So, onto the picks – I’ve selected one photo each from five Sick Britain members…

1. Howzey….

2. Compound Eye…

3. Urban Spaceman…

4. AltoExyl…

5. Alistair Hobbs…

Essentially there’s a few smaller outbuildings towards the road side including a courtyard/garage area but the site is dominated by the main building which stretches up the hill over two levels.  Navigating the main building can be a bit confusing at first as the upstairs part at the lower end of the complex becomes the ground floor of the higher end since the hospital was built on a hill, the corridor between the two sections is also curved so it’s easy to lose your bearings in both axes but if you proceed systematically you won’t get lost.

Since the place hasn’t been derelict for long and has only been recently opened the interior is still in reasonably good shape so the day’s photography focused on the artefacts left behind, mainly signs electrical bits and some more recent graffiti.  Some of the heating and electrical components still seemed operational (one red LED was still lit in the plant room), my favourite shots of the day came from the industrial artefacts..

Whilst walking through the darkened curved corridor I spotted a couple of large paintings on the wall, they looked dull to the eye but the flash of the camera brought them out brilliantly…

There was also an area I assume was the children’s ward since the walls were covered with stickers like this…

And finally, in one of the outbuildings that appeared to be the dentistry department I found a moment of Urbex Fluffy Time…

…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!

Annesley, Clipstone, Pleasley

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).