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…

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

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.

Whilst I was positioning my camera to take shots of this room I did have a feeling that there was someone nearby, I even saw a shadow (of what looked like a man) flick across one of the windows at the far end of the building which got my heart pumping a little bit! After staying still for a while I carried on taking photos but for at least fifteen minutes I had a definite sense that I wasn’t alone and sure enough when I clambered back out of the doorway I was confronted by a deer, yes – a deer! There seemed to be quite a lot of them in this area of the complex and whilst they were a bit jumpy they were very curious and in some cases approached me for a better look, only the babies ran away through fear – the adults just stood there stating at me. After the ‘Caution Wet Floor’ room I came across a boarded up prefab right next to what looked like an entrance to the site next to a large car parking area, I think this may be one of the boundaries between the derelict site and the live site, there was a van parked in the near distance as well but I couldn’t see any signs of activity so I carried on. The prefab’s lock was smashed off so I had a look around, the place was completely boarded up so it was pitch black inside but with my trusty head torch I could see that the place was in a derelict but not completely ruined state, I managed to get the chair shot below on a 30s exposure, at f/14 on ISO 1000 and that was with the aid of the head torch! Other than having a couple more face-offs with the local wildlife I didn’t stick around too much longer, I identified a few areas that warrant further exploration so no doubt I’ll be back at some point. I’m not sure exactly how to get into the main corridor network but judging by Flickr plenty have done so – if anyone who knows the place can offer some pointers please let me know.

When I arrived in the area there seemed to be some activity on the airfield so I had to give that a miss but so I headed down to the woods, parking next to (but not in front of!) a gate by a public footpath. The woods seem to be used heavily for paintballing and there’s plastic tape up all over the place, I managed to tread carefully and avoid being shot but on a couple of occasions I did end up within a hundred yards of a group of paintballers but I don’t think anyone spotted me.

The majority of the structures remaining seem to be odd roofless bunker/trench type arrangements, I saw at least 7 or 8 of them dotted throughout the woods (bearing in mind I was avoiding the ‘live fire’ of the paintballers), I’m not sure what their original use would have been…

I didn’t have much time on my hands so I was probably only wandering around for an hour or so, I’d love to come back with someone who knows the area a bit better – if anyone’s interested please give me a shout.

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