Quizzers of the world take note: the grand-daddy of all skyscrapers is not to be found in Chicago, New York or Philadelphia. According to government heritage adviser Historic England, it is located in the county town of Shropshire, where a complex £28m programme of refurbishment and shoring up, designed to secure the 1797 structure for at least another 100 years, has just completed.

Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is some distance from the town’s medieval heart, in a loop of the River Severn, upstream of Abraham Darby’s 1779 cast-iron bridge over the river around 13 miles to the south-east. Located well away from the town centre, the casual observer may spot little more remarkable than a well-preserved industrial structure given a new lease of life.