Sugar Sheds

I really enjoyed my tour of the Sugar Sheds on Saturday by Rod Miller, but did not use any shots from the visit. I have got a number of ideas for photographs, so on the way home this evening I stopped off at the Sugar Sheds. There is a haunting beauty about this building.

The first commercial sugar refinery opened in Greenock in 1850 and by 1864 almost a quarter of Britain’s sugar refineries were located in Greenock and Port Glasgow. By the late 19th century the sugar trade was booming with up to 400 ships arriving at Greenock ports each year from the Carribean. The most famous of these refineries, Tate & Lyle, was formed in 1921 and operated successfully in the town until its closure in 1997. The large warehouse at James Watt Dock Marina was used for the storage of raw and processed sugar – this category A-listed structure is known locally as the ‘Sugar Shed’.

The Sugar Sheds which sits at James Watt Dock in Greenock: this vast red-brick and cast-iron former sugar warehouse with its distinctive zig-zag exterior sits in the shadow of Greenock’s Titan Crane and opposite Greenock Morton FC’s Cappielow Stadium. It has not been used for sugar-making since the 1960s. Its doors were shut on sugar completely in the mid 1990s. Prince Charles is a known supporter of retaining the former sugar warehouse and even visited the building in 2002 to add his voice to a campaign to save it from demolition. Despite several attempt to demolish it and a fire in 2006, it has now been made wind and watertight and part of it is currently used as storage space. The building was used as a venue during the 2011 Tall Ships Race, which opened many eyes to its potential as a space which could be used for public events.

Absent Voices has been devised to explore and preserve in words, pictures, song and sound, the legacy of Greenock’s once mighty sugar industry.