British Sugar, Ipswich - 20\9\06

[Speed]

Wow is all i can say! this place is fantastic.

After my solo visit last month i returned to the BSC with Dab. We started off with a walk around the outside looking for somewhere to get in and generally taking in the immense scale of the place! - no security on a sunday!:rolleyes:

After an hour or so of checking out outbuildings, substations and huge tanks we found a way into a loading bay of some description, it was bit strange as it was about 3 times as tall as any lorry but it did have a little lab/office thing attached which contained some interesting stuff.

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The loading bay

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Sink in a lab/office

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Full of sugar samples!

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Substation we saw about 10 of these, some were still humming!

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Tanks once contained some very nasty chemicals!

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Filler

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We spotted several of these lookout towers, seemed like they would be more at home on a pow camp

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Chair hiding

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Silo!

The loading bay was a good start but we still needed to find a way into one of the large buildings. I must say they have made a petty good job of keeping people out (and in!) Persistence paid off however and we entered one of the larger buildings next to the chimney, it was used for producing animal feed. (Looks like it was used as a dumping ground too)

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No getting in this door!

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Chairs!

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Lack of roof in places causes this!

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Turbo vac

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Chairs again

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Large hopper thing, hanging rack suggests kids have been having a bit of fun in this area.

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We left our mark several times thought the day but the only graffiti I saw was from the ex workers.

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Conveyors, bigger than they look

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Windowed room along one side

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They weren’t thin!

[Speed]

After a While of poking about through the junk and climbing all the various ladders we moved on to the next building. Access was simpler this time but it did involve me nearly slitting my wrists on a broken window. It was proper dark in some of this building so my pics are a bit shite needless to say it was absolutely mental, floor upon floor of metal mesh gantry, giant ovens and hoppers and the view from the roof was magnificent!

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A don’t look down kind of building!

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The bottom of 2 large hoppers, at least 5 storeys high

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View from the very top of the hopper things

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They look so small from up here!

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Cracking view of Ipswich

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Were we being watched! I doubt it :D

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Thing!

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Progressing on from the roof and hoppers we came across this, Pics don’t show the true scale, it’s about 4 storeys high!

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panoramic

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Lead to some external gantries next to the chimney

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View from the gantries

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Looks like this section was coal fired

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Its those tanks again!

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Also in this area we found an awesome little group of rooms protected by this halon extinguisher system. I think they contained some computers or some thing but they were locked down tight and super well preserved, there was a room layed out like a board room, big long table with comfy chairs. It looked like as if the factory closed yesterday!

After exploring some areas that appeared to be being use by a demolition crew fairly recently, (lockers full of brand new equipment and loads of tools) We got spooked by strange noises (the wind :P) a few times so moved on, that area seemed very strange to me, its as if the demo crew just upped an left leaving all their stuff behind! It was pitch black so no photos im afrade

We carried on into a smaller area of workshops, looked like a tool room or something containing a few out of date bits of machinery

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Entry stupidly easy, im not sure how they thought that would stop you opening the door

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Poster

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List of names on the wall??

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Obsolete

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Bit harsh on Tim tbh!

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Old skool Notice

[Speed]

By this time we had been there for about 5 hours and had only seen about 25%! We took a walk around to the front of the site. Sadly couldn’t find a way into the silos but Dab found a door hidden inside a substation that took us into the actual sugar production area. It’s like a labyrinth in there, after climbing a ladder about 5 storeys high we were able to make our way through one floor the sugar production area and loads of offices. We stayed away from the more modern front of the factory as the power was still on, instead we checked out the engineering stores and social club (which strangely consisted of about 4 offices and shower??)


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Front of the factory, lights were on but no one at home

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Medical centre front

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Medical centre rear entrance!

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Door to nothing

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The door to nothingness from the inside

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no caption necessary

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Automatic doors took you trough into a large foyer, on one side was a room containing display samples of silverspoon products (BSC sister company) best before 1999 on most things

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Light at the end of the tunnel, with spikes!

Boy that was a long report! Hopefully Dabs pics will fill in some of the gaps