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*Advance warning, this is the longest thread I've ever made and is more words than photos*
I was actually planning on doing something like this in the summer of 2019 to mark my decade-long journey of exploring abandoned things, however for some reason or another it never materialised. It was mentioned in my 2020 Review thread about how it might be cool to see some of what I've done over the last decade all put together, seeing as I've now been exploring for almost ten and a half years, which got me thinking about the subject again.
The exploring scene in the UK, and probably the world at large, is now almost unrecognisable compared with a decade ago. I feel so glad to have been doing it before the unstoppable rise of social media turned what was an underground hobby into a media circus. That I managed to see some of the all-time great locations in the UK in the first couple of years of my exploring will always stay with me, especially as a lot of the total idiots running around on Youtube now had only just come out of nursery school when I was doing them.
I had first tried putting together a list of what I wanted to include here along with some text as to why they were special or important, but after a couple of hours I realised it would take literally a week to do so canned that idea off as wholly impractical. Instead of that my second thought was why not just bung a load of photos on here and leave the statement at that, as pictures speak a thousand words. I also sacked this idea off as it would literally be probably the most enormous thread ever. So for the third try I decided instead to focus on the decay, as I realised the words 'decade' and 'decayed' are rather close. However this idea was also binned as it would have been just as large as the other two ideas. So for the fourth and final attempt, I instead decided to choose two or three locations a year and have a more in-depth look at them. If this one doesn't work then I will give up. Considering as of the end of 2020 I have done almost 900 explores (I did some quick maths) it's an absolute nightmare for me to choose the ones which mean the most.
A lot of what you will see below you may not recognise, although a fair few people probably will, especially when I start getting into the American stuff of course. I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to see all that I have done, I never even imagined that when I first started out in June 2009 I'd eventually find myself exploring stuff thousands of miles away from home and building a network of great friends on the other side of the world in the process.
2010
NGTE Pyestock.
To kick things off, there simply couldn't be any other place. I was lucky enough to make four visits to the pinnacle of exploring in the UK during 2010, however I will always kick myself that I didn't bother going back a couple of years later with my better gear and re-shooting it.
The National Gas Turbine Establishment 'Pyestock', more simply known by the initials NGTE Pyestock or simply just 'Pyestock', was a former gas turbine engine testing and development site located in Farnborough in the south of the UK. Ask any explorer in the UK who has been around for a good number of years what the best explore the UK ever had was and invariably they will either answer with Cane Hill Hospital or Pyestock. It was absolutely, unarguably legendary in the community, the enormous sprawling industrial facility being a real timewarp of the pre-computer age, the cavernous buildings filled with mind-blowing contents. From the Air House, with it's eight exhauster sets responsible for supplying air at supersonic speeds to the various test cells, to the indescribably huge Cell 4 where Concorde's engines were tested at maximum speed which required it's own additional exhauster because the eight in the Air House weren't able to provide enough air quick enough. The sub-surface Cell 3, and it's entirely outdoor sister Cell 3 West where helicopter and submarine engines were tested. The Battle Test House, so-called because it's power plant came from a decommissioned Navy battleship, and the Main Stores which inexplicably contained a full size Cessna airplane fuselage. I could wax lyrical about Pyestock all day, it's still to this day my favourite place I've ever been.
If people do want a more in-depth look at the site, please check out the awesome www.ngte.co.uk - it features a load of amazing photos of the site taken in the mid-00s only a few years after it was closed down.
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RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Upper Heyford, out of all the hundreds of locations I've been to, is one of the ones very very close to my heart. In terms of size, the enormous former RAF base is up there in the largest sites I've explored, indeed back a decade ago it was pretty much the size of a small town. The base was only a half hour away from my house so was very easily reachable, as of 2020 I've been there more times than I can remember.
It was around pre-Second World War in a much smaller form, although with the arrival of the war it grew massively and became the blueprint for all future large RAF bases. During the war years it was largely used for training purposes, but it was after the war that it's major purpose came into being. Because of it's size, it became one of the bases which was home to the USAF during the Cold War years. The base grew massively again during the 1950s onwards, and was transformed into a small American town complete with American signage, fire hydrants, a baseball diamond, bowling alley etc etc. Hardened aircraft shelters and various bunkers were built on the airfield side, and it housed dozens of fighter planes ready to go at a moments notice were they required. After the Cold War ended, so did most of the USAF presence on British bases, and in 1994 the base was handed back to the MOD and shut down. The hospital on site stayed open until 2001, it became the last building to close on the base.
The main part of the base people tended to explore was the former school complex situated at the far western edge of the site, this part had faired much worse from the elements and so was in an advanced state of decay. The rest of the base was kept much more secure and had semi-regular security patrols, although on one very fruitful trip I managed to see the school, numerous barrack blocks, the casino, and various other buildings, a feat which was very unlikely due to how well kept a lot of it was.
I have so many amazing memories of this place, some of my most favourite explore moments happened here, and I was very very sad when demolition began in 2013. As of 2020, most of the communal side has been turned into a housing estate, everything that is except for around half of the long derelict school - I'll be extra sad when that goes. I paid it a 'farewell' visit in 2016 not expecting it to be around much longer but four years on it's still standing.
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2011
Mitchell Grieve Needle Works
Mitchell Grieve Needle Works, located in the grey, depressing town of Coalville in the midlands of the UK, manufactured needles for use in the knitwear and hosiery industry which was centred around that area of the country for decades. Their factory in Coalville closed in the late 00s and, for a brief time in 2011, cemented itself as one of the greatest industrial factory explores in the country - up there with places like George Barnsley's, Cranes Foundry, Tone Mills etc etc. Up until the beginning of 2011 the entire building was alarmed to the teeth, but in March of that year the alarms were disabled as demolition was looming.
