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

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.

If you’d like to learn a little more about the place, please check out the first Nocton video or you can get some great background info from RAF-Lincolnshire.info.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/milabrya/19323
http://ccmixter.org/files/morgantj/19473

If you want a little history you can check out the first Nocton video or you can get some great background info from RAF-Lincolnshire.info.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/GrangeGorman/12222
http://ccmixter.org/files/Loveshadow/12996

The site contains an historic listed building, a stately home originally constructed in 1834 and rebuilt in 1841 by the first Earl of Ripon. The hall was first used as an convalescent home for American officers in 1917 during the Great War and was turned into a full-scale hospital by the RAF in 1940 but was has been intermittently used by the US Army from World War 2 right up to the first Gulf War in 1991/92. At it’s height of readiness during the Gulf War the site employed roughly 1,300 medical staff and had 740 beds even though it only ended up treating 35 casualties, following this period the hospital was handed back to the RAF and was finally abandoned to the elements in September 1995.

On a personal note, I find it sad that the property (especially the hall) has been left to fall into such a derelict state, it has been the victim of several arson attacks and an extensive amount of vandalism but the place still has a lot of character with an air of eeriness about it, mainly due to its size and advanced state of dereliction.

Music used in video…

http://ccmixter.org/files/everyeye/3206
http://ccmixter.org/files/Neurowaxx/19080
http://ccmixter.org/files/LiquidEyes/11536

As usual I gravitated towards the swimming pool and found a whole load of new graffiti (but thankfully no hornets). The paint peeling room is in a glorious state, pretty much the essence of urbex and the “Dark Dark Room” is still as mouldy as ever, despite the mask I could still smell some of the Harperbury stench too – makes me consider using a non-disposable mask. I was on a tight timescale for this visit so I just toured through a few favourite spots and ignored some of the less interesting bits though you never know, they might have become interesting since my last visit – that’s one of the cool things about urban exploration.

After heading back into the real world I was just about to leave and thought that since it’d been such a quick trip and I still had a bit of time spare I might try and get down to part of the facility near the road. It looks as though some of it is still in use but there’s definitely a huge cluster of derelict buildings down there, I’ve just never worked out the best way to get down there without raising the alarm or spooking the residents. Well, this time I thought I’d try going round the back along the edge of the field and it worked a treat! I was still on a whistle-stop tour because of time pressures but I could clearly see that there are quite a few abandoned buildings down there, most of them looked sealed but I didn’t have the time to probe closely.

The buildings over here (maybe 10 in total) are arranged around a central ‘playing field’, after a little wander I found one open and accessible building (front door wide open) so naturally I had a look in, unlike a lot of the others over the road many of the buildings down the bottom are two-storey – the stairs seemed solid in my one so I had a proper look around. Architecturally it’s not too different from the others and inside the walls are painted (mostly peeling) either the cream or turquoise-blue that appears to be common across the site. It’s worth noting that in this area there are a couple of diggers so it looks like someone has been working here, that might make it difficult to do anything but weekend or out-of-hours exploration but I suspect that’s what most of us do anyway.

I’m sure I’ll be back at some point, there are still whole areas that I’ve not been into and that somehow gets to me, like an unsolved mystery or when Sky+ buggers up recording the end of an episode of The Apprentice!

On entry into one of the first open buildings (the one with the swimming pool) we took a few photos then headed into the main hall, there we could hear a very low-level buzzing sound. As soon as I realised what it was ‘the fear’ rushed over me: it was a hornet’s nest and I’m scared to death of bees and wasps let alone their giant evil cousins! They were very dopey and zig-zagged around the hall very slowly and crawled in and out of roof tiles and all over the floor (I’m itching just thinking about it). Luckily they were dopey enough that when they’d landed they were ignorable and when they were airborne the buzzing was plenty loud enough that you knew to get the hell out of the way!

After a little poke around the swimming pool area and a brief stab at light painting we moved on to what I assume must have been the wards of Harperbury – large (but not massive) rooms, all with high ceilings. It’s in here where you find some of the cooler graffiti, as well as some of the most dangerous and sodden flooring so please pay equal attention to both the walls and the floors. After light painting at some of the graffiti spots we headed down to a room with severe paint peeling at the end of the block, most noteworthy as it’s the only place I’ve ever seen stalactites having formed indoors (in this case on a light fitting).

On the way out we spotted a windowless room with an intact door so we went in to do some light painting and shut the door behind us, inside it was pitch black and very quiet (aside from the two of us chatting and flailing Maglites around). As we were timing an exposure I thought I heard a noise outside the door, I turned around to see the door move slightly and I knew that it wasn’t the wind as it’s a heavy old door. With no hesitation whatsoever I walked over to the door and pulled it wide open to find myself face-to-face with a terrified guy who panicked and ran away, I stepped out of the room in time to see him fall on the floor as he ran and then spotted his friends also looking mildly panicked. As I pulled my mask off and said “Hi” they realised I wasn’t a threat (neither maniac nor security) and we stopped to chat for a bit, they were just exploring as well so I apologised for causing any alarm and we went our separate ways.

The rest of the explore was less eventful, we covered some of the lower buildings and got a couple of good shots in the padded playpen, usually I find when I visit Harperbury there’s not a great deal of variation once you’re past the main buildings so we sped through a lot of them finding nothing unusual save for the decomposing corpse of a bird (still pretty well preserved). We finished off the day with a good set of shots between us but I always come away from that place feeling a little grubby, even though I wear a mask, gloves, wellies, etc. – it’s nothing a good shower can’t fix though!

