Bleak House

Up on the moors, in between Egerton and Darwen, down a very muddy path can be found the ultimate derelict building. Only two of its walls remain and they are crumbling. I visited twice and both times the weather turned nasty - snow on one occasion and an icy shower the other! I found it in keeping with the bleakness of the surrounding landscape. I have put on here a mixture of the pictures from both visits.

 

Excuse the white blobs on the above pic - one from the snowy day!

 

 

A rare moment of sunshine in  between the showers!

 

 

I can't find out any history behind this building. I am assuming it was a farm house or outbuilding. There is another working farm nearby. Therefore this post will be mainly photos and very little words. I hope that the shots sum up the bleakness of the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More of the snow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main road on the snowy day as we were leaving. I can certainly say that I suffered for my art on this occasion!

 

Random abandoned places

With a combination of terrible weather and a lack of leads on more interesting places, the past month has comprised of a few small mooches. First of all is Belmont Works which is in the process of being demolished in order to construct more show-box type houses. Belmont Holdings Limited was a Private Limited Company registered on 6 December 1939. On the day that I visited, much of the demolition had occurred, with just one remaining shed of a building left. There was also a pond at the back with some interesting machinery which created a pleasing reflection.

 

 

 

 

 

There were warnings of Asbestos but I decided to have a quick nosey inside.

 

 

Not an awful lot to see but worth a quick look round the place.

 

 

Two weeks later this building was demolished and the land is ready for the developers to build on.

 

 

 

Next up is an abandoned mining wagon that I found on a walk on the moors overlooking Bolton. A nice little diversion on an otherwise uneventful walk.

 

 

 

 

 

And lastly, an abandoned WWII Pillbox near Edgworth. It was used by the Home guard to protect access to the reservoirs nearby as well as to keep watch over Horrobin Mill which was used for wartime storage.

 

Not as exciting as exploring an abandoned asylum or synagogue but nice to have a mooch around what's on the doorstep for a change.

Crumbling Churches

Around 20 Church of England churches are closed each year. These churches, whose once devout congregations have dwindled to nothing, leaving the  buildings to start to crumble and rot.

 

 

On a cold, crisp October morning we set out to explore some of these abandoned churches.

First stop was St. Saviour's, consecrated in 1865, built in the Early pointed Gothic style. This very grand, imposing building closed its doors for the final time as a place of worship in 2007.

 

 

                   Sadly, some of the windows are broken. Others are boarded up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly for us, this building has been recently securely locked up and so we were unable to gain access to the interior.

 

 

 

 

We admired this stunning building from the outside, lamenting its demise and got ready to move onto the next location.

 

A short drive and we were at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, a church built in the 1850s, designed by Paley, Austin and Paley.

 

 

This was another impressive building, sadly closed in 2012 due to vandalism so severe that the entire roof was ruined, to the tune of £20,000 worth of damage. An architect estimated that the cost of repairing the whole church to its former glory would come to half a million pounds. Reluctantly, the congregation had to move elsewhere.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, we could not gain access to the inside of the church. Once again, the building had been securely boarded up, quite understandably considering the vandals had caused the place to close.

 

So we headed for our third and final destination of the day.

St. Paul's Church was built in 1846 and closed in 1999.

 

This Grade II listed building was designed in the Early English style with a Gothic tower. In 1997, shortly after its 150th anniversary, the ceiling and roof were found to be unsafe. The repairs required were too extensive and the congregation moved to another building. The final open air service took place in 1999.

 

 

 

The imposing tower appeared to be an easy access point for pigeons and other birds, who kept swooping in and out through a gap at the top.

 

 

The front door is so overgrown it long ago lost its function.

 

 

There were charming gargoyles, covered with a liberal growth of moss.

 

 

The surrounding graveyard had seen better days. Many of the gravestones were broken or had toppled over.

 

 

We found the only way in, which involved a little bit of climbing. Luckily I'm getting rather skilled at shinning up walls! However, the stench of pigeon droppings, of which there was 15 years' worth of, liberally covering the floor, put us off having a thorough explore. Photographs were hastily taken from my makeshift vantage point.

 

 

 

 The place has been truly trashed. There was rubbish all over the place. Pews were smashed up and piled in a heap at one end of the nave. The plaster on the walls was crumbling and filthy.

Every few seconds, pigeons would swoop through the church. There was the constant sound of pigeons cooing. The once human congregation are now all of the feathered variety.

 

 

 

Getting out before I caught something on the same scale as Ebola, we had a mooch around the graveyard.

 

 

 

Sad to see these beautiful buildings left to rot and decay.