This factory was utterly sublime. Old, dated, decayed, filled with equipment and paperwork galore. It was also the first time I slept in a car outside a location due to our planned overnight stop being half demolished, so bright and early one March morning we clambered over the gate and into a beautiful other world.
The entire factory was demolished in the summer of 2011.
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Mobil Oil Grease Blending Plant
Another legendary place I managed to tick off relatively early. Mobil Oil's grease blending plant in the Birkenhead Docks area was a sprawling, enormous old factory filled with amazing machinery and more pipe porn than anyone could ever dream of. The original site was largely destroyed by bombing during the Second World War and rebuilt in the 1950s including a large new blending hall and a tall central tower for grease production. It primarily blended oils for marine, automotive and industrial use, and it closed around 2001 with production transferring elsewhere.
The huge factory was always a bit of a crapshoot with random security patrols and occasionally a warship docked beside it which had it's own security keeping watch over the plant. However by the time I visited it at the end of 2011, things had been scaled back and the site was beginning to be frequented by many scrappers who were having a field day in areas. One of my overriding memories from this place has nothing to do with the building itself but what happened when we turned up, as the way in involved climbing over the side of a (very low) swingbridge on a canal and walking in through the rear, however when we arrived the bridge was closed and had some sort of work going on where we needed to be, so we ended up going down the other side and belly crawling under the bridge to get to the right side.
Sadly it was totally demolished in 2012, although the huge storage tanks found new homes in Poland at another oil site.
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2012
Tone Mills Dyehouse
The Tone Mills complex in the southwest of the UK is one of the all-time greats of UK industry. Encompassing two large sites little more than half a mile apart in the same small town, it was once the largest woollen mill in the southwest. Originally a relatively small facility on a single site, it expanded in 1790 when the owners, Fox Brothers, purchased an old flour mill. Further expansion happened in the early 1800s when another nearby site was purchased and a huge brick mill complex, known as Tonedale Mill, was opened in 1821. Following the opening of the second site, the older site became exclusively the dyehouse, whilst production of the wool cloth transferred to the larger new site. The whole site closed in the early 2000s, and whilst the larger mill is currently being converted into apartments, the original dyehouse still lies empty, looking a sad sorry state for itself.
As far as industrial time capsules go, the dyehouse is right up there with the very best. Back in 2012 it was in wonderful condition with almost no graffiti or vandalism, however the rise in the popularity of the location amongst both explorers and idiots sent it into a slow decline and it's now a battered, although still impressive, mess - the fact it's had exactly the same access point for over a decade as well is somewhat impressive!
I visited here on a blisteringly cold day in February 2012, and as of 2020 I've been back four or five times over the years. I was lucky enough to explore the larger Tonedale Mill as well five years back after word reached me that the security with his very barky dog had buggered off and all the CCTV cameras were dead - that mill was mostly empty but had the most incredible engine room and boiler house out of anywhere I've seen.
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Mansfield General Hospital
I could have chosen so many things for the second spot in 2012, however none quite matched up to my experience at Mansfield General. The hospital is widely regarded as one of the best derelict hospitals the UK ever had, as it had a bit of everything - loads of decay, loads of old stuff left behind, some unique architecture, and was a difficult one to crack.
The hospital, opened on a site in the centre of the grim town of Mansfield in 1890 and expanded massively in the 1950s, closed it's doors in 1992 and soon gained a legendary, almost mythical status within the exploring community of the late 00s and early 2010s. It was known to be one of the toughest places to do without getting caught, as the hospital was surrounded by closely packed houses, the security guard lived opposite the main gate, and police were known to be called regularly by the locals. The site was ringed by multiple layers of fencing seemingly placed to frustrate would-be explorers, and the scope for potential ways onto the site was limited to one dead end residential street with a fence at the end of it you had to climb - the fence being so close to neighbouring properties that when you were perched on top, you could see into their bedroom windows.
There was, however, a much simpler way to explore the hospital which was a very well guarded secret - the security guard actually didn't mind people going in and photographing the building, as long as you asked him first. Our trip involved this very idea, however it didn't really go to plan. After waiting for the guard to appear, he didn't, so we decided to just go for it. We got over the fence no problems at all and found ourselves in the oldest part of the hospital, but after about half an hour I heard the gate open. We scurried upstairs and saw the security guard and two police officers on site just about to enter the much larger 1950s building. We watched the officers roaming around the building from our vantage point and after about twenty minutes they must have got bored or got another call-out so they left. I saw the security guard was locking the gate up so decided, in my infinite wisdom, to go down to the ground floor and wave at him through a broken window! He looked a bit stunned but when it was established that we were the people he was supposed to have met earlier everything went swimmingly. He let us into the larger building and told us to text him when we were done and he'd let us out the front gate. Before he left though he provided me with one of my most entertaining exploring memories - he asked us if we wanted him to show us where the mortuary was which of course we agreed to, and on arrival he realised he'd screwed the door shut a few days beforehand. He, without hesitation, booted the door open for us and left us to it!
Mansfield General was sadly demolished in 2013, although the local residents were much happier having the 'eyesore' out of their lives.
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2013
Val Benoit University Mechanics Institute
My first choice for 2013 was very easy. I've always loved Art Deco/Modernist architecture, and this place is the most stunning example of that era I've ever seen. The University of Liege began building a Mechanics Institute on the site of a 13th Century Abbey in 1924, and whilst some of the site was damaged by bombing in the Second World War the buildings were repaired to their old design in 1952. It closed in 2007 and redevelopment began in 2014, with all the original buildings being kept.
