Ever explored a place that you have been to prior to it being abandoned?

[alpha]

So after having a very derpy explore at the side of the A3 a mate gets a message from an old school friend that apparently my old junior school is abandoned and currently being demolished with a reccomendation that we go take a look, we take a relatively short drive over during which Im seriously doubting the accuracy of the information we have been given, considering I live a mile away and was a pupil there how has this place closed without me even hearing about it!

To turn up to the gate and see an excavator the size of a bus sitting in the playground was a little choking to say the least, guess my hours scouring the web for local explores don't go deep enough.

Now to say that I went out a little poorly equiped was an understatement, a lenser and iPhone was all I had but it didn't stop me from spending a good hour looking round the place including getting very close to a sealed off asbestos removal area just to have a look in the class room I spent my last year before leaving for secondary school in 2008...

Now without waffling on anymore I will return to my question, you guys / gals been to places where you have worked or had some sort of connection with and how did it feel?

I personally don't think my photos are report worthy but if anyone in surrey would like me to make a lead or rumour thread I would happily oblige as this is probably one of the best in the county at the moment but won't be about for long!

 

[Punk]

I've been to a few places that I went to when it was trading, few pubs etc. The one that sticks out for me was my old school. I did find it weird to sit in my old form room without being shouted at. There were loads of pictures of people I went to school with and some of my old teachers. Glad to see the place shut though, hated it there.

 

[The Wombat]

I've visited an old school i went to, which was interesting.
The funniest one was an opportunity encounter with a little chef in Wales i had previously had a lousy meal at a few years previous.
Popped in with Mr Punk. I shan't relay the details on here

 

[The Lone Ranger]

I visited a fair few places which I have worked at or seen them reported on here. The joys of being a contractor when the UK still had a manufacturing industry. Won't be the same visiting a derelict telesales or retail centre in the future.

 

[Punk]

The funniest one was an opportunity encounter with a little chef in Wales i had previously had a lousy meal at a few years previous.
Popped in with Mr Punk. I shan't relay the details on here

I assume you are referring to when you obliterated the disabled facilities

 

[TranKmasT]

Two hospitals off the top of my head. Wolverhampton eye infirmary. Got red eye from breaking out a concrete floor at work without wearing goggles. Luckily I just needed cream for conjunctivitis.
And Dudley guest hospital. The police came round to our flat one night, around midnight to escort me and my parents there. My friend in infants school there was having his stomach pumped for eating poisonous berries from a bush he had eaten in the playground. I'd been playing with him.They wouldn't believe me when they said I hadn't eaten any. But they made me drink some vile liquid and a gallon of water to make me sick.

Ah, great times.

 

["Bert" Weedon]

I suppose I have been very lucky to have worked for many years at both RAF Bawdsey and RAF Orfordness in Suffolk (Reports are on here). I visted Bawdsey about 2 years ago, and I was very sad as almost all the buildings I had used from 1963 to 1972 were missing, even the trees were gone. That's progress I suppose, even an old pre-fabricated building has a value to someone.

 

[Aleks Hayward]

When I was young, my dad was a groundsman at a sports club and we lived on site, the sports club was a large club with acres of land with a groundskeepers house (our home until i was 17) the club also had ball rooms, swimming pools,gyms, tennis and basketball courts, bars, offices, and even two flats within it. The place was huge. As we lived on site we had many friends who worked and visited the club. Me and my brother were always running around the place and talking to everyone who worked and spent time there. we used to even get free ice creams from the bar. In 2001 it closed and in 2006 After 20 years of living there my parents divorced and we moved out.

Having not been there since it shut down, I went back lately to explore. I knew it would be different to all the other explores I had done but i didn't appreciate how much longer i'd stay there just remembering all the memories i had there. I remember requesting songs from the DJ in the ball room when they had discos, the rubber ring we used to trapse up the field with to have a swim in the pool.

It was a really strange feeling. I doubt I'll ever have the chance to have such an explore ever again. It's not often you get the change to explore the place you used to live in. I just hope i can go again one day before the whole place gets demolished for luxury flats.

 

[Mps6]

i remember watching cats and dogs at the odeon in colchester when i was about 5 or 6 maybe

 

[KronJewels]

I used to go to Aylesbury Odeon all the time as a kid, then spent years seeing the abandoned building and wondering what would happen to it. After I got into urbex I just had to get in, so spent another few years figuring it out and finally did it just after Christmas!

 

[Salmon]

I kind of did it the other way round.
In the late 70's and early 80's we used to skip school, get a bus across London and go to Highgate cemetery. It was very overgrown and possibly because of a well publicised story of a vampire being seen there it used to get some strange people visiting at night and breaking into family vaults and coffins. We didn't touch stuff but we did go into the vaults and look into open coffins and see long dead bodies.

We used to go into the catacombs and use candles which were more fun than torches. There was a place you could squeeze in and once when we were in there and heard voices we hid in the darkness. We realised it was some kids like us so I waited until all 5 of them had squeezed one by one through the tiny hole and when they were all in I did one cough as gruffly as I could.
We didn't show ourselves until all 5 kids had in a total panic squeezed through the tiny hole. The last one out complained he needed to change his trousers.
We then spent the rest of the afternoon with these kids in the derelict chapel and crematorium.


Not long after this a group of people began to tidy up and restore the cemetery. I went on a guided tour in 1986 and I took my daughter there for a tour in 2009. The Friends of Highgate are very protective of the place and don't let the public into the catacombs very often and you have to stick with the guide on the tour.

I have such fond memories of exploring the overgrown and unloved Highgate Cemetery. I wish I had more photos. We did take an Olympus OM10 there once with a black and white film which we developed and printed. I recently scanned the negatives so have the photos on my computer now.

 

[tumbles]

Frenchay Hospital. Had been admitted there 3 times via A&E with my Crohns. I joked about collapsing outside A&E in a puddle of my own green bile when exploring the place years later with some of the Bristol folk. It was odd not only to walk through a deserted A&E reception but during the day I realised at one point I was in the ward that I'd been then taken too after assement on at least 2 occasions.

Several others spring to mind - Bristol Ice Rink, Bristol Genera Hospital and Bridewell Island.

 

[Oxygen Thief]

Yep, spent several weeks in Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, in the early 90s.

 

[paulpowers]

As a teenager I spent a bit of time in Cherry Tree hospital in Stockport, went back and it was less of a shit hole than I remembered

 

[anubis]

Loads of places we used to go in when I was a kid. I sorely wish I had had a camera with me back in those days!