A derelict maltings which is one of the more obvious bits of wreckage in Athy.
It’s part of an industrial estate, bordered on one side by a canal and partially surrounded by active businesses including a factory, a pub and a garage.
Part of the rear has been damaged by fire, apparently from illegally stored waste.
Malting, in case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know, involves soaking barley seeds in water, letting them grow a bit (germinate), then lightly toasting the resulting sprouted grain in a kiln.
The germination step was originally done by spreading out the damp grain on large floors, manually raking and turning it over the course of several days.
This was later superseded by mechanised methods involving stirred tanks or rotating drums.
There’s a mixture of buildings from the mid 1800s onwards here, in roughly three blocks.
Starting with the roadside one, it’s pretty far gone with some of the roof missing.
A couple of machines on the ground floor - the red one at the back in the second photo is for dosing grain with a ridiculously toxic organomercury fungicide (Panogen), now banned.
A kiln, with fans for pumping hot air through germinated grain on the perforated floor above.
This is the older type of floor with ceramic tiles, familiar from corn mills, which also need to dry grain.
Nothing much upstairs.
The second block, part of it shown on the left in the first picture below, with several germination floors and a kiln at the end.
Bits of the kiln, which has a perforated iron floor with a collapsing pagoda roof on top.
continued
It’s part of an industrial estate, bordered on one side by a canal and partially surrounded by active businesses including a factory, a pub and a garage.
Part of the rear has been damaged by fire, apparently from illegally stored waste.
Malting, in case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know, involves soaking barley seeds in water, letting them grow a bit (germinate), then lightly toasting the resulting sprouted grain in a kiln.
The germination step was originally done by spreading out the damp grain on large floors, manually raking and turning it over the course of several days.
This was later superseded by mechanised methods involving stirred tanks or rotating drums.
There’s a mixture of buildings from the mid 1800s onwards here, in roughly three blocks.
Starting with the roadside one, it’s pretty far gone with some of the roof missing.
A couple of machines on the ground floor - the red one at the back in the second photo is for dosing grain with a ridiculously toxic organomercury fungicide (Panogen), now banned.
A kiln, with fans for pumping hot air through germinated grain on the perforated floor above.
This is the older type of floor with ceramic tiles, familiar from corn mills, which also need to dry grain.
Nothing much upstairs.
The second block, part of it shown on the left in the first picture below, with several germination floors and a kiln at the end.
Bits of the kiln, which has a perforated iron floor with a collapsing pagoda roof on top.
continued
