Collapsed Roof Interior

The corrugated roof sheeting has come down. It lies in broad, buckled sheets across the concrete floor of one of the large manufacturing halls at the former Davies Coop / Bradmill factory on Francis Street, Yarraville, mixed in with burnt timber and the rusted cylinders of toppled tanks. A steel staircase at the centre of the frame rises intact to a concrete mezzanine, and along the pale brick wall at left a row of old electrical boxes holds its position, still bolted in place as though waiting for a shift that is not coming. The collapse above them has opened the ceiling to the sky. The site was developed from 1952 by Davies Coop and Co. Ltd, a vertically integrated cotton firm that spun in Adelaide, wove in Sydney, and built this dyeing and finishing plant in Victoria around a British shrink-control process licensed from the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd. The early manufacturing buildings on the Francis Street site date from the early 1950s, their large sawtooth-on-truss roofs designed to flood the weaving floors with even, south-facing daylight. The factory later operated under the Bradmill name as a major denim and workwear fabric manufacturer. Textile production ceased around 2001, and the site was vacated around 2007. During the dormant years before redevelopment, fire damage accumulated in parts of the complex. What this photograph shows is the result: a roof that no longer keeps anything out, machinery and structure left where they fell, and the interior of a mid-twentieth-century industrial hall open to whatever comes next. The electrical boxes on the brick wall are the most orderly thing left in the frame. Locally heritage-listed under Maribyrnong Heritage Overlay HO125, the site has since been redeveloped as a mixed-use residential precinct. This photograph was made in 2011, while the building still stood in this condition.