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Report - - Fuller's Earthworks, Redhill - February 2016 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Fuller's Earthworks, Redhill - February 2016

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bart_shrimpo

28DL Member
28DL Member
Yesterday, me and a few friends went to visit Fullers Earthworks, as this was my first outing and this is also the forum that I found the Earthworks on I thought this would be a good first post.

Some Copy+Pasted History:
A greyish, mineral-rich clay, fuller's earth is well-known for its absorbent qualities and has many uses ranging from powder cosmetics to 'mud' used for drilling oil wells. Its best known use however is as cat litter, of which millions of bags are sold every year. Most of this is now imported from the Americas but until recently, fuller's earth was quarried from the Lower Greensand strata at Woburn (Beds.), at Baulking (Oxon.) and at Redhill (Surrey). On the Redhill deposit, the most successful quarry operating at the turn of the century was the Copyhold Works of the Fuller's Earth Union Ltd, established c.1860-70. Initially supplying the woollen trade, demand later shifted to the growing chemical and commodity sector with customers in the 1920s-40s including the Southern Oil Company Ltd, British Glues and Chemicals Ltd and Price's Patent Candle Co.

In 1954 the works, by now employing 780 men, were bought by chemical company Laporte Industries. Production was stepped up to meet increasing demand and a large factory consisting of kilns, granulators, blungers, silos and transit systems on several floors was built. A large quarry existed to the east and in the 1970s this strange landscape stood in for various alien worlds in the BBC's Doctor Who series. In the 1980s, the Copyhold site was sending loose earths and packaged cat litter around the world. By 1995, however, due to falling profits it was announced that the company would close 10% of its 100 plants. Copyhold fell victim the following year and the Laporte Group was broken up with the majority share sold to an American private equity firm trading as Rockwood Holdings Inc. After the production lines were switched off, the 119 acre pit was purchased for use as a landfill site by Biffa Waste Services and continues to take waste from across Surrey. The factory was for a while used as a waste transfer station but this too was abandoned at some time in the last four years and the site is now derelict.


Our Experiance:

The first thing I'd like to say about our experiance is that it went completely un-interupted, and in fact there was no security there at all. One of my friends @LoganMcrae had been there before and said there was normally a spot where the van would be parked with the security in it, but today it was nowhere to be seen (but there were fresh tracks). So we got there about 2:30-3:00, we were really lucky to have one of the sunniest days in winter for a long time. Instead of going in the front, because there were some new fences put up, we instead went around the side until we got to the back and then hopped over a small part of the fence that was broken. Not really much to say to be honest, we just walked around, took some pictures and had a great time!

Quick side story, we were looking around a certain area for about 5-10 minutes, before I noticed that we were standing next to a noose the entire time. This understandably creeped us out and made us think about going then and there, but after calming down and a quick analysis we came to the assumption that is was just some kids leaving it there as a prank, the weird thing was that it was tied up so high, but we forgot about it quite quickly and never tried to get up there

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The Pictures:

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I would highly recommend exploring this place if you can, it's easy to get into and it is amazing to look at and walk through.

Thanks for reading!
 

elliot5200

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Nice first post! All that machinery and steelwork makes a good little adventure playground. Bumped into some parkour kids last time we were there.
That noose thing is a bit dodgy though, maybe it's a swing :rolleyes:
 

Dora Grew Up

Banned
Banned
Other than the flooring becoming dodgier and dodgier as you go up, this place is a lot of fun! Great report and great pics.
 

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