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Tuesday 29 January 2013

Turner & Newall, Rochdale - January 2013

Up on the list of toxic employers nestled beside United States Radium Corporation sits Turner & Newall of Rochdale.

Once the largest asbestos factory in the world,  the now closed factory has recently been described as Lancashires Chernobyl, this is a factory where kids now freely wander and metal thieves loot whilst bathing in raw asbestos fibres.

We thought we would grab a few P3 masks and have winters drive up to not so sunny Rochdale, a group mooch that was a little smaller than we had hoped, the rumours suggested a group visit might be a good idea.

Visited with the master of derp Judderman and the one only known simply as Zero81, Urban Spaceman was otherwise engaged in his shed.

Judderman had made an explore before, although he had left without exploring the full site, his first thoughts being a state of shock over the level of additional vandalism in such a short period of time.

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So far, so good, no sign of the village idiots

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The site is vast at 72 acres, which is as well as it turned out we weren't alone....

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Untitled

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It was over 2 hours in and the expected finally happened, we ran into the metal fairies throwing scrap out of windows of a great height, falling in our path with some unpleasantries thrown in our direction. We decided to call it a day.

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People of Rochdale, rather you than me.

5 comments:

  1. have you got any other interesting imagery fromt his shoot?or could you point me in direction of the most photogenic areas of buildings?
    i had a recce of area earlier on - saw that this place is worth about a year (or more) worth of study... so god knows what theplace would have given up whenit was an actual working environment - and not just meagre industiral units...
    i should imagine that the interesting facets of the area - the old printing press etc - have been pilfered... but do let me know which parts of the mill are worth engaging with -as you know it's a mighty industrial arena...
    regards
    jonathan
    p.s. like what you're doing but i do think the imagery would be less generic if shot with film...
    http://notveryhipinc.wix.com/jpsutcliffe
    DO NOT REPLY TO CONTACT DETAILS ONLINE AS ALL OLD WEBSITES AND BLOGS HAVE EITHER BEEN FILCHED OF THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES OR HACKED ETC ETC ETC

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  2. Its a vast site, internally a mixture of old industrial and mass produced modern offices - it is mostly empty, the remaining machinery is heavily contaminated from asbestos.

    Ignoring any asbestos risks, the place is littered with dead drop holes on upper levels (in dark corridors). Whilst easy to get in, it is maze like in parts and perhaps not as easy to get out in the event of emergency. Finally not to play this down, the site is actively being stripped by metal thieves - we had threats made against us and at one point bombarded with scrap metal from a great height (on purpose).

    As for more pictures, I have more of the same and more of the same, perhaps I will post on a rainy day - thanks for the comments and be careful

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  3. 'twas an interesting day for sure.

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  4. How did you get in here. I know this place and security are on the door 24/7

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  5. How did you get in and out with security on the floor 24/7

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