Sheerness Steelworks was a steelworks in Sheerness, north Kent, the first phase of which was built in 1971 and it was completed and opened in 1972. The steelworks employed the Electric Arc Method of creating steel rather than the more traditional smelting of iron ore. The site closed twice, for the first time in 2002 until it was reopened by Thamesteel, a Saudi Arabian-backed company who used the plant to produce steel billets for export to the Middle East. In January 2012 the site went into administration having not produced any steel since November 2011. In 2016 Peel Ports demolished and remediated 32 acres of the site in order to expand their car import and export services, and Liberty House was intending to lease the remainder of the site as the rolling mill was still capable of production. However looking at the 2019 images on Google Street View it would appear demolition of the rolling mill buildings began at some point in early 2019.
This place popped up in my Facebook memories today as I realised it's been four years to the day that I had a highly eventful explore of Thamesteel with Landie Man, Marlon and Mooch. I ended up with relatively few photos from it because almost the entire time we were on site we spent having a protracted game of cat and mouse with security, and taking photos became a secondary goal as the primary one was not being caught. How we didn't get caught is a total mystery to me, it's by far one of the closest calls I've ever had.
We got on site via the usual route at the time - the 'over the guard rail and leg it to the nearest building' method. We all got over and across the no mans land safely and into the shadows of the first building. However within a matter of seconds of our arrival into the building we heard security drive past where we'd entered. Had we timed it just a few seconds later we would have been caught there and then but we pressed on and ventured deeper into the buildings hoping security wouldn't realise that we were in there. How wrong we were! After maybe half an hour of shooting we were in one of the different areas of the site - I have no idea which - and the four of us were spaced out from each other slightly. I was stood by a small control booth type thing overlooking what I assume was a loading/delivery bay of some kind that was wide open to the outside down below. Landie Man was up some stairs behind me and off somewhere else I don't know where. Marlon and Mooch were off to my left just within my field of view. The next thing we know, security parked right outside the building at the opening I was overlooking. He got out, and walked straight into the loading bay and as he walked further in and headed for the stairs to come up to our level, I distinctly remember backing myself around the end of the little control room type booth to keep out of his eyeline and whilst doing that I saw either Mooch or Marlon doing a military-style stomach crawl along a nearby gantry. The security guy at this point came up the stairs and turned right to go deeper into the building away from our immediate location, and off in the distance I could see him shining his torch around looking for us, presumably doing a walk-round of the perimeter walkways and stuff trying to see where we had gone.
At this point I realised I needed to find Landie and warn him, so I employed my 'quiet feet' and tip-toed up the stairs behind me and found Landie stood under a large overhead pipe run which sort of formed a tunnel with some nice shadows. Much whispering followed as we tracked the guy walking around the building, and we realised that if he walked towards us we would be trapped but we had nowhere else to go to conceal ourselves. So there we stood, frozen and hoping the darkness we were stood in would be enough. We were exchanging texts with Marlon at this point too so we were all kept updated on things and were trying to formulate a plan. By this time the security man had made his way to the far end of the building and had turned to head back towards where we were sheltering and at this point he stopped and shone his torch directly at the point where me and Landie were stood. My heart dropped like a stone at that point as he'd surely seen us, but apparently his torch must have not been powerful enough and he just walked back the way he'd come. Eventually he got back into his pick-up and drove away, thankfully Mooch, who was hiding in a crane cab, had eyes on the outside and could see when he'd left. After a few minutes to make sure he wasn't a bluff and he was about to come straight back in we met up again and carried on, all the while security continued to circle the building blasting his horn presumably trying to flush us out. We kept on exploring whilst constantly being aware that security knew we were inside, and after a while we thought we'd pushed our luck enough having spent around two and a half hours on site trying to stay out of their way so decided to cut our losses. We got back to our original entry point and legged it back across the no man's land and somehow managed to get away without being caught.
I'd have loved to have spent a stress and trouble free time wandering around here but it just wasn't to be, I could have taken a million more photos in here but that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
Thanks for looking
This place popped up in my Facebook memories today as I realised it's been four years to the day that I had a highly eventful explore of Thamesteel with Landie Man, Marlon and Mooch. I ended up with relatively few photos from it because almost the entire time we were on site we spent having a protracted game of cat and mouse with security, and taking photos became a secondary goal as the primary one was not being caught. How we didn't get caught is a total mystery to me, it's by far one of the closest calls I've ever had.
We got on site via the usual route at the time - the 'over the guard rail and leg it to the nearest building' method. We all got over and across the no mans land safely and into the shadows of the first building. However within a matter of seconds of our arrival into the building we heard security drive past where we'd entered. Had we timed it just a few seconds later we would have been caught there and then but we pressed on and ventured deeper into the buildings hoping security wouldn't realise that we were in there. How wrong we were! After maybe half an hour of shooting we were in one of the different areas of the site - I have no idea which - and the four of us were spaced out from each other slightly. I was stood by a small control booth type thing overlooking what I assume was a loading/delivery bay of some kind that was wide open to the outside down below. Landie Man was up some stairs behind me and off somewhere else I don't know where. Marlon and Mooch were off to my left just within my field of view. The next thing we know, security parked right outside the building at the opening I was overlooking. He got out, and walked straight into the loading bay and as he walked further in and headed for the stairs to come up to our level, I distinctly remember backing myself around the end of the little control room type booth to keep out of his eyeline and whilst doing that I saw either Mooch or Marlon doing a military-style stomach crawl along a nearby gantry. The security guy at this point came up the stairs and turned right to go deeper into the building away from our immediate location, and off in the distance I could see him shining his torch around looking for us, presumably doing a walk-round of the perimeter walkways and stuff trying to see where we had gone.
At this point I realised I needed to find Landie and warn him, so I employed my 'quiet feet' and tip-toed up the stairs behind me and found Landie stood under a large overhead pipe run which sort of formed a tunnel with some nice shadows. Much whispering followed as we tracked the guy walking around the building, and we realised that if he walked towards us we would be trapped but we had nowhere else to go to conceal ourselves. So there we stood, frozen and hoping the darkness we were stood in would be enough. We were exchanging texts with Marlon at this point too so we were all kept updated on things and were trying to formulate a plan. By this time the security man had made his way to the far end of the building and had turned to head back towards where we were sheltering and at this point he stopped and shone his torch directly at the point where me and Landie were stood. My heart dropped like a stone at that point as he'd surely seen us, but apparently his torch must have not been powerful enough and he just walked back the way he'd come. Eventually he got back into his pick-up and drove away, thankfully Mooch, who was hiding in a crane cab, had eyes on the outside and could see when he'd left. After a few minutes to make sure he wasn't a bluff and he was about to come straight back in we met up again and carried on, all the while security continued to circle the building blasting his horn presumably trying to flush us out. We kept on exploring whilst constantly being aware that security knew we were inside, and after a while we thought we'd pushed our luck enough having spent around two and a half hours on site trying to stay out of their way so decided to cut our losses. We got back to our original entry point and legged it back across the no man's land and somehow managed to get away without being caught.
I'd have loved to have spent a stress and trouble free time wandering around here but it just wasn't to be, I could have taken a million more photos in here but that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
Thanks for looking
