Then I was asked to manage the operation of the malting industry’s trade association, The Maltsters Association of Great Britain. For the last thirteen years of my working life, as its Director General, I was involved in any issue that involved that modern industry, a fourth career in fact.

I retired in November 2006, after working almost non-stop since September 1960.

In 2009 I finished my distance learning course at the Open University, to earn a BA Honours degree in Humanities, so I finally finished my formal education at the age of 65.

This wide range of different experiences has given me a rich seam to mine, that time now allows.

Walking the Floors - Introduction

I finally read this poem in Bury St Edmunds, seventeen years after it was written! It was at Bury Cafe Poets on September 28th 2010, and Colin Whyles recorded it an put it on the Poetry Aloud website, click here to access it.

Ivor's Versifier Website - Walking the Floors read aloud

This will be the last inspection
no growing grain to muffle sound
beneath the Maltsters feet
footfalls stark on wooden stairs
trod for half a life.

Step on the germination floor
there is no need of light
as memory walks the forest
of the cast iron stanchions.

Grain was always grown in darkness
but this is more than loss of light.
The empty steep has dried and mocks its purpose,
for barley does not swell beneath the sparge.

Shovels lie where thrown
an exclamation from their users
one leans at ease against a post
positioned by a lifetimes rule
that will not end by closure,
“Always leave the tools to hand” by hands no longer wanted.

All fired at the last kiln,
with their empiric knowledge:
Mastery of Water, Wind and Fire.
Water,
uptake judged between the teeth
and later by the Maltsters rub.

Wind,
temperature measured on the cheek,
direction by a wetted thumb,
when ‘running on the windows’.

Fire,
applied by taste and smell.
How far to crack the shutters in the frost?
How many barrows to the bay
when laying out the couch?
How deep to load the old piece on the kiln
for drying before curing?

No cure now.
The kiln fan idles in the cold draught
a clicking sucks the silence.

Yet there are noises.
Others here will walk the floor
Rats have won the ninety nine year war
and run through empty garners.

RESPONSES TO "WALKING THE FLOORS"

Ivor's poem produced several responses from his readers, a few of which are directly related to an operational maltings:-

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Gloria Walls
I remember The Maltings well. From 1941 – 1951 I lived with my Nana and Grandad in Maltings Cottage. My Grandad, William Boyden, was still there and working in the office. Myself and friends would sit on the edge of the chute and chat. No Health & Safety then. Happy memories.

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Alan Paske

I found your poem and photographs purely by accident. The poem brought back some vivid childhood memories as my grandfather, George Paske was foreman at the maltings for many years, living over the years in two different tied cottages adjacent to the maltings on Thingoe Hill.

On many Sundays I would go with granddad to walk the floors, being allowed to shovel coke into the furnaces (before they were converted to gas) and to pull the hand ploughs to turn the malting barley on the floors.

I can even now remember the smell of the malt and the sound of water running through the steeps at the rear of my grandparents house.

I paid for my first proper bicycle by working (under-age I would add) by pricking out the dust from the tiles on the malting floors with stiff wire in a cork handle. Back-breaking labour! There were hundreds of holes in each foot-square tile and as each one was completed I wrote 6d in chalk on it because that is what I was paid!

It would be wonderful to be able to see some more photographs of the maltings especially if I could see any family members and also show my own children what the place was like!

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Avatared Freestone

You may or may not remember my time at Goughs as one of the barley technicians from 1973-75 , the pictures and the poem were all very evocative of a long lost youth!

Still long haired and vaguley chemical, as I am now the chief pharmacist in Guernsey amongst other sins, nice to read a poem about a world of work long lost but in my memory never forgotten, and in some ways still cherished for its honesty, if not for its dust (which seems to have escaped your pictures!)

Ivor Murrell replied

Ed -
Thanks for your comment. Who can forget barley dust?

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IN A FURTHER POEM, IVOR MURRELL EXPLAINS THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE STEEPING OF BARLEY COMPARED TO THE EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE MALTSTER

What is germination?

A seed is a simple package of three parts, an outer casing that holds a food source to which is attached an embryo, which under the correct conditions can change into the adult plant. The embryo cannot start the process until it has the right amount of water, at which point it starts to send enzymes into the food parcel (in the case of barley this is insoluble starch) which cannot be converted into an energy source until the enzymes flow.
The embryo is stained red in this enlarged cross-section of a barley corn, the white area is the insoluble starch.

What is the 'right amount of water'?

The scientific analysis might be as follows:-

‘For one particular batch of grain there is an inverse linear relationship between temperature and the log of the time of steeping needed to reach any particular moisture content (Briggs , 1967). So if the grains hydration characteristics are known at one temperature, the water-uptake curve of at any other fixed temperature can be calculated.’ (‘Malts and Malting’, Briggs 1998).

IVOR MURRELL EXPLAINS IN POETIC TERMS
HOW A TRADITIONAL MALTSTER ANSWERS THE SAME QUESTION

Judging the water uptake - by Ivor Murrell

Lined along the wall of the steep
forty of the local Women’s Institute, there
because of the malting’s imminent closure,
and distracted, but bored.
Not interested in a half a lifetime’s empiric skills
but amused by the novelty of a working Victorian factory.

‘How do you know when it’s had enough water?’
hands trailing through the barley swelling in the steep.
He could have told them that
there is an inverse linear relationship between temperature and the log of time for hydration,
but instead he said ‘Bite it’,
and all quickly tried it,
‘if your teeth touch together smoothly
it’s wet enough, but if it’s sticky spit it out.’

At last someone asked ‘Why?’
– ‘Because it will be a rat shit’
and was rewarded with the sight
of forty explosive spitters.