The site comprised five enormous Art Deco buildings and a similarly huge power plant (which we sadly failed to find a way into). Me and my friend got into two of the huge buildings and could quite happily have stayed in there all day but we had other things to do so ventured out after that. Our visit was trouble free as it seemed security was taking a day off or something, the site was fairly well known to be a hit and miss one. In the intervening years since closure it had suffered a lot at the hands of the locals, Liege is quite a rough city (although I love it) so it was no surprise how badly it had suffered! The buildings were filled with endless labs, lecture theatres, and gorgeous high ceilinged corridors, it was a sight to behold.
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Upper Heyford Hospital
My second choice for 2013 was much trickier. As it stands this is the place I remember most fondly as it was a place not many people managed to crack, and was local to me. It's also the second appearance of the RAF Upper Heyford site on this list too!
The hospital in Upper Heyford was opened in 1980, a two storey building constructed of pre-fabricated concrete panels with small slit windows - one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen. It was tasked with serving the military base as well as Upper Heyford and the surrounding villages, and when the base closed in 1994 it carried on operating for a further seven years until it closed, to much local controversy, in 2001.
This place was one of my very first explores at the tail end of 2009, and back then my photos of it were absolutely woeful. After closure the entire ground floor level had been bricked up, apart from the main entrance doors, behind which a large metal gate had been installed which had one small access panel fitted to it, which was unlocked when I went in 2009 but soon afterwards securely bolted closed. I spent the next four years poking at the hospital, trying to find a gap in it's armour but to no avail - one memorable mission involved a fairly suicidal climb into the hospital boiler house/incinerator building behind it - itself a building nobody had gotten into before - to try going in through the tunnel we were told connected the two buildings. We got halfway down the flooded tunnel before the water breached the top of our wellies and we found it bricked up. When demolition of the base was first announced in 2013 we knew we had to make it work whatever happened as I needed to re-shoot the place, and all I will say is we did what we needed to do to get in without technically breaking anything. Good thing we did as a week or so later I saw a photo on a local group of a large excavator parked right in the middle of the entrance lobby.
After getting in it was clear that almost nothing had changed since 2009, except more water damage, more mould and decay. It was pretty damn awesome to see the 'old girl' again.
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2014
2014 is where my life changed. There are a handful of truly life-defining moments for me, and deciding to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine by travelling to the States for a month and a half on my own for a real, proper adventure is one of the most defining of them all. I had intended it as a one-time trip, but the bug got under my skin, I met some incredible people, and saw some amazing places, and ever since then I've had to keep going back.
However before I made it to the States there was a small matter of HF6.
Haute-Fourneau 6, to give it the full name, was a former steelworks/blast furnace complex in Seraing, near Liege in Belgium. Practically ever since I started exploring I had known about it and it had always been in the top three places on my bucket list. There were other blast furnaces in Belgium and Europe as a whole but none drew me quite like HF6. I had intended to explore it immediately after the Val Benoit University the year before, however on exiting the University the whole area was struck by a severe blizzard and the thought of climbing an exposed blast furnace structure in a freezing cold snow storm wasn't too appealing, so it wisely got binned off. Fast forward a year and a bit and I was there in the height of a humid European summer with no threat of snow and a vague idea of how to get in, little did I know the experience of getting in would be almost as memorable as the explore itself.
The blast furnace was in a rough part of an already quite rough town, the area of Belgium it was in being akin to the 'rust belt' of the northeastern USA. We parked on a dodgy looking side street next to the perimeter wall and began scouting for a way in, which I spotted quite easily - a nice hole in a fence on the street. However before we entered I wanted to make sure there was no activity at the front of the site so we walked to the main road to ensure all was quiet at the gates, which it was, and began retracing our steps. No sooner had we turned around than a rough looking homeless guy begins shouting from somewhere behind us 'hey you guys wanna go in there? I'll show you the way'. Somewhat taken aback we accepted his offer and he showed us to the hole in the fence behind the bus shelter he'd made into his home, and told us a route to get into the buildings, before disappearing off somewhere on site. The route he told us was indeed correct, and it brought us out, somewhat confusingly, onto a gantry inside one of the large steelworks buildings. We climbed down a ladder and to ground level and found ourselves in a vast hall filled with old trucks, rubbish, and dismantled equipment. We knew that there was a razor wire fence that ringed the blast furnace and it ran right along the edge of the building we were in, and we also had prior knowledge that somewhere in the building was a ladder to help you get over the fence. After about ten minutes searching we spotted it, and also found the way over. In one corner of the building one of the support pillars was right next to the fence, and using a pallet could be partially scaled, what we then had to do was place the ladder over the other side of the fence over the top of the razor wire, climb over and down the other side.
The entry was done pretty speedily, and the rest, as they say, is history. We climbed almost the whole way to the top before the stairs became a little bit too crumbly, I absolutely loved it here, although I forever wish I had taken more photos. Sadly the whole facility was demolished some time in 2015, but it was a huge feeling of elation to finally get it done. We wanted to find the guy after leaving the site to give him some money as a thanks but he had long since disappeared.
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Klotz Throwing Company
If HF6 was in my top three bucket list places to explore, the Klotz Throwing Company, otherwise known as Lonaconing Silk Mill, was number one. As soon as I knew I was going to be going to the USA, I made it a mission to see this incredible place for myself no matter what. It just so happened one of the people I connected with happened to live in Baltimore, which was within easy-ish driving distance of Lonaconing, and it all fell into place. I contacted Herb and arranged a date/time for a visit, and all went well. He was a fantastic person, a real character and someone owed a real debt of thanks for preserving the building as best as he could. Unfortunately Herb passed away a couple of years back, although I do believe his family have been keeping the property secure since.
I'm sure everyone knows the story of Lonaconing Silk Mill, it opened in 1906 and closed it's doors suddenly in 1957 after the workers went on strike and the company decided to shut up shop. Since then it remained an almost totally complete time capsule, the most incredible time capsule location I've ever seen and likely ever will see. Herb bought the property in, I believe, the 1970s and acted as caretaker until he died, allowing photographers in to document the place for a small fee that all went into keeping the property secure and watertight.
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Grossinger's Resort
This one may appear to be a bit of an outlier in this list of locations, but out of every single one in this topic it is perhaps the one which means the most to me on a personal level.
Like with Lonaconing, I'm sure most people are aware of the story of the rise and fall of Grossinger's, once the largest and most famous of all Catskills resorts. Closed and partially demolished since 1986 thanks to a renovation that never happened, it was a bashed and battered shell of it's former self before finally being demolished a couple of years ago. The story is a tragic case of what might have been, were the plans put in place for the enlarging and renovation completed it may have been a very different story.
On a personal level though this place means so much to me. It was the catalyst behind making me start planning my first trip to the States, I had been toying with the idea during the latter half of 2013 and then I saw a photo of the iconic indoor swimming pool at Grossinger's and thought to myself 'I need to see that'. Fast forward a year and at the end of October 2014 I found myself, at long last, stood in the very same iconic swimming pool building, along with someone who is incredibly special to me. We spent hours there wandering the whole site in wonderful late October sunshine, an absolutely perfect day and the most perfect way to finish off my trip as a couple of days later I was sat on a plane flying home.
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2015
2015 was another memorable year for me. In January I left a job I'd been in since 2010 and, prior to getting another job in October that allowed me ample time for exploring, the sort of free time I'd never really had before. I broke 100 explores in a year for the first time and had two amazing trips to the States as well.
Bellerbys College
This was a real 'drop everything and go immediately' explore. The site was previously very well guarded, with security on site 24/7 who would let their dogs roam around the grounds and the buildings at their own leisure, however I received a tip-off from a friend who lived relatively nearby that the security had apparently been scaled back and was no longer there. We hot-footed it down to the location and indeed had the run of the place, knowing that the state of lax security may not last for long, and within a couple of weeks sure enough security had returned with their pooches.
The college was originally a large private residence built in 1885, and was lavishly appointed inside with no expenses spared on the decoration. It became first a girls boarding school in the 1930s and then part of a larger college, before closing in 2004. In late 2015 conversion of the older buildings began and it's now a stunning set of period apartments.
As well as the main building there was a smaller stables building which still had a working clock in the clock tower, plus a few more modern buildings including a sports hall, swimming pool and science labs. It was an absolutely stunning place, and one I'm very glad I managed to see when the timing was right.
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Selma Plantation House
This house is my favourite house I've ever explored. Not just because we were extraordinarily lucky to get in and out without having the cops called on us, but because I totally fell in love with the property. I've never felt such a feeling towards a house before or since, it had a real palpable affect on me and I was very sad to leave it.
The original house was built sometime between 1800 and 1815, before being destroyed by fire in 1896 leaving only a small portion of the house intact. The rebuilt Selma was completed in 1902 and was home to the White family. By the 1920s they were known to have the best parties and gatherings and the grandest balls in the great hall. Attached to the property was 1400 acres of beautifully manicured grounds and the property was regularly featured in magazines and newspapers of the time. In 1976 the property was sold to the Epperson family who opened up the property as a wedding venue, until they sold it to a certain Peter J. ter Maaten who left it to become derelict and abandoned in the early 2000s. In 2009 it was named one of Virginia's most endangered historic sites, and in 2016 the property was purchased by Sharon Virts and Scott Miller, who have now restored it into an absolutely stunning family home.
My visit here was a really memorable one. Me and my friend arrived at a deserted nearby golf club, the weather being both freezing cold and snowy, with a good covering on the ground. We knew parking any closer would be a no-no as the house, sat on top of a hill, was now surrounded by bland awful new 'McMansions' with owners who would definitely call the police if they saw a scruffy battered car parked near their properties. We walked a good mile or so along the deserted roads and found our way onto what was the old original driveway leading to the house, and there she stood looming over the whole neighbourhood in all her glory. A new road intersected the old driveway, with faceless new builds dotted along it, so we wasted no time in running up the very exposed driveway and around the back where, thankfully, we found an open door into the basement.
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2016
2016 was a year of change for me. I'd got a new job at the end of 2015, so it was the last year I successfully managed to cram in two trips to the States - one 'proper' trip in the spring and one mad 10 day adventure at the end of September. I have to say out of all of my years of exploring, I feel that 2015-2018 was my personal 'peak', in that I was out loads, doing some amazing stuff on the regular, and having an absolute whale of a time. Things definitely feel like they've quietened down somewhat the last couple of years but that might just be because I'm getting older and my body can't handle the ridiculous roadtrips/early starts like it used to!
American Steelworks
This is my favourite location I've ever done on any of my trips to the States. It's second only to Pyestock in my list of all-time favourite locations, as it embodies pretty much everything I could ever look for in an abandoned property. Stuff left behind? Check. Relatively quiet/off the tourist trail? Check. Natural decay? Massive check.
