I've wanted to see this place for ages but as was the case with a number of things I saw on my long weekend away, the distance between it and Oxford was a little prohibitive! I have to say I'm very glad I decided to stop off on the way home from Scotland, it's been ages since I've found myself wandering around an industrial site of this scale, we were fighting a losing battle with the encroaching darkness towards the end of the explore so we missed one, maybe two buildings however I don't think we missed too much of note.
Alcan High Duty Alloys was a works constructed in the 1940s in Lillyhall near Workington. It was an aluminium alloys extrusion company which primarily manufactured parts for aerospace industries (including Concorde) as well as NASA's Space Shuttle program. In it's later years it was known as Alcan Pechiney Aviatube, which closed down in 2007 and has been empty since. All the machinery has been removed from the huge manufacturing warehouses which is unfortunate, however the real gems in this place lie in the former office/laboratory block which underneath the damage from pikeys, fires and idiots looks practically unchanged since the 1940s. If you look past the terrible fire damage in the main entrance area there is some really cool stuff in there as well as some lovely decay, had it been left to decay naturally it would have been an even more awesome building.
As a side note I don't think I've ever seen so much broken glass in one location before, literally every single window has been broken across all the buildings. Some serious effort went into that.
A very enjoyable relaxed massive wander to end a thoroughly awesome trip and one I could see myself returning to if I'm ever in the area again.
Thanks for looking
Alcan High Duty Alloys was a works constructed in the 1940s in Lillyhall near Workington. It was an aluminium alloys extrusion company which primarily manufactured parts for aerospace industries (including Concorde) as well as NASA's Space Shuttle program. In it's later years it was known as Alcan Pechiney Aviatube, which closed down in 2007 and has been empty since. All the machinery has been removed from the huge manufacturing warehouses which is unfortunate, however the real gems in this place lie in the former office/laboratory block which underneath the damage from pikeys, fires and idiots looks practically unchanged since the 1940s. If you look past the terrible fire damage in the main entrance area there is some really cool stuff in there as well as some lovely decay, had it been left to decay naturally it would have been an even more awesome building.
As a side note I don't think I've ever seen so much broken glass in one location before, literally every single window has been broken across all the buildings. Some serious effort went into that.
A very enjoyable relaxed massive wander to end a thoroughly awesome trip and one I could see myself returning to if I'm ever in the area again.
Thanks for looking
