This old packaging factory has been my latest obsession – just two minutes away from my house, right next to Totteridge and Whetstone Station but completely concealed – and yet I’d never even noticed it until Cowlick pointed it out.
Adding to its mystery, there is no information about it anywhere on the internet, yet according to a local who lives in the cottage next door, before it was a factory (opened some time in the ‘60s), it used to be the main stables for the town before trains were in use.
I tried to get in last month – only to find gypsies had taken over the place. They’d run out shouting, waving a beer can in their hand whenever I tried to approach it. Thankfully, they’ve now been evicted so taking with me a friend and my 16-year old brother, we went in.
Everything’s been left from the days when the workers left, although the machinery, quite expectedly for the amount of time it has been derelict, has been completely trashed – this might have something to do with the previous ‘occupants’, ahem! Most of the documents and newspapers lying around were from 1984 – presumably when it closed. And the deadly silence - apart from the occasional pigeon fluttering from above - whispered echoes of Pyestock.
The design of the factory still looks very much like a stables and they’ve even retained the hayloft (now storage space).
Relics of the gypsy occupation
A packaging receipt from 1982
View out the hayloft window
Falling asleep on the job
My brother snuck back in there the next day to shoot a short horror film – just as it was getting dark. Might have been a little rushed considering all the strange noises coming from the back of the factory and impending darkness!
[video=youtube;HrZ24pgX1jw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrZ24pgX1jw[/video]
Adding to its mystery, there is no information about it anywhere on the internet, yet according to a local who lives in the cottage next door, before it was a factory (opened some time in the ‘60s), it used to be the main stables for the town before trains were in use.
I tried to get in last month – only to find gypsies had taken over the place. They’d run out shouting, waving a beer can in their hand whenever I tried to approach it. Thankfully, they’ve now been evicted so taking with me a friend and my 16-year old brother, we went in.
Everything’s been left from the days when the workers left, although the machinery, quite expectedly for the amount of time it has been derelict, has been completely trashed – this might have something to do with the previous ‘occupants’, ahem! Most of the documents and newspapers lying around were from 1984 – presumably when it closed. And the deadly silence - apart from the occasional pigeon fluttering from above - whispered echoes of Pyestock.
The design of the factory still looks very much like a stables and they’ve even retained the hayloft (now storage space).
Relics of the gypsy occupation
A packaging receipt from 1982
View out the hayloft window
Falling asleep on the job
My brother snuck back in there the next day to shoot a short horror film – just as it was getting dark. Might have been a little rushed considering all the strange noises coming from the back of the factory and impending darkness!
[video=youtube;HrZ24pgX1jw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrZ24pgX1jw[/video]
