Lack O' Steel - Sept 2016

mookster · Oct 4, 2016

This was the final location visited during an awesome day of exploring heavy industry, and what a place.

The steelworks here was once one of the largest in the world, employing around 20,000 workers in it's prime. It's closure in 1982 arguably kickstarted the declining fortunes of the local area, and the city was desperately close to becoming a smaller Detroit but it has recently started picking itself up and has had a major amount of money invested in businesses to revive it's fortunes.

Around 95% of the plant was demolished in stages during the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2013 the beautiful administration office building was controversially demolished much to the dismay of preservationists and campaigners. Although the vast majority of the site has been levelled, there are still a number of buildings left standing which have been decaying for the past 34 years which are each massive, and give some idea of the sheer scale of the facility when it was operational.

The three buildings we explored were each different - one was used to crush coal being delivered by train, the second was the old power station building (yes!!) and the last I am not sure on as it was totally empty but it had some epic pipework coming out the back of it. There were more to explore but we ran out of daylight and all the others were a serious trek away across the wasteground. To give you some idea of the scale, after entering the site the closest buildings were a fifteen minute walk through an overgrown jungle that used to be covered with countless buildings but are all now flattened.

The coal breaker building also was home to some of the sketchiest metal grate floors I've ever seen, coupled with instant death drops if one gave way, it made for a bit of a nervy explore at times wondering in my mind whether or not the next grate would hold!