Shadow Dragon

The Fertiliser Plant

March 2024 | England | Demolition Ongoing

History:

I can’t honestly find that much on the history of the site, except that it began producing fertiliser for agriculture and other chemicals in 1965. Ammonia, potash, carbon dioxide and phosphate were all produced on site and blended with nitrogen to create NPK (nitrogen, phosphate and potassium) fertilisers. I must admit, I don’t know much about the process whatsoever! This plant produced ammonium as a base product which was for sale in that form or it was combined with other products to make NPK fertiliers or ammonium nitrate for agriculture. This plant had an ammonium nitrate production capacity of 575,000 tonnes a year, and a production capacity of 415,000 tonnes a year for NPK fertilisers.

However, this plant has a huge amount of machinery still on site. There is a soda ash plant, conveyor and bunker storage bays, chemical tanks, loads of pipes and ducts, an on site power station, induced draught cooling towers… the list goes on.

The site finally closed not too long ago and has sat derelict ever since. Some demolition work is happening at various parts of the plant.

The Explore:

This was very much one of the biggest places I have ever explored in my life, I can safely say, second only to the Blast Furnaces and Steel Works at Florange in France. The sheer amount of machinery and equipment on site was spectacular! I met up with three very good friends of mine a few hours before the explore and we all had some time to relax and get some food before we made the trek. As this plant is in the middle of nowhere, parking was a pain as we had to walk about a mile and a half before getting near to the access point. After scoping it out waiting for security to do his round, we made our way in – speaking of the round, security was speeding around at breakneck speed around the place in his Toyota Hilux which made me think we’d been clocked before we even got onto the site itself.

After his round, we all got into the perimeter easily enough and made a break for cover towards a building. And once we got there it became evident that the place has hotted up with security – a dog van was parked just around the corner from us and loads of new cameras had been installed on sneaky positions. However, after some careful scoping we made a break for it across a wide open, lit up no mans’ land and got up quite high on a building. We waited a few minutes to see if we’d been spotted on any of the cameras and after seeing no sign of the Hilux coming for us, we went inside and began our explore.

We were on the site for about ten hours easily, exploring a multitude of buildings. It was difficult because many of the buildings have enormous windows so light painting had to be done very carefully indeed. At one point after photographing the conveyors, I heard security doing a round and stuck my head out of a door on the side of a building and saw the car heading straight for our direction whilst one of my colleagues was light painting. Luckily we weren’t spotted but still, close one!

Before exploring the site, I’d eyeballed the enormous silo-chimney structure that sits in the middle of the plant. And it was something I wanted to climb, big time. After we’d made our way towards it, I went ahead and scoped it out. Finding the access to it to be easy, I called the others and we began climbing. In the chimney itself there is a hand painted sign on the wall that states “135 meters” so I can only assume that’s how tall the thing was. And it felt like it! It took about twenty minutes to climb and by the top I was thoroughly puffed but extremely glad to have conquered yet another chimney! The views from the top were utterly spectacular, they really were. The land was quite flat around so it made for some brilliant photo opportunities. I was glad I’d packed my 50-100mm lens for this! We began snapping away, every now and then spotting security driving around in his Hilux. He must have been bored because he began doing circuits of the parking area near his hut. Then again, if you’re a security guard there is an awful lot of sitting around doing nothing all night.

After finishing up our shots of the chimney, we made our way back down to move to another building. This next building turned out to be the plant’s on-site power station. Three delicious turbines sat there waiting for us. Two were Brown-Boveri from the 1960s and one was a Sulzer turbine from the 1930s. It was pretty spectacular in all honesty. There was a very nice control room too, but unfortunately most of the panels where the dials would have been were now blanked off which was a crying shame but oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

After this, we made our way outside to photograph a chimney – my photos of this came out blurred which infuriated me. On the way back in, I smacked my head really hard on a piece of metal that was jutting off from a frame. Seeing stars and feeling quite dizzy, I had to sit down for a few minutes. After I recovered enough to move on, we made our way to a set of induced draught cooling towers and climbed them to get an overview of the site. Just before climbing them, we saw the dog van taking off towards the main entrance and thought nothing of it given it was about 5 o’clock in the morning. Must have been time for him to clear off. I took my pics and packed up and sat down, still feeling dazed and not quite with it from my head bump. I heard my friend say “oh look, secca’s driving around again” so I got up and peered over the edge. And what I saw made my daze vanish – it wasn’t security driving around, it was police cars, and a lot of them!

Ten in total, in fact. And a couple of them were dog units. And one was armed police too. Fuck. We’d been rumbled. We crouched down low, keeping an eye on things. We heard alarms going off down below us from the police setting off sensors. They were getting close to where we were. After a while, we shifted positions and kept an eye out. Another police car turned up and this time they went into the boot, getting something out. We thought it was a drone so one of us wrenched up a removable hatch from the floor and we all piled in as quickly as we could… but before one of us could shut the hatch again, a police officer and his dog came too close for comfort. At first he just shone his torch down the hatch and moved on but then he came back again… and shouted “lads if you’re down there, come out now, I have a dog”. So we gave ourselves in, properly cornered… ah well. At first the police were very shouty and aggressive, telling us to put our hands in the air before cuffing us and taking us to the cars. After he calmed down, the officer who had me was very nice and quite chatty, introducing himself by first name. He took my cuffs off within a few minutes and we had a good chat. My other friends though weren’t as lucky – we were all arrested and the others were taken to the station with their cuffs still on. I was quite lucky mine were taken off, first time in cuffs and I’d much rather not have them on again, they bloody hurt! We were arrested for “conspiracy to commit burglary” but at the station, the desk sergeant was having none of it and refused to have us put in the cells so we just sat in a waiting room for an hour or two. The night shift officers went home and then the day shift lot came on. I had a good chat with them too and shared a few urbex stories (they were quite interested in it) before we were told we were free to go and that they’d give us a lift back to our car which they did. We were given a lift in a big riot van which quite honestly was bloody awesome! Despite being collared by the police, the day ended brilliantly. Enjoy the photos!

Exteriors: