We have had an extremely busy summer this year - 5 weddings, 2 festivals, our own birthdays and my friends hen do - time has just run away with me and I've not found the time to spend on my blog so I apologise for my absence. It has been a very pleasant summer with lots of lovely events to attend though,so I'm not complaining - better to be busy than bored.
So I thought I really should come and do a post but it's taken me ages to decide what to write about as there has been so much going on. In the end I decided to tell you about our second Urban Exploration trip on which we checked out an abandoned brickworks. My last post about our first explore was well received and I thought some of you may enjoy reading about our latest one.
The brickworks was set up in 1897 in a place a which was then called Wootton Pillange by B.J Forder and Son. Over the years they merged with a number of different companies including the London Brick Company which went on to become the largest brickworks in the world in 1936 employing 2000 staff and producing over 500 million bricks a year. In 1984 the London Brick Company were then taken over by Hanson and by 2005 there were only 230 staff manufacturing 135 million bricks per year at the plant which still stood on the same site but the village had been renamed Stewartby many years ago. The brickworks closed it's doors for good in 2005.
The brickworks is not far from our hometown so a short drive led us to the site which is absolutely massive, a lot of open spaces inbetween the many different outbuildings and the main manufacturing plant. We circled the site in the car trying to locate a suitable place to access the site but it appeared to be pretty well secured with massive piles of bricks stacked up high over every open gap in the outer perimeters - a few laps almost left us a bit stumped and we even considered heading home. We decided one final scout round and then we would admit defeat - luckily we spotted a group of lads who looked as if they had just come off the site so we pulled over and asked them if they'd just been in the brickworks. Looking rather spooked (and a little worried) they eventually gave us some pointers after we'd convinced them that we were other explorers and not undercover police officers!
After a bit of trapsing we were on the site and it was at this point we realied just how open and difficult this site was going to be to explore. It was going to take some fast thinking and even faster footwork, we needed to keep our wits about us and my heart was absolutely racing as we made our way to the nearest building to us - what appeared to be a huge shed.
When we got to the building it was obvious that it had been used to house different kinds of bricks and it looked as if people came in to order certain products from here. There were still piles of bricks scattered around and other strange looking things like huge rolls of roofing felt still wrapped up and intact.
Also inside the building was a small room which looked as if it had been an office or workers tea room. As with a lot of abandoned places it almost looked as if the staff just walked out and left all their stuff there, dirty cups sat on the table, calendars were still pinned onto noticeboards and the workers coats and personal items still hung in lockers. Order books were there on tables which probably hadn't been written in for a number of years but almost looked as if they had been used yesterday......
The site, having been empty for a number of years was now unfortunately starting to show some signs of vandalism, one of the perils of leaving a building disused. Urban Explorers do not advocate or encourage vandalism and are in fact very much against it - mindless idiots ruin these places for those of us who just looking enjoy at the demise of a building and photographing the desecration caused by the elements for pleasure rather than a pointless love of totally trashing a building for no reason. One of the outbuildings had blatently suffered an arson attack because the most of the roof had burnt away leaving just a few chared timbers and a half torched shell - this had been sectioned off by security patrols for obvious reasons. Some doors had been kicked off some of the outbuildings for no reason than just boredom.....
We made our way to the next buiding which looked very similar to the first, obviously another housing area for bricks awaiting sale or transportation to buyers. Most of these buildings seemed to be laid out the same with a main warehouse area and then a small office or tea room, each one had more and more personal items housed inside them, these were the areas I enjoyed exploring the most.
We then decided to try and get across to the main building where the manufacturing of the bricks took place. This was approximately 400 yards from us across a vast open space with a clear view from the security hut, it was going to be risky and the only thing for it was to basically run as fast as we could – not easy when carrying a camera bag! Now running is not my strong point but upon the count of three I ran as fast as my little legs could go and was glad to have made it across to the building without detection.
Once over to this, the largest of the buildings we found huge high ceilinged buildings housing lots of machinery. Inside there were piles of bricks which had collapsed into the main area of the building smashing through machines as they fell. This building was like a maze of internal rooms all jutting out to the sides, with a main processing plant slap bang in the middle.
Again a lot of the rooms looked like they had once been offices as there were personal effects from the workers hanging in lockers, empty mugs which once held tea and coffee sat on the desk and even lottery tickets pinned onto noticeboards……
Everything was covered in a layer of white brick dust which highlighted how terrible the working conditions must have been for those employed here, you could almost taste it in the air and this was years after the workforce had left, I could only imagine what it would’ve been like with all those machines working at full pelt in their heyday.
We kept finding room after room, all of which just looked as if everyone upped and left suddenly one day without any warning, the whole remaining workforce leaving at the same time not stopping to pick up any of their possessions along the way.
In one room which was obviously used as an office there were shelves and shelves of box folders lined up. On the desk a file were what looked like architectural plans and technical drawings of previous contracts just left gathering dust – it always amazes me that documents like this are just left and not disposed of or kept in an archive somewhere but often when exploring you see files of such papers, or personal records still in the building you are looking around.
It was hard to picture how the plant worked in its operational days, there was so much to take in, so many pieces of machinery that still stood in situ obviously not used for years but still dominating most of the building. It would’ve been interesting to see the plant in operation although I don’t think I would’ve liked to work there!
We decided that we should probably leave soon as we had been inside the brickworks for a good three hours, there were so many more areas we could’ve tried to look around as the site is so huge but thought it was best not to push our luck so we headed back towards the car running across the open areas as fast as we could again! Anyway a few more pictures for you……
This was definitely a worthy explore and one that I enjoyed – especially as it was totally different to the last one we did last year. I’m hoping that we will get to do another one although am not sure when that will be due to a few other things going on with us at the moment – we are expecting our first baby, due in march 2011 so I think maybe climbing in and out of abandoned buildings may be off the menu for me for a while.
I hope that you enjoyed reading this and looking at my pictures – feel free to leave a comment as I always like to hear from my readers. If this is your first visit to my blog then I welcome any new subscribers and hope you will return in the future. Remember you can also 'like' my work by joining my fan page on Facebook just look up "Photography By Sharon Curran" in the search box.
Thanks for visiting
Sharon
