Visited with Bordello and Fredster Peterson.
This was posted up as a rumour some time last year but since then I've not heard a word about it. Seeing as I was in the south over the holidays I thought it'd be rude not to have a pop. Cemex were the owners of the Barrington Cement Works site until it was mothballed in 2008. The decision was made that the plant would not re-open, and now it is nearing the end stages of demolition phase 1, which has torn through a large portion of the south of the site.
We pushed our way through the trees and dense undergrowth at the back, to be greeted by a monster chimney exhaust. I was praying that the kiln would still be there.
It wasn't. Fearing the worst, we ventured further in, skipping across a wide expanse of wasteland and up onto the site properly.
Clearly some of the kiln was left, but maybe 75% of it was gone, and what was left stood in the middle of the site, another dash across open ground, this time in full view of and not 40 metres away from a big porta-cabin with the ever legible SECURITY UNIT sign...
Up until now, all had been silent but suddenly a thunderous engine roar shattered the rural quietude. Definitely a digger, and seriously close. Worse still, we were extremely exposed, practically next to what was left of the kiln building. We followed the guy's progress, edging round a giant concrete block for cover, and watched him lap the kiln building once, twice, thrice... fuck. He was driving around the damn thing in circles, in a digger. So we backed out, came back in from another angle, balled it past a few cameras and found ourselves in the GIANT shed at the top of the site.
This photo was taken from maybe 1/4 of the way into the shed, and doesn't show the magnificent roof bracing. Big shed.
Should've put a person in for scale. The bottom part of that scoop is probably 1.5x your average human height.
At this point my companions started to complain. We'd been onsite for a few hours, most of that time spent wandering around in the undergrowth, and we had another, more promising site still to do with about 3 hours daylight left. I wanted to keep pushing it, so they sat down whilst I went off on a little solo mission to see if I could get into the kiln building undetected.
Sadly, it was not to be. As I released the shutter on that last shot, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Security or a worker, in Hi-vis, stood outside next to a large bonfire, pretty much exactly where I wanted to be. I turned around and started to skirt around the outside of the shed again, only to realise a huge tanker was driving onto the site, and there really was nowhere to hide. Fuckit, shouting to the lads, we just ran away, no bother. I was gutted to see such a large, mint, unexplored site and to leave it without seeing the good stuff, but that's how it goes sometimes, and hopefully some of you more southern lot can go finish it off, put it this way, that storage shed alone is on the scale of one of the Cardington hangars, so get your arses over there! Honestly, we saw more than is represented here (I was short on film and lazy) and it was decent, but left me wanting a lot more.
GO GET IT PEOPLE! More to see here.
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