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No Promise Of Safety…

July 23, 2012 | Posted in EN ISO 20345:2011, EN345, Industrial, kevlar, Random, safety boots, Steel | By sYnc

Water Station D200 (self bust)

March 10, 2012 | Posted in cctv, Industrial, Reservoir, water tower | By sYnc

I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset the cosmic balance in my world but the tides of karma have washed up nothing but trouble for several months now….so far 2012 sucks 🙂

My tripod is still broken (nowatVelbon HQ getting repaired) but we thought we would take a look at a bunch of stuff the other week we had been meaning to do for some time…bunkers, storm drains, culverts, an underground reservoir and a couple of water towers.First on the list was thederpresi but it was soon obvious that the site was very much live after being met with ass ripping8ft palisade and security camera’s…never mind, we cracked on regardless. Sadly the10ft deep reservoir had over5ft of water in both sides and someone was definitely ‘at home’ so to speak. Shame really as it was quite a big boy and would have made for some nice shots…time to move on.The Water Tower and Pumping Station were similar in that they looked derp from a distance but the humming of pumps and scattering of CCTV said otherwise. We setup anyway and started shooting, the light was pretty lame and I was packing a shagged tripod but we got on with it, avoiding the camera’s and generally trying not to get pinged. Out of nowhere a white van came speeding towards us, we must have been spotted somehow? It parked right on top of our hiding place and just sat there, there was no way we could have gotten out without being seen as a climb up a very steep bank was the only exit and this would have out us right on the radar and the vehicle could have easily cut us off before we could climb the palisade. There wasn’t really any options as we had lots of other places to go that day and I didn’t fancy sitting there until nightfall just to extract quietly and if we sat there any longer another van would soon be along and we would be proper busted so we went for the unconventional option….take the ‘fight’ to them rather than sit there like mugs.

We strode out of our hiding place and walked straight towards the waiting van, then in an instant I realised something was not right, the driver was sat with his head down, not looking at us (or anything else for that matter), shit, no turning back now, we were in open ground and committed so carried on. At the last second the driver looked up shocked and said “Where the hell did you come from?”
I knew in an instant he wasn’t secca so it was blag time…fast…

“Er, well, I’ll be straight with you mate, we came over the fence cos we like photographing derp stuff, especially water towers, I’ll tell you what, we’ll just vanish and you pretend you never saw us yeah?”

“No mate this isn’t derelict you’re on **** property and if security catch you there’ll be all sorts of bother so yeah, you best disappear (he said, smiling).Although we had effectively busted ourselves for no reason he was cool so we got chatting about some operational details regarding the site before we GTFO and moved onto other stuff on the day’s list.

Not as many shots as I’ve had liked from here but then we did get rudely interrupted 😉

Quenby Price/Cargills Grain Store

September 16, 2010 | Posted in Agriculture, BOCM Silcock Ltd, Bromham, Cargills, Industrial, Quenby Price, Turvey, United Agricultural Merchants | By sYnc

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In 1910 R.Quenby & Sons were first listed as millers after buying a 21 year lease on a local mill in Bromham, Bedfordshire. In 1938 they became a registered company as Quenby Price Limited. In 1969 they moved out of the mill and into nearby Turvey Station that had closed in 1962 (the last train left this station in March 1962) as a result of Dr. Richard Beeching’s ‘Beeching Bombshell’ report that resulted in more than 4,000 miles of railway and 3,000 stations being closed over a 10 year period. (During 1962 780 miles of track were closed across the country). The station buildings were used as offices but sadly they did demolish most of the platform.

In 1971 Quenby Price Limited leased the orignal Bromham Mill buildings, mill house and 6½ acres of land to Bedfordshire County Council as a picnic site, selling them to the council two years later. After Quenby Price moved out, the Mill was taken over by artisans making pottery and leather goods until a fire broke out on 20 Feb 1974. Bromham Mill is now a popular Bedfordshire tourist destination

The Turvey Station site grew over the years under the name Quenby Price and many of the original buildings were demolished and rebuilt to keep up with mechanisation and modernistation techniques in agriculture. The company changed hands several times over the years, falling into the hands of Unilever under the name United Agricultural Merchants (BOCM Silcock Ltd). I was lucky enough to have a tour of the site in the early 1980’s when it was fully operational and remember visting the old silo building and climbing the ladders to a high dusty gallery (long demolished).

The site changed hands again several times before being finally taken over by Cargills PLC and then ultimately its closure several years ago, it now lays derelict having been ‘made safe’ and also fairly well stripped by travellers.

The site comprises of two wet grain storage bins, a pre-cleaner, two grain driers, six storage silos with 10,000 tonnes of grain storage and two despatch bins. Everything is linked with grain elevators, conveyors and horizontal augers. In addition to this are workshops, admin buildings offices and a Laboratory.

UPDATE – March 2011
This site has been levelled to the ground over the last three weeks, totally demolished, nothing exists.

There was a development company involved who bought the site several years ago and I suspect it will soon be redeveloped as a residential site.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy the pix