Not done a report in ages with having a busy summer, so it IS pic heavy. Soz about that, but this place is HUGE.
I had wanted to get into here for many years, and trying several times at various stages of the redevelopment down there. Did eventually find a way in, which for me was pushing it a bit but never the less it was doable. So I gave Grea a ring to see if he was up for it and we had a crack at it.
There's a lot on the site here, built in the 1870s though an old OS map shows buildings on the same footprints as early as 1823. My mam used to work there in the late 1960s when one of the mills was still being for textiles so it had long been a plan to get in and try and imagine what it was like. On with a few piccies then.
Caddies Wainright, Phoenix Mill and Navigation Warehouse
It's a pretty substantial collection of mills, there used to be 35 in total but as most of the smaller buildings were demolished to make way for the new Hepworth Wakefield art gallery leaving 10 mills, most of which are Grade II listed.
The charming old Gate House:
Grea weighs up his options with one of the gates:
It's properly pitch black inside due to everything being boarded up. It reminded me of the first time we went to Crabtrees in Bradford, crawling through the hole on top of that 2cv in the blackness. Long exposures and 1600lm of light painting are the order of the day
This floor here contained around 60 little art studios, individually partitioned off rather crudely with plyboard and liquid nails. Again it was pitch black, this was another long exposure illuminated with a 5million candle power torch.
Moving around to Rutland Mill itself, this has the unique curved facade. This is inside it:
Harris Court Mill style floors! Caused with the expansion of the timber. Very spongey under foot:
Looking out towards Phoenix Mill, this one is supposed to be haunted, stupendously haunted with many stories of strange goings on in there. This was completely locked down, and had been locked since the Most Haunted TV crews finished their filming, prior to that it had been locked for 20yrs.
This shot was taken from the 3rd floor wooden walkway linking Rutland Mill to it's neighbour. The warehouse in the mill here is the former warehouse space of Wilkes Group Services, where they held their stock supply for their vending machines.
Looking up to the walkway from the Wilkes warehouse:
I spy with my little eye...
Lone chair shot:
Once out the scaffold around the Caddies Wainright warehouse proved to be too tempting:
Looking over to the new Hepworth, with the 17th century watermill to the left of it:
Underneath the new Caddies roof:
On the way back down the scaffold we spotted an opening we missed earlier in the day. Hidden away behind rubble and bushes, we had a walk down and ended up in the cellars of the haunted Phoenix Mill. Proper creepy and the air is really cold in there. There was no access to the upper floors of Phoenix from the cellar, access was from an elevated walkway that was demolished a couple of years back.