The Robert Cain Brewery, Liverpool.
A spur of the moment visit with Speed, and a satisfying end to an already productive day.
The history:
This is up there as one of my favourite explores so far this year, not so much because of the place (whilst admittedly it is a stunning building it's a little stripped for my liking), but because of the absurdity of the explore itself.
After Winnington we hopped over the river to Liverpool to check on a couple of leads, not really expecting to actually get in anywhere. Pulling up outside the brewery, it became apparent that it was still being used for something - the car park was full, people were milling about everywhere and every few minutes a minibus full of teenagers would rock up. Naturally this warranted further investigation, and so we decided that we would wander through the front gates and that if someone challenged us, so be it. As it happens no one did, and we soon found ourselves in a courtyard next to the offices where an open door beckoned. Well it would have been rude not to, right?
Unfortunately said door only led into the above bar area (picture pilfered from Speeds report). A spiral staircase did lead up to the offices, but halfway up we began to hear that distinctive cackling and bitchiness that you only really get from groups of middle-aged women who work in admin. Not wanting to burst into a live office we decided to fob that off, although a sign saying 'to production office' did give us a clue as to what was going on. Back in the courtyard, we tried an open roller shutter and found ourselves in the costume department for what was obviously a fairly large-scale film or TV production. Cue twenty seconds later, when we waltzed through a flimsy curtain and straight into the damp, fetid and stinking brewery building. Mmmm!
As always the first port of call was the gorgeous brewery tower:
Up in the lofts, a little workshop with stunning glazed brickwork and the remains of a gas lamp:
Moving into the brewery proper:
To be fair, whilst it was absurdly easy to get into the brewery, once you were in getting around was a bit more of a challenge. The place is a litany of locked doors and secret rooms, and to get into the fermenting rooms we had no choice but to climb in from the floors below.
It was interesting to see some of the original blue panes of glass remained in the windows. I believe this was to keep UV light out of the fermenting vessels?
Ephemera:
Brewing hall:
And adjacent to this, a beautiful tiled hall:
There was lots to see in the basements, including some rather nice generator sets, but unfortunately I was sans tripod so no photos of these.
There's plenty more to see here if you're willing to put in the work, but unfortunately we found ourselves locked in as filming wound up for the day and so that distracted us somewhat. I won't go into details about the escape but I will say that as they go, it was a good one!
A spur of the moment visit with Speed, and a satisfying end to an already productive day.
The history:
This is up there as one of my favourite explores so far this year, not so much because of the place (whilst admittedly it is a stunning building it's a little stripped for my liking), but because of the absurdity of the explore itself.
After Winnington we hopped over the river to Liverpool to check on a couple of leads, not really expecting to actually get in anywhere. Pulling up outside the brewery, it became apparent that it was still being used for something - the car park was full, people were milling about everywhere and every few minutes a minibus full of teenagers would rock up. Naturally this warranted further investigation, and so we decided that we would wander through the front gates and that if someone challenged us, so be it. As it happens no one did, and we soon found ourselves in a courtyard next to the offices where an open door beckoned. Well it would have been rude not to, right?
Unfortunately said door only led into the above bar area (picture pilfered from Speeds report). A spiral staircase did lead up to the offices, but halfway up we began to hear that distinctive cackling and bitchiness that you only really get from groups of middle-aged women who work in admin. Not wanting to burst into a live office we decided to fob that off, although a sign saying 'to production office' did give us a clue as to what was going on. Back in the courtyard, we tried an open roller shutter and found ourselves in the costume department for what was obviously a fairly large-scale film or TV production. Cue twenty seconds later, when we waltzed through a flimsy curtain and straight into the damp, fetid and stinking brewery building. Mmmm!
As always the first port of call was the gorgeous brewery tower:
Up in the lofts, a little workshop with stunning glazed brickwork and the remains of a gas lamp:
Moving into the brewery proper:
To be fair, whilst it was absurdly easy to get into the brewery, once you were in getting around was a bit more of a challenge. The place is a litany of locked doors and secret rooms, and to get into the fermenting rooms we had no choice but to climb in from the floors below.
It was interesting to see some of the original blue panes of glass remained in the windows. I believe this was to keep UV light out of the fermenting vessels?
Ephemera:
Brewing hall:
And adjacent to this, a beautiful tiled hall:
There was lots to see in the basements, including some rather nice generator sets, but unfortunately I was sans tripod so no photos of these.
There's plenty more to see here if you're willing to put in the work, but unfortunately we found ourselves locked in as filming wound up for the day and so that distracted us somewhat. I won't go into details about the escape but I will say that as they go, it was a good one!
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must get my ass over there to do this, getting time is the issue 
.......saying that it has been on my list 
