Finding this place was essentially an accident, spotted from a car window whilst travelling down the A5 a few weeks prior to my visit. It was pretty easy to find/remember the location as it’s very close to the M1, Junction 9 and right between a Shell garage and a pub called The Waggon & Horses (please note that this is a strip-pub and not a family establishment). I thought it’d be a bit weird to park on the main road so I took the road up the side of the garage and parked in a layby right at the back of the site.
For some reason I decided to make my entrance with a crazy head on my shoulders, I proceeded to scrabble through undergrowth alongside the building, being barked at by the pub dog to find an un-openable door and a massive patch of nettles. I made it back up the slope easier than I’d gotten down there only to find a nice set of concrete stairs down to the building on the opposite side of the layby where I’d parked. This was a classic example of the both-feet-first approach gone wrong and save for the pair of inquisitive bikers watching me from afar (I waited them out) the access was easy in the end.
The site consists of a single large warehouse-like building in which I imagine the furniture was both built and sold, the place is pretty-much gutted including the the offices although there’s not much to give away the original purpose of the site, save for the giant sign still intact on the main-road side. There’s a lot of graffiti in the place and I recognised both styles and names from previous visits to Harperbury Hospital – the main artists being Phor, Nomad, Adept and Demographix, a couple of bits are quite artful and I managed to make a couple of panoramas from the walls…
Short Graffiti Wall
Long Grafiti Wall
As there weren’t so many artefacts left and the place is essentially one giant empty room the explore didn’t last too long, the offices were a bit wrecked and have clearly been involved in some sort of fire (arson or otherwise) that didn’t seem to have spread to the main building. There wasn’t much graffiti in this part either save for the red bloody handprints on the wall which could be quite disturbing in the half-light but they’re more obviously paint in the daylight. Outside the back of the office is the road-side with the still intact sign (picture at top), other than that I didn’t really see much to stay for so I jumped back in the car and headed off – navigating the easy way, not via the dog+nettles side!
This site has recently been flattened – I think industrial units are going up in it’s place but I’m not sure.