We took a little trip down to Coleshill the other day to check out St Edwards and some of the other buildings on the site. It was my first proper planned exploration, when ive done it before its been on the spare of the moment and a long time ago and for a few reasons, rarely in the uk.
As some of you probably know, St Edwards is the largest of 6 abandoned buildings on a site that also has some live buildings including an old peoples home, a hospital and the headquarters of the Father Hudson Society who own both the live and the abandoned buildings. The history has beed told a few times over on this site so I wont go into it again here.
We got into St Edwards no problem and spent a good hour and a half in there. The place was trashed but there are still enough left behind items to make it interesting. About 15 minutes before we left we heard a load of kids shouting and thought they were on their way in, but after a few minutes they seemed to have gone so we made our way back out to visit the next on our list, St Gerards Hospital.
As soon as we got round the corner on the path to the hospital a car sped towards us from the car park and two blokes jumped out. They weren't really security, they said they're based at the site to board up windows and doors and and i imagine theyre caretakers of some kind. Anyway, they were alright with us and we had a chat with em for a while. They said we couldn't get any closer to the hospital because we were on camera and theyv'e had loads of trouble with kids smashing the place to bits and tatters robbing all the metal and original flooring out of there. Apparently the reason we got caught is because the kids we heard twenty minutes earlier had been trying to get into the hospital, but they made such a row screaming and shouting that the two blokes had caught em and they were sitting in the car to make sure they didnt come back for another go, then we strolled up. So, we were a bit disappointed and we hung around for a bit after they told us we were ok taking some photos from the outside if we stayed on the main paths, but they were parked up not giving us much chance of another go. I thought we may as well have a go at doing it the proper way and went to the reception in the live hospital and asked if there was someone we could speak to about getting a look around the old hospital to take some pictures for a uni project. The woman denied there was a hospital on the site other than the one we were in, but we assured her that she was mistaken, she made a call, we were denied! After one last walk up to see if we could sneak in we were seen again by the blokes and decided to call it a day.
They also told us that St Gerards has got it bad recently, the kids have really smashed it up and when we asked if we could have a walk up to it to take a few pics through the windows, they said they were all boarded up tight now. I'm not sure i believe them though.
Here's a few pics. My camera's nothing special and I'm not sure how interesting my photos are as most were close ups of the weird bits and bobs knocking about in there and not really giving much of a feel for the site. But seeing as its my first time and after a bit of encouragement from another member I'm putting em up.
And many many thanks to Voibmi and TranKmasT!
As some of you probably know, St Edwards is the largest of 6 abandoned buildings on a site that also has some live buildings including an old peoples home, a hospital and the headquarters of the Father Hudson Society who own both the live and the abandoned buildings. The history has beed told a few times over on this site so I wont go into it again here.
We got into St Edwards no problem and spent a good hour and a half in there. The place was trashed but there are still enough left behind items to make it interesting. About 15 minutes before we left we heard a load of kids shouting and thought they were on their way in, but after a few minutes they seemed to have gone so we made our way back out to visit the next on our list, St Gerards Hospital.
As soon as we got round the corner on the path to the hospital a car sped towards us from the car park and two blokes jumped out. They weren't really security, they said they're based at the site to board up windows and doors and and i imagine theyre caretakers of some kind. Anyway, they were alright with us and we had a chat with em for a while. They said we couldn't get any closer to the hospital because we were on camera and theyv'e had loads of trouble with kids smashing the place to bits and tatters robbing all the metal and original flooring out of there. Apparently the reason we got caught is because the kids we heard twenty minutes earlier had been trying to get into the hospital, but they made such a row screaming and shouting that the two blokes had caught em and they were sitting in the car to make sure they didnt come back for another go, then we strolled up. So, we were a bit disappointed and we hung around for a bit after they told us we were ok taking some photos from the outside if we stayed on the main paths, but they were parked up not giving us much chance of another go. I thought we may as well have a go at doing it the proper way and went to the reception in the live hospital and asked if there was someone we could speak to about getting a look around the old hospital to take some pictures for a uni project. The woman denied there was a hospital on the site other than the one we were in, but we assured her that she was mistaken, she made a call, we were denied! After one last walk up to see if we could sneak in we were seen again by the blokes and decided to call it a day.
They also told us that St Gerards has got it bad recently, the kids have really smashed it up and when we asked if we could have a walk up to it to take a few pics through the windows, they said they were all boarded up tight now. I'm not sure i believe them though.
Here's a few pics. My camera's nothing special and I'm not sure how interesting my photos are as most were close ups of the weird bits and bobs knocking about in there and not really giving much of a feel for the site. But seeing as its my first time and after a bit of encouragement from another member I'm putting em up.
And many many thanks to Voibmi and TranKmasT!
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