st.joes seminery, wigan

st. josephs seminery is a place ive seen many a time on the net but never been able to do, so when i got the chance to visit the place you can imagine the thrill of walking the corridors of this fantastic building! its massive, and so much to see through out the site. when we entered it was just in time as it started to pour down! but here are some of the pics any way! went along with OVER.

an HDR off the roof looking at one of the statues on the roof.

one of the many empty corridors with the rooms the residents used to live in!

found this in the attic space away from the rest of the rooms! dont know why it was away from the others but it was a dark room!

heres a couple of pics of the 1st years living quaters from what ive heard of the place, still with the names of the last students on the post entering the small space they had!

this plave is one of my favorites to go, and an over all great explore!!

winstanley hall, wigan. sep 08

after failed attempts at another site me over gimbulate meet up with spark, we then headed up to winstanley hall (thanks to spark for this one!) only spent 1 hour in there as after been on the roof the lighting was a problem and with the lack of some of the upper floors we thought best to get off, but spark had other ideas and followed up a drain lead on the way out if i remember correctly!

historyThe hall was built in the 1560s for the Winstanley family of Wigan; the Winstanley family were lords of the manor since at least 1252 and may have been responsible for building the moat on the site. The Winstanleys owned the hall until 1596, when the estate was sold to James Bankes, a London goldsmith and banker. Winstanley Hall has three storeys and has a date stone with a date of 1584. Extra blocks were added in the 17th and 18th centuries. Further and extensive alterations were made in 1811-19 by Lewis Wyatt in a Jacobean style. He moved the entrance to the left flank of the hall and replacing the original entrance with a window. The final additions to the hall were made in 1843 when an extra wing was added. To the south, on lands belonging to the hall, is a small stone building which was used to house bears that provided entertainment for the hall's guests.The Banks retained ownership of the hall until the 21st century when it was sold for private development. The hall had been kept in good condition until the 1960s when habitation stopped. As the building decayed and the cost of maintaining Winstanley Hall was too much for the family it was sold on. It was intended to develop the hall into private flats, however refurbishment was held up due to Wigan council withholding planning permission.

NWEX

the forums have been changed, used to be northwestexploration.co.uk, but after been closed down and then reborn again its now www.nwex.co.uk but for some reason blogger adds a backslash to the link when used which dont work so hit the link, see the error, delete the backslash, hit enter and your on the forum

Newport art college

Went along on the wales meet, me and FKN arrived at sheep2405 house at about 2 in the afternoon, and along with a member i cant remember his name from DP we went along to asda for food, i had some intrest on this place before i came down here and i could not drive past it 3 times and not go in! so on the way back that was the plan! it took us a few mins to enter as there is all new sheeting up around the building. the building has had a temporary roof fit as the original is missing in parts and letting alot of water in, even with the temporary roof there was alot of water still getting in the place when it rained, which is a shame as its not doing it any good. the place is going to be developed in to apartments im told, here are some of the pics!

in the photo below you can see the fake roof they have put over the place as all the roof is buggered and letting the rain in which aint doing the place any good, even with the roof over there is still alot of water getting in to this place as we saw when it started to rain!

this cup and chair was in the roof space befour we stumbled over the entry point to the tower

the above pics is of a water tank in the top of the tower with Fkn inside doing the lighting for me, and the one below is of the tower its self, could get some good views from up there! as you will see in the pic below again, but the rain was coming down hard by now and the veiws became restricted.


this one is of one of the main corridors coming off the stairs on the bottom floor, got to say thanks for Fkn helping with the lighting againby the way!

the above had to be done! :) me, jonas and Fkn

these are of the main hall, this was a great place for colour as you can see in the picsthis is in the centre of the site and the last one is of a black and white of the hall.


this was a great site, well worth a visit! this is a place i will be going again as you cant get fed up of those big corridors and stairways! one of my favs up to now!

Cathedral Steps, victoria arches

The arches are right in front of Manchester cathedral under victoria street, they have been the centre of many arguments between urbexers. there is alot of hype about this place on how great it is! you i went with an open mind as i didn't want to be disappointed.
went along with fknsamuelbonney after the Manchester meet we went on, thanks to Sam for providing the climbing gear to make this possible and taking my along after he found the location for access!

the arches was used in 1939 as a bomb raid shelter and was supposed to house 3500 people but later changed the capacity was dropped to 1619 people.

one of the many famous signs down there! the one that people wrote there name on in the dust has been wiped clean by someone for a reason unknown to me, but the was some recognisable names in dust in other places!

if you ever come across pics of the arches you will always see these steps going down to the toilets, so i felt like i had to!



overall it was a great explore, somewhere i wanted to do for a long time and now Ive done it and it wasn't as great as it has been made out but it was still great to see!

Manchester meet august 08

The Manchester meet started off as a drain meet and soon turned in to more after a spot of lunch! but it started out as a drain meet. we ( thenewmendoza, bungle666, sheep2405, pr1vate piles, andyj23uk, peanuts, smileysal, fknsamuelbonney and myself) did a few drains which was easy to say the least but it was a drain virgin meet!

the first drain was a river tunnel thing which was quite roomy and none smelly! :)





only really got one photo from the second and it was where the drain met up with a sewer overflow! that's sheep2405 in the pic coming in for a rest!

as i said it soon turned from the drain meet to the what else can we do meet, we could see a mill near to where we all dined and managed to get access in a way which i think must be new to the world of urban exploration! on shear comedy values that is! dont know the mill new sorry!

we managed to gain access to the tower to my delight as i was something to see and also got on to the roof as you can see the door open in the pic below!

lift shaft cables and motor

it then had another turn and went on to Radcliffe school not to far from the mill itself, it was a little creepy walking through an abandoned school as i remember them being place full of people and it was my first abandoned school! found this on the way to asda for mendo's fags!

playing in the gym, found the ropes all still set out and some of us decided to have a swig on them for old times sake!!

overall it was a great day out cracking a few new sites in the not so far off area to myself along with meeting a load of new people which I'm hoping on been able to meet up with again soon!