Follow My Tracks

So Fridays – the day of the week that during term time is taken up with study and class and time spent in dark rooms with my hand immersed in chemicals. But now term is over and there are many long Fridays that lay ahead. A few of them are already behind and have been spend doing some constructive things (like sleeping) and slightly less constructive things (they’re too rude to type). But today I got up and felt that I had to achieve something greater. I don’t usually explore on my own but Leybourne Grange by all accounts was a low key place and doable on a day on ones own.

A foot path leads you to the site and after looking left, the right, then left again, I was over the fence and into the woods. The impressive thing about the grange it its scale, not in style or interest but the site’s vast size. It is a series of villas connected by a long looping drive all around the site. It is situated so close to the motorway that I am surprised that you cannot hear the traffic roaring past. There is only silence broken by birds in these woods… Or so I thought.

I made my way through a few of the outter buildings, taking my time yet aware of the fact that I was on my own, more or less in the middle of nowhere, and then breaking the silence was a crack. A gun shot? I couldn’t place the sound. I ignored it and went back to poking my nose into dark rooms. There it was again… I had finished in the building I was in and took a wonder in the direction I believed the manor house to be in. It should be noted that there is a girls school on site, on the other side of the site even, but when parents collect their children the drive out takes them right past the manor house. I crept round the outter drive to the long avenued pathway, lined with tall pine trees that I know would lead me up to the manor. I kept behind a line of trees but about half way up one has to dart across the path to keep the cover. As I did, I looked up and there was a person in hi-vis with a white hard hat and others walking around the site.I had been told that the building had been covered in scaff and yet I saw none – maybe this explained the cracks… Maybe not.

As I drew closer, still in cover, I could see that the manor was a hive of activity and the cars full of children had started to drive past. Damn. This would not be happening today. I packed up as quietly as I could and made my way back to where I had come in, leapt the fence and went back to the car. I had wanted to see the manor but there would be other, quieter days. As I walked I thought more on something that had occurred to me as I had crept along the tree lined avenue. It had reminded me of the stately homes my parents had dragged me to as a child on our holidays to Kent. Overgrown yes, but still holding something of its former grandness.

The manor house is a grand place and the grounds are vast and then it occurred to me, if history had been a little different, if this had remained the grand house full of treasure and not a hospital for those that society considered unsightly, then it may well have become somewhere that the National Trust might have taken on. What do organizations like the NT and English Heritage do but take the things we love, history, preservation, dusty objects, and the love of being able to have a nose in whats left of how others have lived, and present it to the masses? What makes urbex different? When asked we take the moral high ground on our activities, we go to document, experience and aid in preservation through our photos and yet most shudder at the idea of going to a stately home. Are they not the same?

What’s the difference? There are two main ones that I can see. One is that visitng museums, stately homes, castles is  socially acceptable, and whether we like to admit it or not, we like to separate ourselves from that mainstream of society through our activities, to be given odd looks and know that other people don’t quite know what to think of us or where to place us. We can get permission to walk round the stately homes, you pay a fee and walk freely. There is no rush. So we are adrenaline junkies, hooked on a ‘sport’ just like every climber, caver or other person that dares to think beyond the end of their road. Many explorers shun organizations like Sub Brit who cross those interesting lines of taking people places that few people would ever think to go to or know exist and yet they do so with permission… Why? Because we feel it’s conformist, stifled and again removes the thrill of making your way into a site where you know you might get caught.

The other difference is urbex is dirty. We like the filth, the mud, dust and cobwebs that slowly cover the sites we see. A museum, whilst it’s aims in part may be similar to our own and we use them to justify what we do, is a clean, near sterile place that separates us from our past and objects from history. We like to touch, to feel and experience the tactile like a child with its fingers covered in paint. There is something child like in coming home covered in dirt and scratches, knowing you have been somewhere naughty and got away with it.

It is good to know that behind the bitching of forums, the close-to-chest kept secret locations and access of sites, the elitist bullshit, attention seeking, press whoring front of the Urbex community, there are a solid group of ordinary people who live ordinary lives and do not allow themselves to be defined by a single aspect of the short time we spend on this sun warmed rock.

Rikke and her partner, Pete have my utmost gratitude and thanks for putting me up for the night, a complete stranger but for a name on a forum, cooking me a fab dinner (ZOOOMYYYGOD Home Made Burgers!!!!) and providing me somewhere warm to sleep that was not a floor. They make doubly great hosts in the sense that their beautiful home is in a converted shoe factory and as one walks up the steps to the front door, the stair well is lined with these awesome images of the factory prior to closing. Men and women at work, carefully crafting pieces of leather and cloth.

I lived in Milton Keynes for 13 years before I had really found photography and Urban Exploration so whilst I know the area around MK and Northampton in the sense of a long left resident, I was not aware of the wealth of things to climb over, into and through. Today we planned to just scratch the surface.

Brigstock POW Camp

Picking up Wee Chris, we made our way to Brigstock POW camp. A potted history (painstakingly researched by my host):

“Brigstock Camp built 1925 and over the years was used for an Emigration Camp, an Army Camp, ATS and Land Army Camp, US Army Training School, and in 1960 Stewarts & Lloyds Steelworks purchased Brigstock Camp for £23,000 at an auction. One hundred people moved from Scotland to work at the Steelworks and used Brigstock Camp for their living quarters and paid between £2.00 to £4.00 a week in rent and were allowed to stay up to nine months to allow them to find suitable accommodation. Many did so in the new expanding Corby.”

Today it is a dramatic shell of what is described about, hidden away behind tall hedges in a farmers field, rooms lay overgrown with knot weed, and shot gun cartridges are strewn everywhere. It has a lot of faded signs and peeling paint and we spend a few hours wondering across the entire site, poking heads through every door and testing out the sagging, rotten floor boards with our weight. Once certain we had done every building but for the pill box tucked away across a farmers field we popped back to the car.