The steelworks is an old one, and it's main task in the middle of the 20th Century was processing thousands of tonnes of both Uranium and Thorium metals for use in the Manhattan Project. It closed suddenly in 1982 when the company went bust and has sat derelict ever since. Another steelworks opened up in the parts of the site not used to process the radioactive metals, leaving around half the site fenced off and forgotten. The company sold the land to the US Government as nobody wants to touch the place at all considering how badly contaminated the land is, despite a couple of cleanup efforts. Interestingly the company who occupy the non-irradiated buildings erected a fence cutting through part of one of the abandoned buildings as a warehouse they use joins directly to it!
I love this place so much, and I could quite honestly spend days on end shooting it.
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Deluxe Film Processing Laboratory
This is somewhat of a wildcard location, as it's one not many people are familiar with even in the UK, as it was only explorable for a matter of weeks before it was gone so I was one of the very lucky few who got to see it.
The film processing laboratory was the only surviving building from the former Denham Film Studios complex, built in the 1930s. The laboratory is one of only five buildings in the UK designed by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus movement and it's one of the only surviving examples of Industrial architecture from the 1930s Modern Movement. It's such an important building that it was Grade II listed in 1985. During it's heyday it was the largest and most advanced facility of it's kind outside of Hollywood, able to process upwards of 500 million feet of film a year distributed to cinemas all over the world. Films processed and edited on site included Brief Encounter, The Great Escape, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Tomorrow Never Dies, ET, Superman 1,2 & 3, GoldenEye, Eyes Wide Shut, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. After Avatar was released in 2009 the film industry shifted hugely towards digital rather than film, and the resurgence of modern-day 3D didn't help at all. In 2014, Deluxe shut down with the loss of around 70 jobs, at it's peak there had been over 1200 people working in the facility.
This was a real slow burner of an explore. On getting in, we realised most of it was stripped however still contained some nice Modernist features, until we got to the very far end of the building and discovered the set of eight private screening theatres tucked right out the way which just tipped the explore over the edge into the 'awesome' category for me.
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2017
Detroit Harbor Terminals
This is one place that really doesn't need an introduction as it's such a well known Detroit landmark. 2017 marked my first trip to Detroit, I had been planning trips there the previous few years however nothing ever worked out with timings etc so they were shelved. However 2017 made it work, and on the list of things I needed to see the Boblo Island Warehouse, as it's so-called, was right up there. We went one step further though and made it up to the roof for sunrise - watching the spring sun rise over two countries was a pretty awesome experience for me. After the sunrise we spent a leisurely hour or so photographing the warehouse, and afterwards returned to our hotel for a well-deserved breakfast.
It may seem mad, but Detroit is one of my most favourite cities I've ever been to, not even for just the exploring but for the food, the feel of the place, the people and the fact it gives me a 'fizz' I rarely experience in large cities.
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Rootes Car Graveyard
My friend must take the credit for finding this one - he was on a delivery job and spotted it almost opposite where he was dropping a parcel off. Soon enough he mentioned the place to me and that I needed to check it out. He wasn't wrong! It's the most stunning car graveyard I've ever shot in the UK by quite some way. Totally undisturbed in a quiet village in the middle of nowhere, it's the sort of place I dream of shooting. The owner was apparently an elderly gentleman, since taken into a carehome, who would run cars until they broke, park it in his garden, and buy another. And another. And another. By my reckoning he had over 100 cars on his property by the time he went into a home, so many that they were pretty much spilling out onto the road from his driveway. The vast majority of his cars came from the Rootes Group of marques - Hillman, Singer, Humber, Sunbeam - although there were a few oddities. It even included two flatbeds with cars sat on them, surrounded by trees and undergrowth. Due to the vegetation and it's position right next to an occupied property I only ever saw maybe half of what was on the property - I went back twice afterwards, the first time was in pouring rain and it was miserable, and the second time I returned I found the property almost entirely cleared of cars as the land had been sold off.
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2018
Old Car City
Honestly I don't even know where to begin with Old Car City. Yes, it's a permission visit to what is essentially an enormous junkyard but my god it's one of the most incredible places I've ever been to. The land was originally home to a General Store however over the years they branched out into selling car parts, then over more years became a junkyard, and then a bigger junkyard, and as of now it's classified as the largest car graveyard anywhere in the world with over 4000 cars - mostly ones saved from being crushed in the 1970s - spread over a huge swathe of land and forest in rural Georgia.
Our original plan was to spend an entire day here however that all went to crap when we discovered our car had suffered a slow puncture and had a completely flat tyre, with no spare. After a few hours though we were sorted and on the way, we arrived early in the afternoon and had I think something like four hours before they closed for the day, which we used every second of. I came away having not seen around half of it, and out of every location I've been to in the States this is the one I need to get back to most urgently. I would happily live in a tent in the middle of the place I love it so much.
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Methodist Central Hall
Every so often a tourbus location pops up that actually really is worth the effort to see. In the late summer of 2018 the Methodist Central Hall in Birmingham, only around an hour or so away from where I live, popped up and I knew it would be one of those places worth seeing immediately. Methodist Central Halls were gathering places for Methodists created at the height of the Temperance movement, and were home to live music shows as well as religious sermons and film screenings.
Birmingham's Methodist Central Hall was built in 1903 out of terracotta brick, with a central bell tower above the entrance. Inside it featured a main hall with seating for 2,000 people as well as an enormous pipe organ, in addition to the hall it had over 30 other rooms including three school halls. In 1991 the building was sold off and became, somewhat ironically, a nightclub. In the early 2000s it became empty once more, and a few years later was turned into another club - the Que Club - which quickly became very well known as an exceptional live music venue. However this too closed a few years back, and conversion work started in late 2018 to turn the building into a pair of huge hotels, keeping the main hall as a community venue.
There's not a huge amount to say about the explore, it went off without a hitch and we explored every inch of the building apart from the bell tower which had some seriously shoddy floors. The main hall however was one of those rare 'jaw on the floor' moments for me, to see it in person was unbelievable. It's such an incredible building that I was very very happy to see.
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Whitchurch Hospital
The last truly great asylum in the UK? Perhaps. Certainly the best all-round and most complete abandoned asylum since the halcyon days of West Park a decade previous. It's sheer size, originality, and at the time quantity of stuff left inside made it a true exception in the realms of the more recently vacated Victorian-era psychiatric institutions.
Construction began in 1898 and it opened a full decade later in 1908. Designed as a self-contained community, like all hospitals of it's kind in the Victorian era, it was entirely self-sufficient with it's own farm utilised by staff and patients alike. It was known for it's pioneering use of new therapies and treatments for mental disabilities, and patients were encouraged to leave the hospital on supervised tours and work outside the institution. During the First World War it became known as the Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital, and during the following Second World War it became the largest emergency hospital in Wales for military service personnel, with 200 beds being retained for civilian use. During the 1980s as treatments and attitudes towards those suffering from mental health problems changed, the hospital began to wind down and patient numbers were slowly reduced, and it finally closed it's doors for good in April 2016.
Whitchurch was an enigma from the word go. Immediately after closure the whole site was covered by external CCTV as well as internal cameras which were strung along the length of the main connecting corridors. These were monitored by extremely vigilant security who would waste no time in kicking people out. As such it was a place that was chipped away at by a dedicated few locals over a long period of time, but all that changed in late summer 2018. The NHS had finished their decommissioning and clearance of patient files etc, so for a brief few weeks security disappeared. It went from a totally secure fortress to wide open in a matter of days and needless to say I jumped at the chance to go see it. I wasn't going to miss the chance to see an enormous Victorian era asylum again as they are real rarities now. We got in early one morning, and met a friend of ours at a pre-arranged spot inside the building where he'd spent the night alone (the nutter). Soon after, the four of us were joined by a couple of other friends of mine and we all had a jolly good time, a totally trouble free, carefree wander around a huge asylum. It was just like the old days and I loved every second of it.
Maybe two weeks after my visit, news filtered through that security had returned, and the cameras around the outside were active once more. It turned out that the NHS weren't quite done with the place, and this time they were going to clear out everything. All the furniture, fixtures, fittings, everything. Pretty much the only thing left in there now is one lone wheelchair someone pulled out of a hedge. After the NHS had finished their site clearance the hospital was left without a shred of security for a second time, until about a month later local residents raised concerns about people getting into the site and the owners - the local council - decided to spend out a huge amount securing the site. As of 2020 every single window and door along the lower floors, as well as vulnerable higher windows, has been convered in steel sheeting, and there are also two security teams stationed on site 24/7 with dogs. It wasn't before time either, as the lack of security there was a joke and it's nothing short of a miracle that nothing was burned down during either period of it being wide open.
Whitchurch had everything when I went. Loads of stuff inside, some seriously decayed areas that closed in the 1980s, fantastic architecture (most of the site is listed Grade II so can't be demolished), and something more, the feel of truly stepping back in time as far as exploring goes to the years of the 'age of asylums'.
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2019
Abandoned Elementary School, Detroit
A bit of a strange choice this one on the face of it, but it's more about what it made me feel when inside than the actual building, although as far as schools in Detroit go, it's a bloody good one.
The school at first glance isn't anything special, just one victim of the dozens and dozens of school closures in the city over the last decade. It's not particularly big or imposing, and the lack of windows perhaps makes it look to others that it's not worth bothering with as it'll be a total wreck surely. Or maybe it's position in a pretty bad area of the city means most people, even taggers, have steered clear? Who knows. It goes without saying though that the school is a gem in a sea of often totally ruined schools. Yes it's got some decay and scrapper theft but overall, for a school in Detroit, it's not bad at all.
It also has some of the most amazing murals I've ever seen in a school, thankfully none of which had been tagged.
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Bookbinding Factory
Another strange 'out the way' choice which even I wasn't expecting. I never expected to be exploring one of the most amazing industrial time capsules I've ever seen hidden in plain sight in a rough city in the northeastern States, two blocks away from my friend's house I was staying in.
The building dates from the 1930s and was originally home to a company that manufactured transmission systems for applications around the world including aerospace, defence, medical and more mundane stuff like agriculture. At some point they moved out and the premises was, for a short time, occupied by a bookbinding company. From what little I could glean from inside they closed abruptly around 2014 and left almost everything inside. It's pretty much like they downed tools one day and walked out, it's that sort of 'Mary Celeste' feel.
This was a deeply personal explore for me as the morning before we left I received news that back home my beloved old dog had sadly passed away in the night, needless to say I was devastated especially being so far away from home but I thought the best thing to do instead of sitting around being sad was to get out and distract myself, and it really did help.
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Porsche Graveyard
Probably my most unique car graveyard find of the whole lot. A non-explorer friend of mine mentioned to me that he'd gone past a barn with what looked to him to be a VW Beetle inside 'and there might be more there'. As the location wasn't too far away from my house at all I went over one afternoon and, whilst my friend waited in the car outside I ventured into the field which ran alongside the barn in question and stuck my head through a window in the building. Needless to say my jaw dropped when I saw that inside the barn was a VW Beetle, as well as numerous Porsches in all sorts of states of repair. I scampered back to the car, grabbed my things and had a lightning quick shoot of the cars - the barn is an overflow/storage site for spares cars used by a bespoke customiser and is right next to their house so we really didn't want to get caught poking around. I think we were in and out in around ten minutes, neither of us wanted to overstay our welcome.
