HISTORY: Founded in 1826 as a partnership between members of the Pilkington and Greenall families. The venture used the trading name of St Helens Crown Glass Company and was based in St Helens, Lancashire (Wikipedia says it's now part of Merseyside?). In 1894 the business became Pilkington Brothers Ltd after the Greenall family had left some years before. There are loads of Pilkington buildings in the area and a massive current modern glassworks location. Looks like they just upped and moved leaving their old buildings to rot.
Noteworthy is that between 1953 and 1957 Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff invented the float glass process. A revolutionary method of high-quality flat glass production by floating molten glass over a bath of molten tin, avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to make it clear.
EXPLORE: Having already done the Pilkington Sandwash a fellow urbexer told us there was also an office building. We parked a decent distance away, came in through the back trees, avoided security, kept flashlights on low ... only to find 9 other people already wandering around inside. One of them was half naked. I assume some Urbex-Youtuber managed to convince his girlfriend to strip in the derelict offices in order to get some footage/photos that would boost the channel? I didn't get a chance to ask because my urbexing partner was my daughter who covered my eyes immediately and pushed me back downstairs. Aside from the girl in her underwear and her photographer, there were three other pairs and one guy doing 'proper' photography. Never been in such a busy explore before.
[Please note: there are no photos of the girl below and I don't have any either if some of you pervs were thinking of asking. There is one video clip where you glimpse a buttcheek as my daughter pushes the camera down on reaching the top of the stairs.
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I didn't go up on the roof. It looked like it might be okay but I've had some bad luck recently so chickened out on this one. Plus it was the first of the day. We get less cautious as the day goes on as any injury or getting soaked ruins less of the time we have left.
The Pilkington Sandwash that supplied the sand for the glass making isn't far away and is also a good explore:
https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/threads/pilkington-sandwash-foundry-st-helens-oct-2022.38937/
Noteworthy is that between 1953 and 1957 Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff invented the float glass process. A revolutionary method of high-quality flat glass production by floating molten glass over a bath of molten tin, avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to make it clear.
EXPLORE: Having already done the Pilkington Sandwash a fellow urbexer told us there was also an office building. We parked a decent distance away, came in through the back trees, avoided security, kept flashlights on low ... only to find 9 other people already wandering around inside. One of them was half naked. I assume some Urbex-Youtuber managed to convince his girlfriend to strip in the derelict offices in order to get some footage/photos that would boost the channel? I didn't get a chance to ask because my urbexing partner was my daughter who covered my eyes immediately and pushed me back downstairs. Aside from the girl in her underwear and her photographer, there were three other pairs and one guy doing 'proper' photography. Never been in such a busy explore before.
[Please note: there are no photos of the girl below and I don't have any either if some of you pervs were thinking of asking. There is one video clip where you glimpse a buttcheek as my daughter pushes the camera down on reaching the top of the stairs.
]
I didn't go up on the roof. It looked like it might be okay but I've had some bad luck recently so chickened out on this one. Plus it was the first of the day. We get less cautious as the day goes on as any injury or getting soaked ruins less of the time we have left.
The Pilkington Sandwash that supplied the sand for the glass making isn't far away and is also a good explore:
https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/threads/pilkington-sandwash-foundry-st-helens-oct-2022.38937/
