Introduction
The previous challenges of climbing and high security made it seem unlikely for me to ever see Fletcher’s. Fortunately, towards the end of last year, there was a period where security appeared to ease up a bit. Me and @JakeV50 decided to take advantage of this and finally give it a go. Thanks to Mikey for a few tips.
I am so glad we got to see this as the rest of our trip was fairly unsuccessful. We must’ve pinned 20+ pump houses and other bits and pieces around Manchester, Stoke and Lincolnshire to look at across three days, and the only success we had was two pump houses and Fletchers…
Information & History
The history has been posted a billion times, so I won’t go too mad with it. The History of Fletchers dates back to the industrial revolution where the company was first owned by the Cromptons. The first site was situated in Stoneclough. The Cromptons later died and ownership was transferred to Robert Fletcher who managed the mill at the time. Fletcher died in 1885 and the company was then passed through the family.
The Greenfield site opened in 1921 and specialised in the production of cigarette paper. During the site's peak, Fletchers employed around 1000 people. In the eighties, it was found that the company was operating at a loss and was bought out by Melton Medes Conglomerate. Fletchers was profitable for a period until it started failing once again, in 2001. The Stoneclough and Greenfield mills then closed with the Stoneclough one being demolished.
The Explore
After parking up we started walking down a track which led to a footpath to the back of the site. We both forgot to put our wellies on and contemplated going to back to the car to change shoes but we decided to wing it. Bad idea. We quickly realised that the footpath we had to walk up had turned into a stream of water, we tried to avoid getting wet feet by stepping on rocks etc but gave up and just got soaked.
Thinking the worst part was over, we then went along a field which was quite literally just soggy mud. I fell over almost immediately and the funny thing is because we just wanted to get onto the site as quickly as possible none of us even said anything and I just got up and carried on…but it suddenly became hilarious once we got onto the site. You can see the remnants of all the barbed wire and various fencing that used to be put up to deter explorers. I couldn’t believe how easy it was now compared to what I heard a couple of years ago.
Once inside we spent around four hours on the site, which to be honest was less than I expected, as a couple of you know I tend to spend far too long faffing about with the camera in these places. A few interesting things occurred while on site. When in the boiler house I heard some people shouting outside and it sounded like some explorers were getting caught. We also got told that a couple of people got caught walking along the field on the same day so they didn’t even manage to get onto the site. I guess we got really lucky as this was the point security had started to clock on to the recent wave of people visiting the site following the demolition of one part of it. We also saw a woman in the office corridors who quickly hid away once we saw her, may have just been another explorer but seemed a bit strange. Maybe she thought we were security - I was waving my torch around in a dark bit to be fair.
We did also try to get into the waterworks section of the site but to no avail, and we also didn’t manage to get into the workshops section, but we did the main parts including the boiler house which was the part I was most looking forward to.
Photos
Photos are in the order of the explore.
We started off in a small plant room containing a large extraction unit overlooking the finishing room, then quickly moving to a canteen/break area nearby:
There was a blue room near here containing various pipes and electric motors. It had some lovely decay:
We headed towards the Basher Hall which is easily one of the most photographed and known parts of the site. Just before this, there was a lovely locker room with a desk, this was one of my favourite rooms of the whole site:
Moving into the Basher Hall:
Next door to this is the rolling mill where the paper was rolled into sheets using a water & steam mix:
Moving back to the Basher Hall area, I descended down some steps which revealed lots of underground machines, pumps and motors. There were a few of these large air compressors:
It was pretty dark and grim down there, so I didn’t spend too long in this part.
There were a couple of large empty rooms we came across before reaching the top of the mill where the pulp was processed.
Pulping areas:
A look out of the window, unfortunately, this is probably the best external I got. We didn’t spend much time outside to avoid attracting attention:
CONTINUED…
The previous challenges of climbing and high security made it seem unlikely for me to ever see Fletcher’s. Fortunately, towards the end of last year, there was a period where security appeared to ease up a bit. Me and @JakeV50 decided to take advantage of this and finally give it a go. Thanks to Mikey for a few tips.
I am so glad we got to see this as the rest of our trip was fairly unsuccessful. We must’ve pinned 20+ pump houses and other bits and pieces around Manchester, Stoke and Lincolnshire to look at across three days, and the only success we had was two pump houses and Fletchers…
Information & History
The history has been posted a billion times, so I won’t go too mad with it. The History of Fletchers dates back to the industrial revolution where the company was first owned by the Cromptons. The first site was situated in Stoneclough. The Cromptons later died and ownership was transferred to Robert Fletcher who managed the mill at the time. Fletcher died in 1885 and the company was then passed through the family.
The Greenfield site opened in 1921 and specialised in the production of cigarette paper. During the site's peak, Fletchers employed around 1000 people. In the eighties, it was found that the company was operating at a loss and was bought out by Melton Medes Conglomerate. Fletchers was profitable for a period until it started failing once again, in 2001. The Stoneclough and Greenfield mills then closed with the Stoneclough one being demolished.
The Explore
After parking up we started walking down a track which led to a footpath to the back of the site. We both forgot to put our wellies on and contemplated going to back to the car to change shoes but we decided to wing it. Bad idea. We quickly realised that the footpath we had to walk up had turned into a stream of water, we tried to avoid getting wet feet by stepping on rocks etc but gave up and just got soaked.
Thinking the worst part was over, we then went along a field which was quite literally just soggy mud. I fell over almost immediately and the funny thing is because we just wanted to get onto the site as quickly as possible none of us even said anything and I just got up and carried on…but it suddenly became hilarious once we got onto the site. You can see the remnants of all the barbed wire and various fencing that used to be put up to deter explorers. I couldn’t believe how easy it was now compared to what I heard a couple of years ago.
Once inside we spent around four hours on the site, which to be honest was less than I expected, as a couple of you know I tend to spend far too long faffing about with the camera in these places. A few interesting things occurred while on site. When in the boiler house I heard some people shouting outside and it sounded like some explorers were getting caught. We also got told that a couple of people got caught walking along the field on the same day so they didn’t even manage to get onto the site. I guess we got really lucky as this was the point security had started to clock on to the recent wave of people visiting the site following the demolition of one part of it. We also saw a woman in the office corridors who quickly hid away once we saw her, may have just been another explorer but seemed a bit strange. Maybe she thought we were security - I was waving my torch around in a dark bit to be fair.
We did also try to get into the waterworks section of the site but to no avail, and we also didn’t manage to get into the workshops section, but we did the main parts including the boiler house which was the part I was most looking forward to.
Photos
Photos are in the order of the explore.
We started off in a small plant room containing a large extraction unit overlooking the finishing room, then quickly moving to a canteen/break area nearby:
There was a blue room near here containing various pipes and electric motors. It had some lovely decay:
We headed towards the Basher Hall which is easily one of the most photographed and known parts of the site. Just before this, there was a lovely locker room with a desk, this was one of my favourite rooms of the whole site:
Moving into the Basher Hall:
Next door to this is the rolling mill where the paper was rolled into sheets using a water & steam mix:
Moving back to the Basher Hall area, I descended down some steps which revealed lots of underground machines, pumps and motors. There were a few of these large air compressors:
It was pretty dark and grim down there, so I didn’t spend too long in this part.
There were a couple of large empty rooms we came across before reaching the top of the mill where the pulp was processed.
Pulping areas:
A look out of the window, unfortunately, this is probably the best external I got. We didn’t spend much time outside to avoid attracting attention:
CONTINUED…
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