Urban Exploration: Holdings Country Pottery

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

With that motto in mind on a drizzly Sunday afternoon we sought out Holdings Country Pottery in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. This UrbEx site is very popular and is very well documented on the internet.

I won’t go into the history of the place but it has been simply left to rot away for many years now looking at the dates and time stamps of things left behind. There is plenty of information around if you want to dig further.

Some say it folded in 2010. So why do I find memorabilia from 1970 and the sixties hanging about?

This place is not easy to find and I had to dig quite a lot on the internet before I found it. You will need to do the same if you want to discover the precise location.

I initially had a map ready and another zoomed in one with exact details of the location of Holdings Country Pottery, where to park to avoid attention and how to gain access but withdrew all this information at the last minute.

Why? Because the true Urban Explorer discovers these places themselves. I have read stories about locations being revealed, and then a month later the place burning down due to arson.

Holdings Country Pottery is a unique place lost in time. Arsonist, Vandals, Smackheads and Graffiti Whores are not welcome in my opinion.

On entry the place is overgrown with bushes, weeds and other foliage. It’s hard to see the target it if you don’t know its there.

A walk through the trees to the left of the photograph (above) revealed that we had found what we were looking for. The writing on the side of the building is now so faded you can barely read it.

Gaining entry to the building is simple. Many doors are open and you can just walk in. We ignored this one (below) as we wanted to scope the outside first.

At the far end is yet another missing door and we went though this one.

The room looked like a workshop, machinery was still intact though I have no idea of its purpose. Part of the roof was missing.

This ‘press’ was hard to photograph due to the lighting conditions. It has a faded look to it, and I should have tried for a better one.

Pots were strewn around everywhere but vandalism was minimal. There was some graffiti but not too much. Several pieces of machinery are still present, now heavily rusted.

The next room had almost no roof and the beams were collapsed as you can see. Foliage has taken over a lot of this one and it looked more like an outdoor area.

Several pieces of machinery were dotted about such as old generators and other things all in terrible state of disrepair.

Shelves of old pottery were strewn around in this room that looked like it once had a glass or tiled roof. The glass or tiles are long since gone and nature had taken over in a big way.

Was this an old metal kiln? It looked like completely metal encased and could have been used for firing the pottery?

We moved into the house section next which was much darker. This old piano was hard to shoot again due to the light.

The number of personal things I saw was staggering, and the age of them too. These stamps haven’t been around since the 1960’s and the newspaper has a date of 1970.

Personal letters and birthday cards are strewn around everywhere. It’s good that people haven’t taken these away.

We could have gone in the loft but thought better of it. How safe is that ladder and the beams holding the upper area?

More machinery was spotted in the beam room, what was this used for? It looks like something from Fallout.

Yes the building is unsafe, don’t climb up on the roof or face the consequences!

Inside again, we found the living quarters. It was a family business so I would expect to find beds and kitchens. We found more than that, clothes everywhere, and cups and plates in neat piles sometimes.

This cheque was so faded I could barely read it. We exited the building through another broken down door. It’s not hard to get in or out.

I found the atmosphere silent and serene and didn’t get any of the willes I was expecting. @bingbabe found it disconcerting. After the apprehension and fear I experienced in my last UrbEx trip, it just didn’t happen to me.

If anything this has given me more confidence to do the next one.

Holdings Country Pottery was like a trip back in time. The artefacts that have been left by the original owners are mostly still intact. Newspapers from 1970 and stamps from the 1960’s are not normal to see anymore.

You don’t come across places like this too often. Vandalism is present but not in great amounts. It’s hard to reach without car being in a more rural area. Perhaps this is a factor.

What will happen to Holdings Country Pottery? I expect in time it will be flattened but for now it remains an isolated empty cold place, devoid of any life and being overtaken a little more by nature day by day.

All photographs were taken by myself.

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