Report - Burmah Castrol, Stanlow - October 2017

[raisinwing]

Visited with @Humpa

One from over a year ago, for some reason I'd never gotten around to editing my photos from here but I rediscovered them the other week. It was an enjoyable visit and I think we covered most of the place, plenty of stuff to see and not very trashed considering the length of time it seems to have been derelict. I guess that it's location within the enormous Stanlow Oil Refinery helped a lot to deter unwanted visitors.

Information online about this particular facility appears to be quite limited, it'd be interesting to know when it actually shut etc, seems to be quite some years ago considering the age of the equipment inside. Here's a bit of a brief time line of the company though:

1967 The name Burmah-Castrol was introduced for industrial products of the Burmah Oil Co
1987 Acquired Simoniz
1990 Burmah Oil Co was renamed Burmah-Castrol
1991 Acquired Foseco Minsep
1992 Sold off most of the building products group acquired from Foseco except Celmac
1997 Sold its car care division, Simoniz of Newquay, to Holt Lloyd
2000 Burmah-Castrol was acquired by BP Amoco.

A few photos from the office block roof showing the surrounding refinery

A nice big Burmah sign, sadly too big to walk out of the place

Canteen Building

Laboratory/Library Building

Plant Building

Main Office Building (I hope you like photos of wires!)

​

Thanks for looking.

 

[little_ boy_explores]

nice thread... great pics

 

[Terminal Decline]

some really nice decay there, love the wires

 

[mookster]

Wish I'd gotten around to this place. Great photos of it, kicking myself I didn't get the chance!

 

[Camera Shy]

Nice photos, was a good wander this one. Was funny how it went to the point of police dogs and helicopter response within a few weeks.

 

[raisinwing]

Nice photos, was a good wander this one. Was funny how it went to the point of police dogs and helicopter response within a few weeks.

Yeah I'd heard about that, I presume that people weren't being very clever about things?

 

[Speed]

Silly question maybe but did people drive to it or just walk in?

 

[Ojay]

Silly question maybe but did people drive to it or just walk in?

People parked outside the gate where security patrol and wondered why the response

 

[raisinwing]

Silly question maybe but did people drive to it or just walk in?

We parked about a mile or so away on the industrial estate and then walked in through the woods etc. I imagine some weren't very discrete, probably not wise to walk along the access roads that take you next to live parts.

 

[albino-jay]

Nice one fella. Really enjoyed it here. Good levels of decay plenty to see, really relaxed. That incinerator is so bloody cool!

What @Ojay said about people driving upto the main gate fannying about.

Good while it lasted.

 

[raisinwing]

That incinerator is so bloody cool!

Aye, from the late 40's/early 50's. They pop up on ebay every now and then, and usually fetch a fair few quid.

 

[dustbreeding]

Great pics

love all the wires photos, what is it though? A telephone exchange or something?

 

[Speed]

That was my thoughts too. This one pissed me off a bit as i had my eye on it for ages and had just never quite hooked it up. Then it found it's way online and was burnt within a week or two. Wish I'd have known how good it was from day one, would have made more of an effort.

 

[urbanchemist]

Arguably, this should have been put in NP for a while, like a certain factory not far away - but I didn't know there was such a thing as NP when I did it.

 

[Speed]

Yeh, not your fault. Just the way it is nowadays.