A Brief History of Car Graveyards and My Love Affair With Them - Thread

Over the last decade of me venturing into and documenting abandonments there have been a few things I always love to shoot - industrial was my first real love, and still is my favourite type of structure to explore and shoot. Hospitals and churches come a close second. But over the last few years I have developed a real love of documenting car, and other vehicle, graveyards.

I had planned a somewhat retrospective look across my entire exploring timeline to coincide with my ten year anniversary last week but it never happened for some reason or another. Instead I guess I kind of want to look back at a focused area of my photography (some would say an obsession) that has really taken root over the last few years.

It probably should have been an obsession that started sooner, as I have been surrounded by cars, and classic cars my entire life. I spent days as a kid at my dad's workshop where as a business he bought, sold and repaired classic Volvos from the 1950s to the 1980s. Weekends were often punctuated with watching old cars get smashed to bits on short oval tracks, indeed this is still my second hobby except now I have evolved that initial spectating as a kid into filming/photographing the racing and being heavily involved with the promotion side of my local track. Through those two things I developed both a love of old cars on the road, and an equal love of rusted old cars too, gradually becoming more and more knowledgeable on the subject as the years passed by.

In the early years of my exploring I saw the occasional place that had maybe a car, or a few, but nothing more as back then I was too focused on trying to see everything that I had spent years lusting after on the internet previously to really devote the time to them. I do however remember being absolutely gutted to hear the famous car graveyard in Chatillon, Belgium had been cleared only shortly before I began exploring however. My first 'proper' car graveyard was a place I found in 2011, but it wasn't until 2016 and the discovery of an utterly incredible one in America that I really began purposely hunting these places out. The amount I have seen has grown exponentially over the last few years, and in the first half of this year I have found and shot more than I ever thought could still be out there. I really enjoy the hunt, relentlessly scanning areas on Google Maps trying to find possible locations - most of course turn out to be duds, but occasionally I strike gold and find something pretty awesome. Whenever I'm out between locations on exploring days I am also constantly scanning driveways, fields, patches of woodland, anything we drive past for interesting old cars.

Anyway, enough waffling. I hope you enjoy looking at these as much as I did shooting them. Some of these places I've shown on here before, others have been hidden away on my Flickr account for a while. It's a long thread, way longer than I thought it would be when I began writing all this down!

The first one - June 2011

#2 - The Indiana Jones one, July 2014

Land Rovers would go on to become my most commonly found vehicle, with Ford Transit vans coming in second.

#3 - The massive snowy Canadian one, March 2015

One of the craziest things I ever did.

#4 - 'Old Iron GB' August 2015

#5 - The incredible one in Upstate NY, May 2016

It's impossible to show how amazing this place was in only a few shots. Sadly now it's mostly been cleared. To this day it is still the best 'in the wild' car graveyard I have ever shot, anywhere.

2017 was when things changed and I began to take the hunt for these places seriously.

#6 - The railway station one - January 2017

#7 - The pub car park one - March 2017

#8 - The first abandoned scrapyard one - May 2017

A permission visit, thankfully the guys in the mechanics shop out front were more than welcoming when we asked for a poke around out back.

#9 - The second abandoned scrapyard one - May 2017

#10 - The Rootes graveyard one - May 2017

The best car graveyard I have ever found in the UK. It remained completely unknown to almost everyone as we managed to keep it between myself and a small group of close friends for ages. I went back a month or so back, and was absolutely gutted to find it was about half cleared.

#11 - The Volvo breakers one, August 2017

An active business, which specialised in Volvos. A place I had been wanting to see for absolutely ages.

#12 - The dealership on a hill one, September 2017

Another place I had wanted to see for ages. An infamous former car dealership which at one point years back was filled with cars but sadly only three remain now.

#13 - The Rover P5 one, September 2017

Shortly after my visit, these were all unceremoniously dragged out the undergrowth and scrapped.

#14 - The Jaguars in the woods one, October 2017

#15 - The collapsed garage one, October 2017

#16 - The first destroyed barn one, October 2017

#17 - The Plough House one, November 2017

#18 - Mr. Gray's one, December 2017

#19 - The one on the island, January 2018

Another permission visit, made possible by knowing the right people!

