The grain store, and what it will hold
One room, four floors up, with the loading beam left where it was.
Grain came up the outside of this building on a crane and went out through the doors on the water side, which is why the top floor is one clear span with no columns in it. The floor was rebuilt and strengthened; almost nothing else was.
It takes a seated dinner, a conference with a stage at the river end, or rows of chairs and a screen. The windows black out properly, which is rare in a room this height and is the reason the film nights ended up here.
Two things are worth knowing before you ask about a date. Everything loads in through the goods lift, so a grand piano is a conversation rather than a yes. And amplified sound stops at eleven, because there are flats on the dock and we would like to keep them on speaking terms with us.
What is on
In the grain store this season
Our own programme. Private hire sits around it, which is why some weeks look emptier than they are.
Every second Thursday
Wharf Film Nights
Grain Store, fourth floor
One film, shown properly, with the bar open before and after. The programme is picked by whoever is running the projector that month, which explains a good deal about it.
First Tuesday of the month
Trade breakfast
Long room, ground floor
For people working out of the wharf and anyone else who fancies it. An hour, one short talk, and nobody has to introduce themselves in a circle.
Most Sunday afternoons
Open rehearsal
Grain Store, fourth floor
Whoever has the room for the week works in it with the doors open. Come in, sit at the back, leave when you want to.
The two weekends before Christmas
The winter fair
Grain Store and the market hall
Makers from the studios upstairs, traders from the hall, and a good deal more people in the building than it was designed for.
By arrangement, usually a weekday morning
Wedding viewings
Meet at the wharf-side entrance
The room empty, with the lights up and then down, so you can see what you are actually hiring rather than a photograph of somebody else's evening.
The room
A walk through it, empty
Filmed on an ordinary weekday morning before anything was set up, which is the version worth seeing when you are deciding.
The same room, set three ways
Shot from the same corner each time, so the difference is the setting rather than the lens.
Seated dinner, long tables
Tables down the length of the span, service from the lift end.
Conference, stage at the river end
Rows facing the water, with the blackout down and the house lights at half.
Screening night
Chairs, a screen hung off the loading beam, and the bar moved to the back wall.
Before you book
Loading in
The goods lift is the only route to the fourth floor for anything you cannot carry, and its dimensions decide most of what is possible in the room. The film is somebody taking a flight case up it, at the speed it actually goes.
Measure the case rather than the kit. Two crews have arrived with a desk that would go through the door of the lift but not round the corner at the top.
If something will not fit, say so early. There is a hoist point on the loading beam and a rigger who knows it, but that is a booking of its own and not a thing to discover on the day.
Bookings
The winter diary closes
After this we stop taking new dates for the winter and start on the spring one. Anything already agreed stands; anything asked for after it goes in the next diary.
Ends Monday, November 30 at 5:00 PM