Urban Exploration – A Trilogy of Failures

We are Urban Explorers, we are not vandals. We take nothing besides photographs and leave nothing but footprints.

After our initial success in finding Holdings Country Pottery and doing a successful exploration of the place I was full of beans and looking to do the next one.

Talk about beginners luck! Had I happened on a gem with no security and a place relatively untouched by vandals? I think so as my next THREE attempts all ended in different levels of failure.

In reverse order, last Sunday I earmarked two places to visit both of them in close proximity the where I live. One was a disused power station the other an old chicken factory.

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I had driven past the gates of the power station several times only to find them locked, but possibly climbable if I could find no holes in the fence.

Sunday morning is supposed to be a day of rest, people going to church, roads empty, streets deserted.

So why is an organised 10k run going right past the gates, and what’s worse why are the ‘always locked’ gates open and blokes in high visibility jackets milling about?

Fail One. Never mind there’s always the chicken factory that looks like it’s in a rural location.

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Fifteen minutes later, I’m in the countryside driving past the entrance of the side road to where my target is. What? It’s supposed to be rural, so why is there a terraced street here with a load of houses?

I dumped the car and walked to the entrance or should I say past it looking intently inside. Big gates with chains but I could slip through the netting on the side.

That is if this place was not in full visibility of 20 houses or so. Not content with giving up I walked up the lane by the side of the factory only to encounter a car coming down the road toward me.

The road was marked private road (to cars) and the driver was obviously thinking I was up to no good. He drove past me ever so slowly and then stopped, reversed and came back to see what I was up to.

Talk about paranoia!

Fail Two. So let’s go back a day to Saturday for something a little more interesting.

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@bingbabe was doing an abseil in Sheffield that day (write up is coming) so I checked to see what appropriate creepy mansions were in the area and found ‘Thornseat Lodge’, perfect!

Abandoned and left to rot since the 1980’s this spooky looking manor house was just what I was looking for.

I had checked this place out but the last report I read was 18 months old.

No security, middle of nowhere, extremely dangerous to enter inside due to rotting floors, big holes in the ground due to missing manhole covers and 40 something years of neglect. Bloody wonderful!

The manor can be seen from the roadside and is still striking in its present terrible form. Parking can be a problem as it’s on a very minor road but we managed.

@bingbabe decided to not come with me on this one; she had a feeling of doom and despair about the place. Hindsight tells me it was a wise choice.

Entering was not so difficult but I won’t tell how I gained access. They do try and make things difficult for you though with barbed wire and other nasty things.

The original driveway is clear once inside, but I spotted some security cameras. They are not supposed to be there?

Undeterred I approached the house via the massively overgrown vegetation area to the right of the road thus avoiding the camera. This shot looks like a horror movie still.

It took me a while but I got to the road in front and got some nice shots of the house. The ruin is all to apparent to see, broken windows, collapsed floors, holes in the lower areas of the house, some of the roof is missing.

On approaching the house, I literally shit my bricks. There was another camera to my left with a loudspeaker attached and another to the right (edge of picture).

‘You are trespassing on private property and have been recorded using CCTV. The evidence collected will be used against you. Leave immediately’

As much as I was tempted to bolt, I didn’t leave right away. ‘Just a few more shots and I’ll be gone I muttered’.

I know trespass law and that it is not in fact a criminal act or illegal if you are not vandalising the place and have entered without damaging anything.

Nonetheless I had images of 4 burly blokes with German shepherds chasing me around the grounds.

The side of the house showed it to be in a terrible state. The roof was collapsed at this point. I wonder if the ‘new’ security is because the place is either going to be demolished soon or refurbished.

Hopefully it’s the latter. The property would have been majestic once. The brickwork does not look like it was built in the 1800’s either. It just looks too new and yet here it is.

Eventually I got the willies and scooted down the driveway past the original camera setting that one off too, through the access point and hurriedly got in the car and drove off.

Partial Fail Three. I’m really going to have to do better than this!

All photographs were taken by myself unless cited.

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