T H E D E R E L I C T M I S C E L L A N Y

R e f l e c t i o n s o n f o r g o t t e n a n d a b a n d o n e d s p a c e s

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Type Index

By Name : By County
Smaller sites are listed in the alphabetical index

Comms. : Defence : Domest. : Gardens : Hosp'ls : Indust. : Relig. : Research & Edu.

A wide variety of building types become redundant over time with the changing needs of society. Over the last century changes in technology, economy, war and society have left scores of redundant buildings in their wake. Most are swiftly replaced by new structures that better meet our needs, but many remain because they are too remote, too costly or too valuable to remove. Please be aware that because some sites have been used for multiple purposes, they will appear in more than one category.

Communications

Tatsfield Receiving Station
Derelict BBC Technical station which monitored domestic and foreign broadcasts - the first place in Britain to recieve signals from the Russian satellite Sputnik I.

Defence

Arun Stop Line
WWII defences surrounding the nodal point of Horsham - pillboxes, obstacles, gun emplacements designed to hinder invasion.

Chichester RAF Distribution Depot
Defended fuel depot built to serve fighter airfields on the South Coast during the Second World War.

Coulsdon Deep Air Raid Shelter
A WWII public air raid shelter which later found use in making lenses for telescopes and television cameras.

Deepdene: Southern Railway Control Room
Undergound tunnels housing the wartime control room and telephone exchange of one of the 'Big Four' railway companies.

Dunley Hill Camp
A WWII Canadian Artillery camp hidden in the woods of Ranmore Common near Dorking.

RAF Dunsfold
Class 'A' Bomber airfield built in 1942 for the Royal Canadian Air Force, later used for aircraft testing and development.

Fraser Gunnery Range
Disused Naval gunnery school, missile range and Admiralty RADAR Research Establishment.

Park Aviation Supply Co
A breaker's yard full of decaying warplanes hidden deep in the Sussex countryside

Purdown: Bristol No. 6 H.A.A. Battery
Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery built during WWII to defend the city from air raids.

Worms Heath Igloo 2 H.A.A. Battery
Anti-aircraft gun site built during the Cold War as part of a short-lived and little-known artillery-based defence against Russian bombers.

Domestic

Beedingwood
A remarkable gothic fantasy of a house built in 1876; During WWII it became part of a pioneering rehabilitation hospital.

Hollywood Lodge
Georgian gentleman's residence latterly used as a psychiatric hospital annexe.

Oaklands Park House
Tumbledown Victorian mansion hidden in the Surrey Countryside.

Steep Park
Rambling Victorian mansion, formerly home to a wealthy artisan and his wife, which fell into ruin after their deaths at the turn of the 21st century.

Tangley Place
Victorian mansion used by the Ministry of Agriculture as a field station for animal testing.

Gardens

Lost Gardens
A brief history of the rise and decline of the country house garden.

Hospitals

Barrow Hospital
The Second Bristol City Mental Hospital, opened in the 1930s to be a progressive centre for treating diseases of the mind.

Beedingwood
A remarkable gothic fantasy of a house built in 1876. During WWII it became part of a pioneering rehabilitation hospital.

Hollywood Lodge
Georgian gentleman's residence used as a psychiatric hospital annexe until 2003.

Horton Hospital Chapel
A psychiatric hospital chapel opened in 1902. The hospital played an important role in the development of music therapy, forensic psychiatry, and attempts to treat and rehabilitate pathological sex-offenders.

Lingfield Farm Colony
Sprawling hospital-school established in the 19th Century as a mission of mercy to London's poor, which later became a pioneering centre for the treatment and care of epilepsy in children.

Mid Wales Hospital
Large turn-of-the-century psychiatric institution hidden amongst the Brecon Beacons, slowly rotting from the top down after conversion plans fell through in 2008.

Milford Hospital
A former tuberculosis sanatorium built by Surrey County Council in the late 1920s.

St Francis's Hospital (cemetery and isolation wards)
Exploring around the edges of a large Victorian psychiatric hospital; abandoned wards and a forgotten burial place.

West Park Hospital
The last of a cluster of mental hospitals to be built by the London County Council on the Horton Estate near Epsom, a rambling maze of wards and corridors.

Industrial

Abingworth Nurseries
A long-disused mushroom farm hiding an unexpected potpourri manufacturing outfit. A victim of cheap imports and changing tastes.

