Wales Various
Without any certain plan of places to visit and with a friend who fancied 'seeing what we do' after seeing some of our pictures, we decided to make the most of a nice weekend by heading across the border into Wales to see a few places that had been on the list for some time.
First up was 'old faithful' Brymbo Steel Works, where something unexpected happened, we bumped into security and some former workers who were there surveying the damage following some heavy snow fall, which left the roof of the most interesting building collapsed, as a result we were told we could not even go down the hill onto the site, but we did spend some time talking to one of the former workers who gave us some very interesting information about what it was like to work there and told me exactly how they used to use those big wooden 'stencil blocks' I have wondered about for some time (apparently they used to press the 'stamp' into the sand in the main shed and then pour the molten steel into the hole, leave it to 'solidify' and then they would have their stamped finished product.
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Next up was Minera Hall, nothing much seems to exist about this place and I don't think it's been featured much on the forums (there is probably a good reason for this as its well knackered!), all I can find is that it was owned by a Mr Danson during WW1. Mr Danson was apparently a timber exporter to Burma, but fell on hard times once Burma was taken over by the Japanese.
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No idea what this was growing on the door.
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Whilst driving on to the next location, we passed this little church (which was sadly sealed), I decided to include a couple of photos of it, as it was quite an odd little place, the best way to describe it was that it looked like a tin cattle shed with a wooded roof stuck on the top, I have never seen a church like it on my travels. Speaking to one of the locals, it has planning permission to turn into a house, but there is no room for car parking at the side (the owners of the farm are not willing to give away any land) and the Highways agency won't allow cars to be parked out front, so its very limited as to what anyone can do with it and as a result has been on the market for about 15 years.
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Just down the road was Minera Lead Mine, it's now a country park, but was closed, so we hopped the fence for a couple of shots.
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Second to last step was Clwyd Alloys, The site was originally the Gem Brick Tile and Terra Cotta Works Company, which existed in several different forms until the site was acquired by Clwyd Alloys around 1959 and used as a foundry for the reclamation of scrap metal. The site finally closed around 2002.
I quite liked the place, it was quite trashed, but was nice and peaceful and had some interesting bits too it, for some reason, it reminded me a little of both Hipperholme brickworks and also a bit of George Barnsley.
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Last stop of the day was the Duke of Lancaster, or the Mostyn Fun ship, a big old rusty heap of ship which has recently had a '2nd life' by becoming a huge canvas for some quite talented graffiti artists. Ship still has the on-site security in their little caravan and a very 'barky' dog who follows anyone walking down the path and barks constantly at them.
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Full Gallery Here
