Tag: Privately Owned

By Joe Mander

Castle View School

Share your memories with us by commenting at the end of the article! Now lying derelict with overgrown grass, collapsed ceilings and smashed windows, this building once held over a thousand students and staff. With the building getting older year on year and student numbers on the up, the school packed up its bags in…

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By Joe Mander

Bowaters Farm HAA Battery

TN13, or Bowaters Farm Anti-Aircraft Battery, was built at the outbreak of the Second World War. Whilst many HAA sites have been demolished, we were given permission by the farm owner to have an explore around these 70 year-old remains. Built in 1939, the defence was armed with four 3.7-inch guns and later upgraded to…

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By Liam Heatherson

Bromley-by-Bow Gasometers

Those of you who travel past West Ham station on the C2C train line will be familiar with the sight of Bromley-by-Bow gas containers. Upon closer inspection, you will see that these ugly industrial monstrosities are in fact works of art from the bygone era of the Industrial Revolution. The first industry known to be…

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By Joe Mander

‘A12’ ROC Post

Situated close to the A12, this immaculately preserved ROC Post hasn’t been touched for years and is pretty much a time capsule. Built in the June of 1959, a month before the one at Hatfield Peverel, the site holds many relics that would have been in the bunker when it was first opened including old bedding,…

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By Liam Heatherson

Billionaires’ Row

At Hampstead Heath in North London lies Kenwood House. Constructed across the 17th and 18th centuries, the house now stands as a symbol of traditional British elite culture. However, only across the road lies the enormous manors built by a new elite class, decaying in a state of neglect. Nicknamed Billionaires Row, this busy road…

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By Liam Heatherson

Halstow Decoy Pond

Close to High Halstow on the vast historic marshes on the Kent side of the Thames Estuary lies a peculiar diamond-shaped pool of clear man-made origin. This is a duck shooting decoy pond constructed around the late 17th Century with signs of alteration over the following 200 years. The four channels called ‘pipes’ at either…

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By Liam Heatherson

WW1 Airship Shed

At Moat Farm on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent overlooking the Thames lies an unsuspecting grain store of unusual sloped shape. Believe it or not, this is the roof of an airship (zeppelin) shed dating to the Great War, originally situated at Kingsnorth. The fact this is only the top section; already huge, suggests the…

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By Joe Mander

Warley Asylum

Warley Hospital was the first County Asylum to be built in Essex, following the passing of the County Asylums Act. The first patients were first admitted in 1853; 130 out of a capacity of 300 although by the turn of the century the site had expanded and accommodated just short of 2,000 patients. Psychiatric Hospitals…

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By Joe Mander

Howbury Moated Site

Moated sites are as the name suggests – wide ditches full of water that would have surrounded an island which would have had a domestic or religious building on it. They were mostly built during the medieval period around central and eastern England, often to show wealth and status in the countryside. The Howbury moated site…

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