We stopped into McDonalds for a swift filthy lunch and to collect a new explorer. Enter Michelle Stage Right

St. Crispin’s Asylum

This place is totally stripped and yet it still holds the feel of an asylum. We walked through the last few remaining blocks that were fenced within the large redevelopment of the site, in all sides new houses and flats and a select few converted blocks. I’m assured that the site has stood like this for some time and the more I look at whats left, it’s evident that they had started to convert the blocks that were left, installing new sash windows and taking the insides back to the brick and then suddenly stopped. Ran out of money? Probably.

We bumped into a small group of kids, we quizzed them as much as they did us and yet one of them (the only one who didn’t have a smouldering cancer stick in his hand) was desperately trying to convince us that he didn’t want to damage anything, he just liked the history (his favourite subject at school) and the feel of the place. They didn’t look much older than 12, too young to be smoking, but in a place where none of us should have been it was not time to be picky about or preachy about the poorly made choices of youth.

As we continued round the site, I spied adults and hid. How I suddenly felt as naughty as the child smoking a cheeky fag on the wrong side of the fence, and yet wasn’t this partly the reason I was here? They must have heard us as soon their heads popped round a door frame. The usual questions.

Why are you here?

Taking Pictures…

Who were they? We got an answer we hadn’t expected. Plain clothes pigs. A flash of a warrant card confirms it. As ever with the fuzz there seems to be an attitude imbalance but after brief and open discussion we agreed to continue to take our pictures and be swiftly on our way without taking ‘the piss’.

You do know you’re technically trespassing?

A pause on my part… how to best answer this one. Eventually, honestly, “Yes”.

Oh, fine then, just be careful incase the locals call Uniform.

We walked our way through the next block around a pit that had been dig for underground parking and then slowly filled with water. The kitchen was identifiable only by it’s tiled walls and the main hall had been gutted by fire. It’s inside scaffolded from floor to the rafters but the lower boards had been removed and recently been stacked outside, probably due to recent arson attempts on the place.

I danced across the lower poles to look through the projector holes. Inside the small room there were two full projectors but also light behind them. You must be able to get in? Surely? You could. We walked out round the hall to the front and there, the two tall blue doors that had kept the room sealed for long enough that the projectors were still there, were ajar. We quickly worked in the room and closed the doors firmly behind us. To see two old projectors sat there… i almost wanted to carry them away else they be destroyed by the chavs, but I didn’t. The past has to crumble and fade. Even the photos we take become lost and damaged over time. They are a vain attempt to preserve fleeting moments of dying worlds.

Exit Michelle Stage Left

Pianoforte Factory – Roade

Hisotry (lifted from www.contaminationzone.com):

“The sprawling industrial site of Pianoforte lies on the edge of the small rural village of Roade in the heartland of Northamptonshire.

In 1910 a London floor polishing paste firm known as J. Masters&Co began the manufacture of polishing paste on a site nearby the railway tracks along the small village train station.

J. Masters&Co closed after only 12 years in business and was purchased by a former employee, C.T Cripps. In 1923 Cripps founded ‘Pianoforte supplies Ltd’ which was dedicated to the production of castings and fixtures for Piano manufacturers and also successfully produced large quantities of fixture parts for automobiles.

In 1933 the factory suffered from severe fire damage and was rebuilt later that year.

During WWII the factory went into full time production creating spare vehicle and aircraft parts as part of a contribution to the war effort in Britain.

Later during the 1960’s employment peaked with the factory employing just over 1,800 workers, this success was however short lived and when the railway station of Roade was closed in 1964 Pianoforte began a slow journey into gradual decline.

In 1980 the factory ceased to production of piano parts altogether.

Areas of the site to date still remain active, employing an average of 400 workers on car-parts production lines which produce plastic and metal components for car brands such as Vauxhall.

Piles of ferrous metal adorn the walls in the old piano workshops and old workers aprons hang from the production walls in the long abandoned factory as if still waiting in hope for work here to resume.

A company that was once reputed for its excellent care of staff and spacious canteen now bears witness every day at noon to a single file of grim looking workers piled out before the factory’s seat-less front gated area, all huddled together savouring one last cigarette drag before returning to their shifts.”

This place was a gem and I am very grateful for Rikke for showing me the way in and out. Entire rooms lay scattered with the remnants of a huge industry. We crept about and photographed a little but Urbex fatigue was starting to set in and I had the long drive home ahead. We made it a short trip and headed back the Shoe Factory. Sweaty, dirty and tired I collected my things and said goodbye to  my hosts.

I stood under the shelter of the entrance to Epsom station waiting for Winchester to arrive. It was grey, cold and the drizzle added to the gloom of the place. Epsom felt like the end of the world. I had trudged to Mac Donalds and had a double cheese burger to pass the time and get into the warm but found myself back in the grey, waiting.

Winchester arrived and saved my from the locals and we headed towards the hospital. We parked up in the usual spot and wondered over the road. I was a bit jumpy – this would turn out to be my first successful trip in and the last time i had been in particular, the security guard had swooped down on me in mere moments.

Anyway we walked around looking for some mythical propped shut door near a staircase without success. Padded around the grounds a bit and then found a broken window into the corridors. Do we go in? We had nothing to loose but the corridors are the place where you are most likely to get caught. Now it was a case of trying doors into blocks to find one that was open… Eventually we did – and we were in.

There were some amazingly rotten floors, but following the beams and being a bit daring paid off. We had stumbled into the block with the padded cell (Dartford and Denton) and the store room in which the clothes of patients still hung.

On with the pics…

There are more pics in the gallery.