Windows

Two tall narrow windows cut through a concrete interior wall of the Mungo Scott Flour Mill. Paint has lifted from the surface in thick sheets, curling away from the wall in layers. A red metal ladder leans against the wall to the right. The timber floor below carries a scatter of debris. Light enters through the two openings and falls across the peeling surface. The mill at 2-32 Smith Street, Summer Hill, was built in 1921 and began operating in June 1922, when Mungo Scott Ltd relocated from their previous premises on Sussex Street, Sydney. The building is a five-storey load-bearing brick structure with a timber post-and-beam internal frame and a hipped metal-sheet roof. The mill form was not incidental; grain arrived by rail to the site's own siding, was raised to the top floor, and moved downward by gravity through successive milling stages, floor by floor. On 13 January 1927, a fire destroyed a flour store and part of the mill, with approximately 10,000 bags of flour and offal lost. The blaze was believed to have been caused by sparks from passing trains igniting stored flour. The mill was rebuilt and continued operating under successive operators, including Goodman Fielder and, later, Allied Mills. Concrete grain silos were added in the 1950s, and steel bulk storage silos followed in 1963. By the 2000s, the Mungo Scott mill was the sole remaining customer on the Rozelle-Darling Harbour Goods Line. The final goods train arrived on 1 December 2008. Milling operations ceased in 2009. The site was heritage-listed under the Ashfield Local Environmental Plan in 1985 and the Mungo Scott building was retained as part of the subsequent redevelopment. These photographs were made in 2014, after the mill had been silent for five years and before construction on the redevelopment commenced in August 2015.