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It's more than 30 years since Hilton James walked through the doors of the Baltic Flour Mills to start his first day at work but he can still remember it clearly.

"I was 29. I started on the Monday and my first daughter was born on the Friday.

A ship unloading at the mill in 1962

"I was a maintenance joiner. When the pieces of material, i.e. wood, metal, started falling apart we took sizes of them, made new pieces, and when the mill closed on a weekend we used to replace them with the new pieces we'd made."

That was in 1974. Fast forward to the 21st Century and the site on the south bank of the River Tyne is now home to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

Baltic Flour Mills closed in 1982 and work to convert the old silo building, the only part of the complex remaining, into an arts centre began in 1998, after several years of discussions.

Changes

In October 2008 the two halves of the mill's history came together when several former workers, including Hilton James, returned to the building to take part in an art installation called Couples.

Construction of Baltic in 1999

The former workers joined current members of Baltic staff to talk to the public about their memories of working there.

Most of them had been to the arts centre before but said it was still quite strange to see the building looking so changed. Even the entrance is on a different side now.

Vera Smith from Gateshead used to work in the canteen, first as an assistant and later as chef.

"I don't feel so weird now but I did," she said. "I brought my grandchildren to see it, and of course I was thinking I was going to walk in and say 'This is where I used to do such and such' and I saw the inside and thought 'I'm lost, I'm lost'.

"That's when it really felt weird because I was ready to tell my grandkids all about it. I expected to come in and say 'this was there and that was there'… I wanted to do that."

Hilton agreed: "It's just the outside of the building we recognise now. It's totally different inside."

Walter enjoyed working at the mill

Good craic

"There were no individual floors in here just a floor and a roof," Walter Braithwaite, who started work as a lorry driver for Rank Hovis when the mill opened in 1950, explained.

"It was silos, huge storage bins from top to bottom. There was sort of gangways in between for the workmen to get around but there was no actual floors."

Walter, now 88, worked at the mill until 1978 and still has fond memories of the time.

"It was smashing. It was a good job. It was the people, and the management were good, but it was hard work, strict time keeping," he said.

Vera and Hilton also loved working there.

"It was good camaraderie," Hilton said. "It was good craic. There was a family atmosphere."

Vera added: "I got on quite well with the office and management and all the workers. It was good, I loved it there."

Peter worked in security

Vera and Hilton had not seen each other for about 25 years before the event at Baltic in 2008 but Hilton recognised his old colleague straight away.

He remembered being tempted by the cooking smells that wafted from Vera's canteen every morning.

"Your wife might make sandwiches up for you but when you smelt those bacon sandwiches on a morning you couldn't resist them," he said.

Devastating news

Peter Thompson, who worked in security at the mill from 1973-4, sits on the other side of the fence.

"I personally didn't really enjoy it as a place to work because the noise was deafening when it was in full operation," he said.

"And when they shut it down it was dead quiet. It was quite a tomb except the building used to sort of groan, it sounded like the building was in pain. There was all these funny noises."

But like the others Peter also said it was a great group of people to work with.

The Baltic Flour Mill sign remains

The Baltic Flour Mills closed in 1982, after just over 30 years in operation.

Hilton remembered feeling shocked by the news that it was to shut.

"We all thought we were going to be there until we were 65, until retirement. It was a secure job, it was like being employed at the council, you know, it was a job for life.

"It was devastating."

Now he's glad to see the place has a new lease of life as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

And the sign on the side of the building acts as a reminder for future generations of the work that once went on in this section of the Gateshead quayside.