Abandoned Interior

The room is bare down to its concrete floor. A white-painted support column rises from the centre of the space to ceiling-mounted light fittings, the kind of industrial fitting designed to keep a working area lit through a long shift. Cabinetry panels, loose cables, and a draped sheet lie scattered across the floor, and daylight pushes in through a window on the right wall. Whatever the room was for, that function is long gone. What remains is the structure itself. The building this interior belongs to is the former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory on Francis Street, Yarraville, in Melbourne's West Footscray industrial precinct. Davies Coop & Co. Ltd began developing the site in 1952, establishing a wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd., to run dyeing and finishing operations under licence from the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England, using the Bradford Dyers' Association's proprietary "Rigmel" shrink-control process. The West Footscray dye house was started that year and reported as nearing completion by late 1954. The company had purchased 40 acres at West Footscray and built up a vertically integrated cotton operation across three states. The site later operated under the Bradmill name, manufacturing denim and workwear fabric. Textile operations ceased around 2001, and the building was vacated around 2007. Brett Patman photographed this interior in 2011, during the years the site sat empty between closure and redevelopment. The scattered fittings and panels suggest a building partway through being stripped rather than one simply left to stand. Frasers Property Australia and Irongate later took control of the site for a mixed-use residential development retaining the heritage-listed boiler house and proofing building. This photograph records the factory interior as it stood in that window before work began.