Harperbury was built as a specialised Mental Health / Learning Disability hospital in the period between the first and second world wars, referred to at the time as either an ‘asylum’ or a ‘colony’. At it’s height the place had over 200 staff and over 1,500 patients, for a full historical account of the place please read the excellent History of Harperbury Hospital which goes into quite some depth. The site is quite large but despite those stats the site doesn’t feel like it has the scale of somewhere like Nocton Hospital, partly because many of the buildings are at least 2-storey and the buildings are also quite close together. It’s worth noting that some of the site appears to still be operational and there’s a small cluster of houses right at the bottom of the lane where I usually park so be careful not to spook the people who live there as it’s not fair.

First Visit: Discovering Harperbury

The first time I went to Harperbury was in April 2008, in fact I went twice split over two weekends through lack of time to explore (the first was more like a reccy). Both times I went on my own and found the experience to be quite spooky but quite exciting too, especially given that in the very first building I encountered graffiti advertising “<— DEATH THIS WAY”, I checked and it turned out to be a toilet – nothing too sinister! This very same building (along with most of the others on the site) is now boarded up properly and I’m not the type to go forcing my way in so I’m glad I got the chance to have a look around when I did.

As the site is very close to convenient parking I took my tripod with me (I often don’t bother because of the added weight) which enabled me to get one of my favourite shots to date: Dark Dark Room (pictured right), the room itself was pitch black and I mean pitch black – you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face even. The exposure was taken over 30 seconds and all of light in the picture comes from my trusty Maglite which I striped furiously across the room as even as possible but you can clearly see the mottled exposure it created, my first experience of light painting. Despite it’s semi-rural location there’s quite a bit of graffiti in there, some general rubbish (tags, crap slogans) and some quite visually striking pieces. Sadly I was short on time during both visits so I only managed a quick poke around the lower buildings but I knew I’d end up returning at some point!

Safety Notes & General Tips

There’s lots of insulation hanging from the ceilings, I’m not sure if there’s any asbestos about but given the state of considerable ruin the place is in (and if nothing else the general stench) I’d recommend wearing a P3 mask when you visit. It’s also worth noting that there are quite a lot of bad floors at Harperbury so you should wear boots/wellies for protection and tread carefully (try to stick to the under-floor beams if you can (they’re the only truly solid bit in some rooms).

Entrance to the site was simple, I parked up right next to the giant metal gates which were already completely busted up. I got my tools out (Canon 400D, Sigma 18-50mm, Speedlite 580 EXII, Maglite), gloves on (left hand full DeWalt, right hand fingerless), mounted my head-torch and headed on into the site. At first I had a poke around some of the nearby buildings and a few Anderson shelters before heading towards the nearer edge of the site, at this point I pulled back because that area is easily visible from the houses and flats in the distance and I didn’t want to blow my cover this early! After looking around a few of the other buildings in near the gate I headed rightwards.

It’s easy to underestimate this place at first but Nocton is truly massive – space isn’t really a problem in Lincolnshire so almost all of the buildings are single storey and if you imagine a combined RAF base and 740-bed hospital it ends up being an extremely large site. Inside the main body of the facility there are a series of long corridors, in what appears to be the main building there’s a large corridor running down from front to back (i.e. from the gate end straight forward) which is then crossed by long corridors running to the left and right at several intersections down the main corridor.

The walls contain directions around the site in the form of coloured stripes and every now and again you see a red bar hanging from the ceiling showing which department you’re at, in my time there the only labelled bits I made it to were the pharmacy, path lab, surgical ward and gynaecology department. Pretty much all of the rooms across the site are large and empty, it’s reasonably clear to see where an area would have been full of beds (i.e. a standard ward) and where there would’ve been a series of private rooms with beds but some of the areas are a bit ‘different’ and have some interesting little quirks. One of the more interesting buildings I found must have been some kind of administrative block and housed a giant safe, seemingly impossible to get into now but the door is still there and the whole unit is at least the size of a normal door. The place must have housed sensitive documents and military secrets, I’m not sure exactly when Nocton closed down but it’s intriguing to think about whether there’s still some classified material stashed away in there!

Across the whole of the base there are in excess of 50 buildings (see Google Maps) so there’s quite a lot of work to be done if you want to cover the whole place. I only skimmed the surface really but I think I managed to rush my way in and out of most of the major areas (but certainly not every building in each area). In terms of safety I saw a couple of signs and even some graffiti pointing out that there is asbestos present on the site so make sure you go in there wearing a P3 dust mask.

I picked mine up at Screwfix for about £5, there are cheaper P3 masks but don’t compromise your safety by using a lower rated (or unrated) mask or by using some other fabric to cover your mouth – if it doesn’t work out you could end up with serious illness down the line. Otherwise I thought that most of the surroundings, floors, ceilings and the occasional staircase all seemed relatively intact – it doesn’t mean they all are though so keep your wits sharp and don’t forget to read the Urbex Safety post.

After exploring for nearly a couple of hours I began to get one of those ‘sixth sense’ feelings that I’d overstayed my welcome and decided to leave, I took my time traversing the site and popped into a few areas on the way but I was fully intending to head off the site. I’d gotten this strange vibe that maybe I wasn’t alone on the site, it’s hard to explain why as I hadn’t heard any voices and sites like this always have strange noises (doors creaking/banging, pipes rattling, etc.). I wouldn’t say that I was worried as it was a windy day which will increase that sort of ‘natural’ activity and besides the only people likely to be on the site would be other people exploring and I’ve always found other explorers to be polite and courteous (if not slightly suspicious!) but something deep inside me told me that I really ought to leave and it’s always worth listening to your instinct.