The Crown Flour Mills (Former) building was constructed in 1878 for millers J.T. Evans and Company. Designed by architect James Johnston, the mill is an important survivor from North Otago’s flour-milling boom of the 1870s and 1880s.

North Otago was one of New Zealand’s premier grain growing regions in the 1870s. The North Otago Times proclaimed that ‘mills are multiplying in this district...We have a windmill, steam-mills, and water-mills, and milling enterprise is evidently not yet at an end.’

John Thomas Evans (1841-1913) entered the milling business with James Lees and Charles Moore in the 1870s. When millers J.K. Anderson and Company put their Teanaraki Mill up for sale, the three men took over the business, trading as J.T. Evans & Co. Judging the Teanaraki Mill too small, the company decided to build a larger mill in Oamaru that would provide both storage and manufacturing space. Architect James Johnston advertised the tender in September 1877. Mr Barclay was the stonemason, Henry Sidon, the carpenter, and Jack, Steel and Hendry, the engineers. The mill was built of Oamaru stone and ‘American pine.’

Building was well underway by June 1878, when the paper reported the construction of the 90ft high chimneystack. The stonemason used over 60,000ft [18,300m] of stone. The mill was the biggest building in Oamaru: it was 120ft long [36.5m], 54ft [16.5m] wide, with a 53ft [16m] high façade over four storeys. The two-storey engine house, built partly of stone and partly of iron, was 59ft [18m] long, 40ft [12m] wide and 34ft [10m] high. The mill was steam powered and ran four pairs of millstones. Elevators moved the grain from the receiving floor to the upper floors of the mill. The Crown Flour Mills operation was running by September 1878. The mill had storage for over 5000 tonnes of merchandise or for fifty thousand sacks of grain. The scale of the mill showed how optimistic millers were of a prosperous future.

J.T. Evans and Company ran into financial problems almost right away. A four-month delay in the building contract meant that the company missed a season of production. The partners attempted to float a company but this attempt failed. John Evans and Charles Moore ended up in bankruptcy court, and the mill was sold to millers J. and T. Meek.

Scottish-born Thomas Meek (1842-1905), a joiner by trade, arrived in Oamaru in 1863. After buying a threshing machine, which he worked for six years, he then developed a flour milling business with his brother John. Thomas was prominent in local politics, being a member of Oamaru Borough Council for many years, and held a seat on the Oamaru Harbour Board.

The Meeks set about developing the mill – replacing the iron engine house with stone around 1880. In 1886, the Meeks installed a roller system and electric light, and renamed the mills the Crown Roller Mills. The Otago Witness praised the modern technology and convenience, describing how the mill had its own railway siding and weighbridge with a turntable. On the first floor were the rollers with spouts that conveyed the products from the machines on the floor above to the elevators. The flour was bagged on the first floor. On the second floor were more conveyors to the third floor where the scalpers and dust collectors, flour bins and bran bins were located. On the fourth floor were the tops of all the elevators and its central shaft and drive belt. Meek’s Crown Roller Mills, producing the ‘Snow Drop’ brand of flour, operated until the 1980s.

Milling changed in the twentieth century. New wheat varieties meant grain could be grown more widely, ending North Otago’s predominance as a wheat-growing region. The local market was static. Freight was expensive. Imported wheat and flour from Australia competed with the local products. By the mid-1930s, farming had changed; meat and wool were in vogue. In Oamaru, only Meek’s and Ireland’s mills survived. The Ireland milling group took over the Meek’s in the 1960s. In 1981 then managing director J.K. Ireland wrote that the mill was one of the ‘few remaining early mills which continue to run efficiently in almost original form’ and its products were as good as any produced by modern mills.

In December 1987, Queenstown’s Defiance Mills took over the Ireland Group’s mills. Defiance sold the mill in 1988. The mill closed. Since the late 1980s, the former mill has been home to a car wrecking business.

In 2013, the former Crown Flour Mills building remains home to Smash Palace Auto Dismantlers.