4 inches apart, as laid down 200 years ago, by the strict regulations of The Malt Tax. Some of these windows also required replacement of the surrounding stoneware, and all those on the germination floors needed new hatches on the inside, courtesy of which the temperatures and humidity on the floors are controlled. And the list goes on.

However, the final roofing project has to be the most ambitious of them all. This is the restoration of the original pyramid style roofs to kilns 3 and 4, which were burnt down in a major fire in 1924.

They were replaced then by ‘hipped’ roofs, with a flue running the full length of the apex. Planning permission from both Wiltshire County Council and Historic England was sought, and both agreed it was an exciting project, and permission was granted in 2018. But, unfortunately, Covid got in the way! So the work has only just been completed.

At the same time as all this structural work, all the engineering has been replaced or upgraded, and all the old electrics were stripped out and replaced with new.

Then in 2017, a brand new ‘state of the art’ Weishapt gas fired kiln was installed. This has been a particularly significant upgrade, both widening the spectrum of white malts produced, and combining the superiority of the ‘floor made’ modification with a very precise kilning capability.

Robin Appel is very keen to emphasise: “Our maltings is our shop window, and it has always been our plan to present it in its best light. We do not want to be seen as a working museum, because we are quite definitely not that. We make malt the traditional way, and we want to show respect for that method. We believe our malt is superior to “commercial malt” (a term the whisky industry has conjured up for pneumatic malt), and our customers continually acknowledge that it is.”

“Not only that, we believe that the future of Craft Breweries does depend on maintaining the moral high ground through associations with desirable qualities such as local, artisanal, and sustainable.

“We are doing our best to deliver all this, and all the time we can, we are confident we have a robust and viable future. It is absolutely vital to maintaining everything that we have achieved so far, and to everything we look forward to achieving in the future.”