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2020
And all that leaves us with is 2020. The year the world stopped, the year to forget, whatever you want to call it. Things started off so well, then the world went to crap, I had a fairly normal summer and then come winter time things were plunged into chaos again, somewhat predictably.
I did, however, get to spend a very enjoyable couple of hours wandering around RAF Upper Heyford once again, just before the country shut down. As of 2020 the only derelict part left was one half of the sprawling school/training centre area, but I still love it dearly and it seems like a fitting way to round out the thread, with a place I first explored over a decade ago and is still going strong - just about. It's not a place many explorers go nowadays, although come to think of it despite the original size of the base back in it's derelict heyday it never really got too much attention, probably owing to how well secured most of it was.
I will be very very sad when this set of buildings is finally brought down. It reminds me so much of the 'good old days', before social media, before Youtube explorers burnt every location they splashed across the internet, when it really was just about you and a couple of friends wandering around an old deserted building and having a laugh. It still is for all the best people, thankfully.
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Thank you, as ever, for reading.
[last edit 1/7/2021 7:29 PM by mookster - edited 3 times]
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Fantastic ‘decade in review’ post dude.
Pyestock is insane, what a place to wander around in.
Also the mechanics university and the Methodist hall, damn. Really love shot number 2 of the university room with all those old school fume hoods holy shit.
Purveyor of Sinister Whimsy to the Wretched | |
Man this is a killer round up. As you know I've been following along with your adventures since you first turned up online. 900 places, good lord man! I thought I was catching up to you but im still over 100 spots behind. Something you said really struck a nerve with me. You mention how much the landscape of exploring has changed, and you're so right.
Think about the limited resources we used to have back in 2010. There was almost no accurate satellite imagery to be found. Street view? Nope. We had bing birds eye at best. All these trash publications like Atlas Obscura, Roadtrippers, and the other cancerous dreck didn't exist. There were so many fewer places to discover, and far FAR fewer people finding them. In fact, I'd estimate that as much as 2/3rds of the places I visited since I started weren't even closed yet in 2010. And before then pretty much everything I saw had already been visited by other explorers. Most of the people exploring nowadays had no clue what exploring was.
When I see these new kids coming on the scene throwing up numbers and "low key" spots it just doesn't mean the same thing to me anymore. It really doesn't take much at all to succeed in this hobby after 2017 or so. You don't need any sense of research ability, in fact most of these people simply ask someone they don't even know how to access stuff and get an answer. A decade ago you would be rebuffed with extreme prejudice for a move like that. There's almost no risk of driving hours and hours and getting rejected anymore for a large portion of the population. And because of that, the sense of entitlement has spread like wildfire.
There is still a very small contingent of people who do things the right way for the right reasons, and I try to give it up to those folks whenever possible. But overall this hobby is just not the same anymore. I hear more and more stories of people getting caught and prosecuted hard, often as the result of other people doing stupid, thoughtless bullshit. Thats a big part of why we got nailed back in 2019. I don't hold it against those folks, they didn't know what was going to happen and we could have been smarter too. But it really signaled to me that there was another factor to be concerned about in this era.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Just that seeing a round-up like this from someone such as your self makes me nostalgic for old times. Nowadays it takes a big risk to be the ones holding it down and finding the goods. And it takes a certain level of good will to make sure they stay safe and off the radar. Who knows what this hobby is going to look like in another 10 years.
Anyway, cheers to a great decade. I look forward to having you back on this side of the pond for our next adventure, wherever it may take us.
https://www.flickr...62837453@N07/sets/
http://www.tfpnj.blogspot.com | |
Posted by Sheavy
Fantastic ‘decade in review’ post dude.
Pyestock is insane, what a place to wander around in.
Also the mechanics university and the Methodist hall, damn. Really love shot number 2 of the university room with all those old school fume hoods holy shit.
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Pyestock is almost impossible to describe, especially using my shoddy decade old photos. There simply won't be anything even approaching that sort of 'epic' in the UK probably ever again, unless one of the Atomic Weapons Establishments happened to close down, which are of a similar late 1940s early 1950s vintage. Even then if one of those happened to close the chances of actually managing to explore it without getting into serious trouble would be pretty slim!
Posted by EsseXploreR
Man this is a killer round up. As you know I've been following along with your adventures since you first turned up online. 900 places, good lord man! I thought I was catching up to you but im still over 100 spots behind. Something you said really struck a nerve with me. You mention how much the landscape of exploring has changed, and you're so right.
Think about the limited resources we used to have back in 2010. There was almost no accurate satellite imagery to be found. Street view? Nope. We had bing birds eye at best. All these trash publications like Atlas Obscura, Roadtrippers, and the other cancerous dreck didn't exist. There were so many fewer places to discover, and far FAR fewer people finding them. In fact, I'd estimate that as much as 2/3rds of the places I visited since I started weren't even closed yet in 2010. And before then pretty much everything I saw had already been visited by other explorers. Most of the people exploring nowadays had no clue what exploring was.
When I see these new kids coming on the scene throwing up numbers and "low key" spots it just doesn't mean the same thing to me anymore. It really doesn't take much at all to succeed in this hobby after 2017 or so. You don't need any sense of research ability, in fact most of these people simply ask someone they don't even know how to access stuff and get an answer. A decade ago you would be rebuffed with extreme prejudice for a move like that. There's almost no risk of driving hours and hours and getting rejected anymore for a large portion of the population. And because of that, the sense of entitlement has spread like wildfire.
