The History
Central park on the outskirts of Halstead was once home to Central Piling.
Central Piling was opened in 1980 when the original company changed to the holding company Central Plant Investments and started a new operating company called Central Piling. In 1984 the company doubled in size and purchased an acre of land and built a new base at Milner Road, Sudbury, within a couple of years the size of the building had doubled.
Central Piling became the first piling contractor to have a radio telephone (Storno 900 System 4) fitted to each rig and the first piling contractor to computerize pile design, using a Commodore Pet 8032 and in-house software.
In June 1989 they moved into Central Park, Halstead. This was just in time for a deep recession and the painfully sad day when half of the workforce were made redundant.
Central Piling have been located in Central Park ever since, however the company have move to a new purpose built place just up the road leaving Central Park empty. Recent local news has stated that the site has been sold to Bellway and will soon have 103 new houses on it.
The Explore
You know how these things happen, you’re heading one place and a wrong turn or whatnot can take you to another. Well that’s how this happened. @slayaaaa and my good self where out mooching about and heading towards Norfolk for something else and a wrong turn took us passed Central Park. Ooooo look Heras was the cry from the car and we immediately stopped and checked it out.
After a quick look around we decided over the main gate would be the easiest option. Now the main gate was locked with an over the top chain and padlock. So climbing over was the best option.
Once inside the site we had a walk around, found an open door and ventured inside. If I’m honest it wasn’t that good inside, a couple of gantry cranes, a nice sink and some desks but it was the outside that I thought looked great.
One thing that was more than a little weird was that on leaving the gate had been unchained.
Yeah I know what you’re thinking but we really did check and it really was locked, God knows why it was open but it wasn’t the last of the odd stuff that happened that night…
Enjoy the pics
