Posted on February 4th, 2010 by thirtyfootscrew
I wanted to start the year with a little bit of urbex but had limited time so an ROC post was ideal, I caught wind on the ‘net that the Whitchurch post (in a Buckinghamshire village called Oving) was in reasonable condition (no floods, no vandalism) so I headed up that way and found the place pretty easily. After parking up a side street and approaching via a public footpath I realised that the easy way was from the main road, the fence is wide open and despite the traffic it’s easy to get in and out, though it is quite exposed to passers by. The hatch is on fine, though the clasps weren’t in place when I arrived…
…down in the post it’s in reasonable condition with most of the furniture gone but what’s left is in reasonable shape…
There are a couple of original artefacts intact and for the first time in an ROC post I also saw some telecoms equipment intact, though I’m guessing the door was brought down here as a replacement unless the stickers were added in-situ…
All in all it was a good little trip and the hatch is better sealed than it was in the first place so I left the place happy, sorry if the photos aren’t entirely clear – I didn’t have torch with me (doh!) and I only had my point-and-shoot camera rather than the DSLR.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tags: cold war, Military, nuclear bunker, roc, roc post, roc posts, urban exploration, urbex
Posted in Military, Site Visits | No Comments »
Posted on December 29th, 2009 by thirtyfootscrew
On the first free weekend for ages I found a nice easy to reach site in a countrified spot on the outskirts of Flaunden and Latimer, Hertfordshire. RAF Chenies was a post-WW2 radar station (history from Subterranea Britannica) that is now derelict apart from a live Met Office radar that still hums away under its golf-ball covering.
The ROTOR programme that led to its construction was a post-war attempt to modernise the UK’s radar infrastructure in the face of veiled threats from Cold War adversaries, the government committed a considerable amount of money to the project even though the British economy was in a pretty dire state.
The site is large when compared to the actual buildings which occupy a small portion of the fenced-in area, consisting of a main building complex…
The coolest part is probably the live ‘golfball’ radar which hums away in the background, as well as the large antenna at the very back of the complex…
Around the side of the main building are a couple of sheds containing an electricity substation, some kind of machine and some barrels – it’s a little bit ‘Black Mesa’ with the humming radar in the background but I don’t think there’s anything too sinister out there.
The interior of the building has two levels and consists of both completely ruined rooms as well as some that would be perfectly servicable, floors are a little unstable in places and some rooms would’ve been dangerous to enter. It’s worth noting that there was a ‘Hazard Asbestos’ sign on the floor so wear your P3 if you’re on site here, here’s a few interior shots…
Popularity: 17% [?]
Tags: antenna, chenies, derelict, Military, radar, RAF, Royal Air Force, urban exploration, urbex
Posted in Military | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 4th, 2009 by thirtyfootscrew
I just got back from a trip to Cuba where I spent a couple of nights in Havana before going to a beach resort for a much more traditional holiday and I thought I’d share my mini-urbex outing I had in the city. Aside from trying to get a feel for the place and doing the touristy-type things I also took a little walk with my camera during which I came across a corrugated iron enclosure, my urbex-based 6th sense made me think “hmmm… I wonder what’s in there?” and I navigated round to the entrance (FYI, it’s on Dragones between Amistad and Industria – near the Capitolio).
It turned out that the yard was full of wrecked, rusted and derelict trains, most (if not all) having been made in America in Philadelphia’s Baldwin Locomotive Works or the Vulcan Iron Works in Wilkes-Barre, PA. After I spent a little while wandering around the yard the owner (or at least keeper) of the place turned up, a lovely old man who rents out the space not filled by trains for use as a car park. The man (whose name I couldn’t quite understand) spoke no English but proceeded to show me around the yard pointing our the ages on the trains, most of them seemed to have been made around 1920 but one was as old as 1873.
Here are a handful of shots that I took in the yard…
Popularity: 29% [?]
Tags: che guevara, cuba, exploration, fidel castro, havana, rail, railway, steam, train, urban, urban exploration, urbex, wreck
Posted in Industrial Urbex, Site Visits, Urbex Photography | No Comments »
Posted on September 5th, 2009 by sickbritain
Following up on my Top 10 Abandoned Asylums post I decided to start looking at other ‘genres’ of urban exploration, in this week’s post it’s going to be industrial sites. When I started researching the list I had a few obvious sites in mind but for the rest it was really tough to build a good solid list, industrial urbex seems to be much more diverse and localised than asylums. It seems that explorers will travel great distances to visit an abandoned asylum but there are seem to be enough derelict warehouses, mills, factories, etc. on a local basis so people tend to visit places close to their homes.
As before, I have selected a top ten list based on the number of Flickr photos I found for each site in a single search, doubtlessly I will have missed important sites and got the ranking wrong but please feel free to point them out by leaving a comment. All of the photos used below were taken by other photographers and are used under a Creative Commons license (click through to Flickr for attribution), if you think you’ve got a better photo and it’s not CC – get your licensing sorted!
1. Pyestock NGTE
2. Inverkip Power Station
3. Nottinghamshire Colliery GroupAnnesley, Clipstone, Pleasley
4. Steetley Magnesite
5. Thorpe Marsh Power Station
Popularity: 56% [?]
Tags: abandoned, Annesley, Clipstone, colliery, decay, decayed, derelict, electric, electricity, exploration, Gas Turbine, Industrial Urbex, industry, Inverkip, mines, mining, NGTE, Nottinghamshire, Notts, pit, Pleasley, power station, pyestock, Pystock NGTE, ruined, Steetley Magnesite, Thorpe Marsh, urban, urban exploration, urbex
Posted in Industrial Urbex, Urban Explorers, Urbex Photography | 2 Comments »
Posted on August 26th, 2009 by thirtyfootscrew
I’ve been hankering after a proper wide-angle lens for a while and after ages of trying to decide between the Sigma 10mm and the Sigma 10-20mm, I’d kind-of settled on the zoom because you get a little more flexibility and it’s cheaper but I’d read that the 10-20 had quite poor build quality. On a pay-day whim I ended up buying the Tamron 10-24mm (which had favourable comparisons to the Sigma 10-20) and tonight I popped out to give it a quick test – the weather was turning out rubbish so I needed somewhere indoors and Harperbury seemed ideal.
The place was in an even worse state than the last time which one would expect to be the case in a derelict building but the bulk of the new damage is human and one of the previously sealed buildings was open on three sides, I even saw the remnants of what would’ve been a padded cell but only the floor was intact as the walls had been stripped bare.
It was interesting to explore a couple of new rooms but they all looked essentially the same as the others anyway – pretty mashed up…
It’s often difficult to find inspiration in a site you’ve visited before and I really struggled to find anything to do that I’d not done before, despite the new lens – it didn’t help much that I was knackered after a long day at work either.
I guess this is a lesson really, that the fun and interesting part of Urban Exploration really is the ‘exploration’ component – finding something new and interesting as opposed to covering the same ground over and over again. Just because it’s probably the most diverse building on the site, I spent the longest amount of time in the swimming pool block doing a couple of long exposures but I really didn’t get anything I hadn’t done before and I didn’t have the patience to do time consuming work such as light painting, which is a pity as it’s quite a cool spot to do it.
I achieved the lighting in these shots through a combination of the light from my head torch and the external flash unit being handheld off-camera…
Popularity: 67% [?]
Tags: abandoned, asylum, decay, derelict, graffiti, harperbury hospital, hospital, mental, mental health, tamron 10-24mm, urban exploration, urbex
Posted in Asylums & Hospitals, Site Visits, Spotlight | No Comments »