There is still a very small contingent of people who do things the right way for the right reasons, and I try to give it up to those folks whenever possible. But overall this hobby is just not the same anymore. I hear more and more stories of people getting caught and prosecuted hard, often as the result of other people doing stupid, thoughtless bullshit. Thats a big part of why we got nailed back in 2019. I don't hold it against those folks, they didn't know what was going to happen and we could have been smarter too. But it really signaled to me that there was another factor to be concerned about in this era.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Just that seeing a round-up like this from someone such as your self makes me nostalgic for old times. Nowadays it takes a big risk to be the ones holding it down and finding the goods. And it takes a certain level of good will to make sure they stay safe and off the radar. Who knows what this hobby is going to look like in another 10 years.
Anyway, cheers to a great decade. I look forward to having you back on this side of the pond for our next adventure, wherever it may take us.
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I think we're all somewhat nostalgic for 'the good old days', hell we're all still posting on forums even though most explorers coming into it now have no idea places like this even exist, or they just leech off them for locations and don't contribute anything.
I can still remember the early days where I'd have actual printed off aerial views of locations complete with annotated notes and maps and directions, before I even owned a smartphone. I'd have piles of maps of places like West Park and they'd be the navigation, nowadays it's so much easier and faster and simpler which I guess is one good thing!
I only hope that this 'urbex' thing is a fad for a lot of the posers and the leeches and the social media/Youtube 'content creators', a fad they will grow out of. Because that's the main issue now, a lot of the kids coming into it thinking it'll be a great way to get exposure are first and foremost content creators, they aren't explorers, they don't care about the location or burning it for others as long as they get their content.
I really can't wait to get back over there, I'm quietly hopeful that come late summer things will be much calmer, and there might actually be a chance for me to have an exploring holiday because god knows I need one.
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Posted by mookster
I think we're all somewhat nostalgic for 'the good old days', hell we're all still posting on forums even though most explorers coming into it now have no idea places like this even exist, or they just leech off them for locations and don't contribute anything.
I can still remember the early days where I'd have actual printed off aerial views of locations complete with annotated notes and maps and directions, before I even owned a smartphone. I'd have piles of maps of places like West Park and they'd be the navigation, nowadays it's so much easier and faster and simpler which I guess is one good thing!
I only hope that this 'urbex' thing is a fad for a lot of the posers and the leeches and the social media/Youtube 'content creators', a fad they will grow out of. Because that's the main issue now, a lot of the kids coming into it thinking it'll be a great way to get exposure are first and foremost content creators, they aren't explorers, they don't care about the location or burning it for others as long as they get their content.
I really can't wait to get back over there, I'm quietly hopeful that come late summer things will be much calmer, and there might actually be a chance for me to have an exploring holiday because god knows I need one.
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Ha! I used to do the same thing man. I remember literally clipping newspaper articles about Overbrook and going through making little notes. A good amount of the information that circulated about the place back in the early days was from those news articles, whether people knew it or not.
I dont think things will ever really die down personally. The cat is out of the bag now, to the extent that I just found out recently that my young cousin has recently discovered exploring through YouTube and hes super into it. Its still reaching through to the younger generation. As we have seen before there will continue to be new waves of explorers until the hobby is completely unrecognizable. That's a big part of why I'm so grateful I found the online community when I did.
Fingers crossed that things will get better. I don't really see it happening here as things have just continued to get completely out of hand, but one can only hope.
https://www.flickr...62837453@N07/sets/
http://www.tfpnj.blogspot.com | |
A damn fine set, sir!
Let me know when you come back to the USA, once all this crap is over. Let's shoot somewhere.
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 50mm 1.2, Canon 28mm 1.8, Canon 16-35 f2.8L
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenbley/ | |
Wow that's a lot of pictures and words bud!! It has truly been a hell of a good decade for you. You are one of the most active explorers I know, just how many places you get into blows my mind. Not to mention you are definitely one of the luckiest explorers I know!!
I'm glad I was able to join you on a few of these adventures. Our Detroit trips were both legendary and Georgia was on a whole other level. I wish we had more time at Old Car City, but I know we will return one day soon! I actually completely forgot a bout the flat tire fiasco lol.
Here's to another great decade of exploring bud!
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Posted by macgruder
A damn fine set, sir!
Let me know when you come back to the USA, once all this crap is over. Let's shoot somewhere.
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Absolutely! I'm always down for meeting new faces and extending my network of buddies over there.
Posted by TheSwanStation
Wow that's a lot of pictures and words bud!! It has truly been a hell of a good decade for you. You are one of the most active explorers I know, just how many places you get into blows my mind. Not to mention you are definitely one of the luckiest explorers I know!!
I'm glad I was able to join you on a few of these adventures. Our Detroit trips were both legendary and Georgia was on a whole other level. I wish we had more time at Old Car City, but I know we will return one day soon! I actually completely forgot a bout the flat tire fiasco lol.
Here's to another great decade of exploring bud!
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I kind of feel like I've slowed down a bit lately, not helped of course by the global events happening right now which has made it a bit of a struggle the last six or so months - plus getting older my body is struggling more and more with the ridiculous early start roadtrips than it did five or so years back.
I'm eagerly awaiting the day we can get back to Old Car City, it's been gnawing away at me for the last couple of years and as and when I can make it over there it's going to be factored in no matter what!
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