Shrewsbury: The Birthplace of Skyscrapers
How a Shropshire Flax Mill Changed The World
The tarmac path I’m standing on used to be a canal. It’s the perfect vantage point to capture Shrewsbury’s latest visitor attraction.
With my lens at its widest setting, I’m struggling to get the entire building in shot. Stretching five storeys high, the Flaxmill Maltings is huge! What the locals thought when it was built in 1797 is difficult to imagine, although I’m sure some must have looked at it with sheer awe.
Little did they know back then, that this building would change the world’s skyline forever. And that’s because the Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings building was the first iron-framed building in the world.
It proved that an iron frame was strong and robust and, most importantly, fireproof. It was only once a building this size was built, engineers around the world began to wonder — just how high could buildings go?
This building is known as the grandfather of the skyscrapers, because without Shrewsbury’s Flaxmill Maltings proving the engineering and the science worked, the world may not have gone on to build the Empire…
