Millenium Mills – Derelict Sunday DS227

The Millennium Mills is a derelict turn of the 20th century flour mill in West Silvertown on the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock, between the Thames Barrier and the ExCeL London exhibition centre.

During the early half of the 20th century, the Royal Victoria Dock became an essential part of industrial Britain and London's largest centre of flour milling. Millennium Mills was designed and built by millers William Vernon & Sons of Birkenhead in 1905. The mills were extensive with a capacity of 100 sacks per hour. Vernon described the mills in a single word as "palatial" and named the mill after their most successful product, a flour variety which they called "Millennium Flour" after winning the "Miller Challenge Cup" at the 1899 International Bakers Exhibition.

In 1920, Vernon & Sons was taken over by Spillers Limited, an established flour milling business founded in 1829, which subsequently went into the production of dog food and animal feeds by 1927. The Spillers name remains prominent on the east and west wings of the building.

Millennium Mills was rebuilt as a 10-storey concrete art deco building in 1933 (see extra) and again after WWII bombings of the docks partially destroyed the buildings.

Spillers' Millennium Mills has become a well-loved icon of post-industrial Britain and has made its way into many aspects of popular culture, being used as a backdrop in films and television shows such as Ashes to Ashes, London's Burning and Derek Jarman's The Last of England.