This place, although being on my radar recently was never intended to be explored when we did - a failure in the midlands resulted in us with time on our hands so we decided to head even further away from home up to St. Helens to check out this little gem.
This facility was responsible for purifying the sand used in the production of Pilkington glass, and closed way back in the 1960s. It has sat rusting away ever since with all it's machinery still in-situ which is frankly incredible. Behind the main building are a series of huge storage pits where the sand would have been kept but we ran out of time to check these out.
I had heard it was an easy one to get into so I was initially feeling pretty confident. It is situated on a busy road so it was just a matter of timing getting into the site itself, however accessing the building was a different story altogether. For the more athletic-minded there was a fairly simple looking way in but for those of us who are less nimble and flexible there was what I can only describe as the grimmest game of stepping stones I have ever played - trying to avoid falling or putting any part of your body into horrible stagnant stinky water that was anywhere between a couple of inches and six feet deep whilst in a crouching position balanced on bricks and grates made of more rust than metal in the dark was not particularly fun, but after a long while we worked out the best 'safest' method across the flooded pit of doom and were in - trying to block out our minds that we would have to do the same thing in reverse to get out...
After all that, it's a great little spot. Anything that is full of rusty machinery is right up my street and this one certainly ticks that.
Thanks for looking
This facility was responsible for purifying the sand used in the production of Pilkington glass, and closed way back in the 1960s. It has sat rusting away ever since with all it's machinery still in-situ which is frankly incredible. Behind the main building are a series of huge storage pits where the sand would have been kept but we ran out of time to check these out.
I had heard it was an easy one to get into so I was initially feeling pretty confident. It is situated on a busy road so it was just a matter of timing getting into the site itself, however accessing the building was a different story altogether. For the more athletic-minded there was a fairly simple looking way in but for those of us who are less nimble and flexible there was what I can only describe as the grimmest game of stepping stones I have ever played - trying to avoid falling or putting any part of your body into horrible stagnant stinky water that was anywhere between a couple of inches and six feet deep whilst in a crouching position balanced on bricks and grates made of more rust than metal in the dark was not particularly fun, but after a long while we worked out the best 'safest' method across the flooded pit of doom and were in - trying to block out our minds that we would have to do the same thing in reverse to get out...
After all that, it's a great little spot. Anything that is full of rusty machinery is right up my street and this one certainly ticks that.
Thanks for looking