#20 - The stinky manure house one, March 2018

The house really did stink of manure.

#21 - The Old Car City one, April 2018

I don't know how to describe this place. Just visit it. Now.

I will force myself to only add three photos because I could just add dozens and dozens otherwise.

#22 - The gay porn house one, May 2018

#23 - The second destroyed barn one, May 2018

#24 - The garage forecourt one, May 2018

Mobile shots of a place I had wanted to see for ages.

#25 - The heavy recovery one, June 2018

Another favourite of mine, a field full of ex-heavy recovery/heavy haulage trucks.

#26 - The third abandoned scrapyard one, June 2018

One of my personal favourite finds, this one came right out the blue. Dozens of cars and vans all scattered through dense undergrowth, abandoned for years.

#27 - The American one in the UK, September 2018

Visited at the end of last summer, this place was one I had wanted to visit for ages and luckily I managed to gain permission at last with a friend of mine.

#28 - The Mercedes one, September 2018

Another permission visit, this collection of rusting Mercedes cars is sat behind a garage, we used our charm and genuine interest in cars to wangle a free roam permission visit. We had no idea what to expect, but the collection included some incredibly rare cars including a Fintail estate and a 600 Grosser.

#29 - The Scottish highlands one, November 2018

Probably my second favourite place I've ever found on home soil, after the Rootes one. A total chance find on Google maps a few days before a planned Scotland trip yielded one of the most amazing car collections I've ever seen. The owner was absolutely lovely as well and after turning up completely on spec at his house he allowed us free roam for as long as we liked.

#30 - The shearer's cottage one, November 2018

Another Scottish one, this one much smaller. The ground around the abandoned house had recently been cleared for drainage works which made shooting them a lot easier!

#31 - The Churchyard one, December 2018

I rounded off 2018 with another small find, but contained in it was one of the rarest cars I've ever found - a Jensen 541.

#32 - The construction workers one, January 2019

#33 - The Dragstrip one, January 2019

Now cleared, this was another good accidental find. We had a quick run around of the place as it wasn't somewhere we particularly fancied getting caught...

#34 - The abandoned farm one, February 2019

#34 - The Peugeot 505 one, February 2019

There are more Peugeot 505s here than I have ever seen before, easily over a dozen but most of them in an impenetrable mass of brambles.

#35 - The military depot one, February 2019

#36 - The 4x4 one, March 2019

Another total chance discovery on Google maps, the chance finds more often than not prove to be duds but this one wasn't!

#37 - The sheep-filled one, March 2019

Two chance finds in quick succession, this one was another eagle-eyed maps spot which turned out to be something more than I ever expected, having only seen two cars in a field on the aerial view.

#38 - The MG one, April 2019

I gained access here thanks to my friend who spotted it on Facebook marketplace as the cars were all being sold off. Thankfully we got there before anything had been removed!

#39 - The Detroit one, April 2019

I spotted this compound on maps when planning my Detroit long weekender, and pinned it as something to check out. Sadly I couldn't access most of it, however there were a few I got closer to round the back. I had to make do with photos through the fence for the most part.

#40 - The Canadian Boneyard one, April 2019

Another lucky find, with great owners who allowed us around to have a look at their classic cars. It was a great morning until the heavens opened and horrendous weather arrived.

#41 - The electrical storage farm one, May 2019

A small area of a much larger site, this barn had a nice collection of old cars sat in it. Sort of a little bonus area in the main explore as such.

#42 - The sea of nettles one, June 2019

I don't count this one as complete, as we had to bail halfway through owing to the massive amount of thorns and stinging nettles covering everything. I will be back in the winter...

#43 - The hoarders house one, June 2019

The house on the land where these cars are is the most rammed full hoarders house I have ever shot. Most of the cars were filled with stuff as well.

#44 - The Porsche one, June 2019

And now we've reached the latest, and possibly most impressive find of mine to date. It's by no means the biggest, but it's a barn full of the skeletal remains of Porsches. Rare models such as a 911 Targa and a 356 are all somewhat present. I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing when I peeked in the side of the barn.

Thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed this. My hunt goes on, somehow I am always finding new places to shoot with cars in, so who knows what the future holds.