Tablet House

Date Built: 1909

3 storey commercial building. CSR site for manufacture of sugar tablets and cubes and golden syrup.

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Tablet House

Overview

Sandra Edwards, Workers Beti and Maria, from CSR Pyrmont Refinery Centenary 1978 Photography Project. Sandra Edwards, 192 cubes per tray ... from CSR Pyrmont Refinery Centenary 1978 Photography Project. View across roof of central laboratory to Tablet House and the refinery View across roof of central laboratory to Tablet House The interior of Tablet House 2009 Tablet House from Refinery Drive View of water between Escarpment and Tablet House Tablet House Tablet House

The building was erected in 1909, to make tablet sugar, syrup and other products. Renovated as a three-storey office block, the building retains many original features, such as the load-bearing window frames, the open plan layout made possible by cast iron beams, the loading dock opening to Refinery Square and the lift well (now glazed) which cuts a vertical shaft through the building.

According to Wikipedia,

Tablet is a medium-hard, sugary confection from Scotland…. not as soft as fudge, but not as hard as hard candy [and] often flavoured with vanilla, whisky, or nuts.
According to The Scots Kitchen by F. Marian McNeill, tablet is first noted … in the early 18th century… Tablet is also mentioned in Oor Wullie, a comic book focusing on a scruffy Scottish boy in a world where people speak an extreme form of Scots English.

(Scots had the worst – and fewest – teeth in Western Europe.)

The CSR venture was initiated by a Mr Turner in 1908:

The making of tablet sugar is a matter which we must look into and provide for in the very near future in a way and on a scale which we have not hitherto done; what I saw in England convinced me of the possibilities of the business, and it is sure to extend here at a greater rate than the past developments would lead us to expect; so that our present appliances… will be found altogether inadequate unless we … look ahead a bit.