Report - Arkinstall Galvanizing, Digbeth Birmingham July 2014

[dweeb]

Chance find whilst walking from one backstreet boozer to another. It seems a couple of gents have set up homestead in here...

The building was the ancestral home of Arkinstall, who according to my Kelly's directory galvanised buckets and dustbins. The firm are still in existence, having moved to an equally run down building further down the road.

The place had a bit of promise, it was big and old. Well it certainly was big, and old... but pretty much empty. Even the vast archive room contained very little of any antiquity. That said it was an interesting building, being one of those places which has been chopped and changed so many times there is not a decade from the 20th C which has not left it's mark somewhere on the fabric of the building. It seems the chemicals used in the galvanising process have a fondness for the fabric of the building too, in some places almost a course of bricks had been eaten away

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[Oxygen Thief]

Yeah there's some nasty chemicals used in galvanising - Sodium Hydroxide and Hydrochloric Acid for starters. I bet these guys smoked so many No.6 that they didn't notice their lungs were being dissolved to mush by the fumes.

Looks ok though in there, quite a large space.

I bet there's hundreds of these places waiting to be found.

 

[Speed]

We even got Turk in there!

 

[Ojay]

Some nice vaulted brick work there

No valves ?

 

[Ojay]

We even got Turk in there!

Disabled access, say no more :

 

[dave]

Great find there the archive room looks interesting though i take it most of the boxes were empty or full of modern stuff.