This massive facility has been a thorn in many people's sides for a long time. However the land was recently sold to the local council who wasted no time in demolishing a line of storage sheds in order to put a new road right through one end of the site to access their new headquarters, and following that they decided to not pay for security any more. So it's become a bit of a free for all for the local youths and metal thieves, they've made a real mess of parts of the site however all the good stuff is still very very good. It's location about as far east as you can go in the British Isles generally means it doesn't get too much in the way of attention, but knowing it's likely to be demolished soon after a new road bridge is completed nearby meant it was one place I simply had to see.

The company is still going strong today but closed this factory in 2010 during a downsizing operation. On site they built mainly large wooden window frames as well as bespoke items like staircases and other big wooden things. There were on-site wood treatment and drying facilities alongside a dozen large storage sheds, two enormous workshop buildings and the main draw, the mind-bending sawdust extractor and storage plant, a towering snaking mess of pipes and hoppers powered by a massive centrifugal fan.

I did attempt to access the higher levels of the extraction plant, however the last 13 years exposed to the salty sea air haven't been kind to the walkways which are are made of both metal and wood, getting to the top of the one climbable ladder revealed a rusty walkway with plants growing out of it and at that point I decided I'd prefer to live to see another day so went back down the ladder rather fast.

1. First sight of the extractor system. It connects to the larger of the two workshops via the covered pipe bridge.



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9. Moving into the boiler house, with it's carpet of pigeon shit over everything and resident pigeons making a nuisance of themselves.



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12. On into the drying plant, these fans were a good 6ft in diameter.



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19. The rear end of the enormous main workshop building.



20. Outside storage sheds.



21. Maintenance garage.



22. Looking down towards the site entrance, the main workshop on the left.



23. Timber treatment building, not a lot left here.



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25. Into the main workshop, a vast cavernous space that has beared the brunt of most of the attention by local idiots.



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30. Store room in the offices at the front of the workshop, one of the few intact things left in there.



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33. Looking across the outside storage area. Behind the dirt bank at the far end which you may be able to see, is where the new road was plowed through a line of the sheds. We didn't know it at the time but there were construction workers moving earth around on the bank whilst we were on the site.



34. Crossing over to the second large workshop building, through a small parts room. Most of the site was empty except for, weirdly, this one room.



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And with that we were gone.

Thanks for looking

Looks like an excellent facility! All those interweaving pipes are especially heavenly. Sad to hear about the scrappers but glad you got these pics to share before any serious damage is done.

Very cool!

Looks like you got there at a good time. Awesome photoshoot, and the insight you provided accommodates the photos well. Seriously love the way that place just looks, especially with those mossy ass pipes. Thanks for sharing!

Great shots! Looks like a fun explore.

I really like that moss in #5, and #26 and #38 are framed really great.

An excellent demonstration in dust suppression! The drying corridor was really cool too.

Cheers guys! Was nice to finally do a massive location again, industrial sites on this scale are few and far between now sadly.

nice one