Hickson and Welch, Castleford, Nov 2010

KooK. · Nov 21, 2010

Explored with jST

After a little tour in the morning doing some recce work we headed down to Castleford (after a pit-stop at Waitrose, mmm pork pie) where we headed for the defunct Hickson and Welch site. It took a bit of time, but eventually after negotiating what seemed like an endless number of fences we found our way onto the site, which is absolutely huge, despite the demolition crew knocking down some fair old chunks of it.

Lots of history about so I won't drag it out too much.

Hickson and Welch was established in 1915 when Ernest Hickson built a chemical plant for TNT. They were hit quite badly by a couple of accidents and the banning of their main product DDT. The plant was closed in the early 90's and eventually acquired by Arch chemicals.

This Facebook group is quite interesting for lots of pics of when it was open.

Thanks for looking

LiamWg · Nov 21, 2010

KooK how do you manage to go on so many explore you seem to be posting a new explore everyday

fair play to you though mate

if i could i would :L anyway nice pictures looks like a very wander able site

jjstenso · Nov 21, 2010

LiamWg said:
KooK how do you manage to go on so many explore you seem to be posting a new explore everyday fair play to you though mate if i could i would :L anyway nice pictures looks like a very wander able site

He has a chauffeur who drives him round to all these places :mrgreen:

Here are a few of mine:

Lots of Control Panels.

Some still live, this one was flashing on like a goodun.

Finally - the two chimney brothers.

Cheers.

KooK. · Nov 21, 2010

Haha, cheers Liam, just lucky that I have quite a lot of daytimes off cos of work, and live near a lot of win!

And yes its true, I have a chauffeur who herps me around in the derpmobile

UrbanX · Nov 22, 2010

That is one HUGE site!!
Looks a great explore too, some nice photos too.

What are they demo'ing it for? I cant imagine there's a lot that'd be profitable to build on there?