Baynards Works
80-acre site comprising the remains of chemical works, battery manufacturing and brickmaking over more than a century. One of Surrey's most toxic and contaminated sites.

Buckland Sand & Silica
Washing and processing works which provided fine sands for the glass and ceramics industries.

Clock House Brickworks
Large soft-mud process brickworks established in the 1930s as a factory for ceramic blocks. In 1945 it was acquired by London Brick who switched production to multi-stock bricks.

Cocking Limeworks
Quarry, plant and kilns supplying lime and powdered chalk to the local brick industry.

Crychydd Woollen Mill
A small but industrious mid-Victorian woollen mill which ran one of the first public electricity schemes in Wales.

Esgair-Mwyn Lead and Zinc Mines
This small lead and zinc concern stopped underground mining in the 1920s, but the tips were worked until 1994, making it Wales' last lead mining operation.

Ewhurst Brick Works
Remains of a small factory producing stock bricks of Weald Clay until its closure in the 1980s.

Forton Graveyard of Ships
The remains of small a shipbreaking business comprising dozens of derelict vessels; minesweepers, trawlers, gunboats, landing craft and more.

Laporte Earths
A hellish maze of conveyors, silos, calciners, mills and pipes used to produce granular fuller's earth for the chemical, woollen and pet-litter industries.

Nutbourne Brickworks
A substantial 1930s brickworks comprising dryers, moulding sheds, milling plant, a smithy, canteen and the remains of a narrow gauge railway system.

Pont Llanio Milk Factory
A factory and distribution depot set up by the Milk Marketing Board in 1937 to process milk from local farms. Closed in 1970, it has stood empty for nearly half a century.

Sharpenhurst Reservoir
A small Edwardian reservoir supplying a local public school.

Swallow's Tiles Ltd.
A well-preserved small-scale Victorian factory which produced handmade tiles until 2008.

West Hoathly Brickworks
A small brickworks founded in the 19th century, one of the last in England to use the clamp firing method.

Weyburn Engineering Works
A large rural factory established in 1913 which made precision components for cars, trucks, aeroplanes and even tanks for over 90 years.

Willington Cooling Towers
Five massive hyperboloid cooling towers; the last remnant of two enormous coal-fired power stations which together could produce 125 MW of electricity.

Wonham Mill
An eighteenth century flour mill and miller's house, much extended in 1914.

Religious

Bedham Mission Church
A tiny abandoned church, also doubling as a schoolroom, hidden in the backwoods of the Sussex Weald.

Capel Blaencaron
A disused Calvinistic Methodist Chapel on a bleak mountain road in the Welsh highlands above Tregaron, opened in 1875 and closed c.2000.

The Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
A Victorian convent, home to a community of Carmelite nuns until 1994.

Kingswood Wesleyan Chapel
A large Victorian chapel in the suburbs of Bristol. Now little more than a burnt out shell.

Church of St. Matthew, Goginan
A small church established as a mission of Llanbadarn Fawr in 1871 and closed at an unknown date within the last 15 years.

St. Michael's Church, Llanfihangel Penbedw
A small parish church with mediæval origins, much altered in Victorian times and then abandoned in the 1970s.

St Michael's Orphanage Chapel
A redbrick gothic chapel designed by Edward Pugin, St Michael's later served as a Catholic Seminary, a school of Ballet and an Islamic school.

Capel Troedyrhiw
Large Welsh Independent chapel furnished with carved woodwork, stained glass and cast iron, abandoned as congregations and fortunes declined in the early 21^st century.

Welsh Martyrs' Church
A striking modernist church plagued by problems with the flat roof caused by the damp Welsh weather which forced it to close in 2008.

Whitefield's Tabernacle
An historic nonconformist church established by Methodist pioneers George Whitefield and John Cennick in 1741.

Research & Education

Atmospheric Station 'F'
Small research station built in the 1950s to monitor meteorological phenomena and test scientific instruments for a local university.

Lingfield Farm Colony
A sprawling hospital-school established in the 19th Century as a mission of mercy to London's poor, which later became a pioneering centre for the treatment and care of epilepsy in children.

St Michael's Orphanage Chapel
A redbrick gothic chapel designed by Edward Pugin, St Michael's later served as a Catholic Seminary, a school of Ballet and an Islamic school.

Tangley Place
A Victorian mansion used by the Ministry of Agriculture as a field station for animal testing.