…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.

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…

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…

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 Group

Annesley, Clipstone, Pleasley

4. Steetley Magnesite







5. Thorpe Marsh Power Station

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…

1. Hellingly

2. Cane Hill

3. West Park

4. Whittingham

5. Severalls

6. Denbigh

7. Deva

8. St Mary’s

9. Talgarth

10. St John’s

The articles include quick tips, safety and legal advice, lighting, working with a model, light painting, photoshop tips and even a competition to win an Epson Stylus Photo 1400 A3+ printer by submitting ‘dereliction themed’ photos which should be quite easy for most of us!

Pick up the magazine now at all good stockists (I’ve always wanted to say that).

Good luck to you with the code,if everyone gets the answer all at once we might all end up having a mob to storm the place with or if nothing else we might have enough people for an impromtu rave, I’ll bring the glow-sticks!

This was one of my quick visits in between places so I stowed the car in the first possible place I could find by Googling “american adventure theme park postcode” and slinging the result (DE7 5SX) into my sat-nav, and went for a walk into the site. Despite the fact that it was a miserable day there were plenty of people walking dogs and riding bikes around the perimeter of the place which is a little disconcerting when you’re trying to work out how to subvert a fence! In the end I spotted a clear and easy hole in a metal gate and slipped through unnoticed, there were several spots though so access isn’t an issue.

I didn’t make it around the entire site but what I could see was fairly barren, there are some admin buildings left and there was clear evidence of fire in certain places…

… and some other commercial detritus…

Occasionally you’d spot some clear and definitive evidence that the site had been a theme park, such as bits of rides…

Points where rides had been anchored…

You could also see where the old railway line had been, carting people around on a little model steam train…

I know that there’s a lot more see but the rain and time constraints really stopped me from going much further, it didn’t help that I’d neglected to put on my wellies (see this post) so my feet were beginning to get a bit squelchy and I couldn’t venture into the muddier bits, next time I’m buzzing up the M1 I’ll try and make sure I’ve got some more spare time on my hands and go back for a more thorough explore.

Q1: Who are you?

Simon Cornwell and I run the urbex|uk (www.simoncornwell.com/urbex) website. I’m also one of the moderators on Derelict Places (www.derelictplaces.co.uk). I’m also known in the community as “Simon Cornwell”. It was a conscious decision from the start that I would use my real name for all my urban exploration; I feel it adds integrity to my writings and explorations.

Q2: Why do you do Urban Exploration?

I was always in-and-out of derelict houses, old bomb shelters, river culverts and tunnels as a child and never really grew out of it. When I discovered various urban exploration sites on the Internet in the late 1990s, I realised it was something I missed and started sneaking in and out of derelict buildings again.

I’m driven by mainly by curiosity. What’s in that old building? What was it built for? Who worked there? Why was it designed in this form? Why did it close? I turn these transitional sites into temporary museums where the price of admission is guile, agility and courage. Therefore I’ve experienced being in various locations which I would never have been able to: anything from old lunatic asylums through to top-secret military installations.

Q3: What's the best explore you've been on?

Cane Hill, 13th July 2002. There had been various pictures of some of the interiors of the buildings (mainly the laundry, corridors and water tower) on Andrew Tierney’s “the_one” website but this was the first time I’d been deep in the bowels of Cane Hill itself. The main hall had been burnt down a month before, but the Chapel was still fully fitted with its pews, pulpit, organ and other furniture.

There’s always something special about going in a building and not knowing what to expect. But that day in Cane Hill was superb. (It was later written up as “Grand Tour” on my website).  Cracking the water tower six years later was also memorable and it felt like finally finishing the site off.

Q4: What's worst explore you've been on?

St Lawrence’s, Bodmin in January 2007. We drove all the way to Cornwall (from Royston) only to get busted within five minutes of reaching the Fosters building. We were really unlucky: the alarm system was malfunctioning, the security guard was therefore on the prowl looking for people, and we turned up at the same time.

Another memorable experience (for all the wrong reasons) took place at an asylum with a film crew. It was decided that we wouldn’t go up the water tower, but everyone was so fired up by the day’s filming that they all shot up the water tower stairs like rats up a pipe. The director pointed out a missing slat on the way up but forgot about it whilst climbing down. He fell the last step, scraping his shin on the jagged edge of the rusted metal slat, before slamming down on the concrete floor. We thought he’d bust his leg, but he managed to hobble out with help.

Q5: If you could explore any site/facility in the world, what would it be?

Area 51 is top of the fantasy list followed by the wreck of the Titanic.

Q6: Are there any pieces of kit that you'd recommend to others?

Heavy boots, multiple torches, mobile phone, water and food.

Also get the best camera you can afford. I wish I had a better camera for my first forays into Cane Hill. I was halfway through formatting the “Grand Tour” when I realised that the quality of the photographs I’d taken were crap. It was the early days of digital photography, and the early tours on urbex|uk reflect that, but I wish I’d got a conventional camera or a digital camera with better resolution.

Q7: If you could give any tips to newbies or experienced explorers, what would they be?

Remember the motto: “Take only photographs, leave only footprints.” Keep to that rule and you’ll stay on the right side of the law. And that’s for newbies and experienced explorers.

Never delay exploring a site. Always seize the day and get out there. These places are in transition and they won’t stay derelict for ever; they could be demolished tomorrow.

Q8: What would win in a fight: 1,000 chickens or 1 giant chicken the size of a thousand chickens?

The 1,000 chickens would swarm all over the 1 giant one and gradually destroy it.