The History
GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) is a British pharmaceutical company headquartered in Brentford, London. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, GSK was the world's sixth largest pharmaceutical company as of 2015, after Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, Hoffmann-La Roche and Sanofi. Andrew Witty has been the chief executive officer since 2008. Emma Walmsley became CEO on 31 March 2017 and is the first female CEO of the company.
The company has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. As of August 2016 it had a market capitalisation of £81 billion (around $107 billion), the fourth largest on the London Stock Exchange. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
GSK's drugs and vaccines earned £21.3 billion in 2013. Its top-selling products that year were Advair, Avodart, Flovent, Augmentin, Lovaza and Lamictal. GSK's consumer products, which earned £5.2 billion in 2013, include Sensodyne and Aquafresh toothpaste, the malted-milk drink Horlicks, Abreva for cold sores, Breathe Right nasal strips, Nicoderm and Nicorette nicotine replacements, and Night Nurse, a cold remedy. The company developed the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S, which it said in 2014 it would make available for five percent above cost. Legacy products developed at GSK include several listed in the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines, such as amoxicillin, mercaptopurine, pyrimethamine and zidovudine.
More recently it has been said that the GSK site will become the new home of Public Health England (PHE) and that’s facilities will be moved from Porton Down to Harlow in Essex.
The £350m move will initially see 900 workers relocating from sites such as Porton Down in Wiltshire to the former GlaxoSmithKline labs in Harlow.
Public Health England have said that the move is a "big step forward for UK public health science".
The new facilities, based on the site currently owned by GSK, will create a centre for research, health improvement and protection working on international health threats, such as Ebola.
The Explore
Well I wasn’t expecting this….
I find myself over in Harlow a lot, my oldest friend lives there, a few of my mates from racing days live there blah blah blah
This particular day I’d been out on the lash there the night before and was feeling a little rough, so we ended up having brekkie in a typical Essex greasy spoon. Full of tough guys and travellers, although all in the same boat as me, messy headed and starving hungry lol
My drinking partner from the previous night doesn’t really get exploring and as I’m explaining it to her she notices my attention is drawn to the big green building opposite.
“Oh I’m surprised you haven’t done that” she quips
To which I reply, “I’d love to but it’s not empty”
She replies with music to my ears
“It’s been closed since 2013”
2000 and fucking thirteen!!
What a prick, I drive around this area all the time and never once thought of googling the place
So that was it, a WhatsApp group was formed of the likely suspects and a plan was in the making
So with a drive around the site and the help from good old google maps I had a rough idea what was going on and headed home and waited for the rest.
Then it kinda went wrong
Well it turned out not to be my turn to drive…..
@drzexplorez picks me up and we stop at the shop for some refreshments
We head to Harlow and meet up with @oakley & @slayaaaa, like I said the normal crew
Now we knew getting caught in here could be an issue, GSK are worth billions and at a guess wouldn’t hesitate to prosecute 4 urchins they found on their property. So after a quick debrief regarding what to do if we got busted we decided to go for it.
After finding a way into the huge site we decided to head for the first tall building we could see. The plan was to hit the roof first and see what we could see.
We headed up to the main building and spotted the immense walkway and headed up onto it as it seemed the most logical way in to the buildings and it was…..
Once inside it was pretty impressive, every part of the site was clinically clean and was ear on perfect. We headed upwards and soon found lab upon lab upon office upon meeting room etc.
All areas looking like they had never seen any use.
We made our way to roof of the first building and snapped away at the pretty cool views.
Heading back into the building to head over to the main building we stumbled into a pile of PPE wear and in the name of a comical selfie decided to put it on for a few pictures.
It was at this point it went wrong, very very wrong
Half dressed in the white suites and with our camera gear all set up for selfies, the door next to me swung open and that awful feeling of being busted descended upon us.
I looked at Oakley, he looked at Slayaaaa he looked at DRZ and he looked back at me and we all shat ourselves as in walked a lady in a GSK security uniform. She kinda reminded me of a high school headmistress and I knew at that point we were getting arrested…
The following conversation happened, although I’m slightly paraphrasing
GSK: Hi
Us: Hiya (whilst trying not to snigger)
GSK: Erm, I wasn’t aware we had anyone on site today
Me: Oh sorry ( fuck fuck fuck think fast ) we must have missed you on the way in, we are just finishing off our survey and we will be done
GSK: That’s ok, be careful if you go upstairs though as I have turned a few of the lights off
Us: ok thanks
And as calmly as she walked in on us she turned around and went, not a care in the world
With that we broke out in a huge and very childish giggling fit, fed by nerves and dragon soop.
Now any sensible person would have cut their losses and bailed, but nope our intrepid bunch of idiots decided to take the fact we were now “official” and abuse it to our hearts content.
Boldly we wandered back over the bridge into the taller of the two buildings and helped ourselves to refreshments from the still active tea machine in the reception and display area.
It seemed that this area may still be occasionally used as there are plans for what’s happening to the site up on the walls and an awesome model too.
This building was pretty much the same as the other apart from a huge canteen area and some very nice stairways and architecture.
Again we headed for the roof ad snapped away.
At this point Slayaaaa and Oakley had to make a move leaving me and DRZ to explore a funny building in the corner of the site that didn’t really fit in with the rest of it.
Well this turned out to be the Anti-doping test centre for the 2012 Olympics.
Again like the previous buildings this was mainly full of labs but you could see this lot had been used as it was in a proper mess.
Whilst walking into one of the labs and peering out of the window blinds it became apparent that our cover had been blown as I could now see 3 car loads of people in Hi-Viz waving their arms about and looking pretty frustrated, So we hid up for a bit to see what was occurring.
The second they jumped into their cars and roared off around the site we left as quietly and quickly as we had got in.
However we did go back the next night to do the boiler house and get some night time shots along with @UrbanDuck, @WildBoyz and @mrstewie.
Of a night the place is something else, towering over you like some mad city skyscraper, it’s hard to imagine it’s in the UK, let alone Harlow lol
Enjoy the pics, sorry there are loads but there’s a lot to see here
The externals and some roof shots
GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) is a British pharmaceutical company headquartered in Brentford, London. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, GSK was the world's sixth largest pharmaceutical company as of 2015, after Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, Hoffmann-La Roche and Sanofi. Andrew Witty has been the chief executive officer since 2008. Emma Walmsley became CEO on 31 March 2017 and is the first female CEO of the company.
The company has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. As of August 2016 it had a market capitalisation of £81 billion (around $107 billion), the fourth largest on the London Stock Exchange. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
GSK's drugs and vaccines earned £21.3 billion in 2013. Its top-selling products that year were Advair, Avodart, Flovent, Augmentin, Lovaza and Lamictal. GSK's consumer products, which earned £5.2 billion in 2013, include Sensodyne and Aquafresh toothpaste, the malted-milk drink Horlicks, Abreva for cold sores, Breathe Right nasal strips, Nicoderm and Nicorette nicotine replacements, and Night Nurse, a cold remedy. The company developed the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S, which it said in 2014 it would make available for five percent above cost. Legacy products developed at GSK include several listed in the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines, such as amoxicillin, mercaptopurine, pyrimethamine and zidovudine.
More recently it has been said that the GSK site will become the new home of Public Health England (PHE) and that’s facilities will be moved from Porton Down to Harlow in Essex.
The £350m move will initially see 900 workers relocating from sites such as Porton Down in Wiltshire to the former GlaxoSmithKline labs in Harlow.
Public Health England have said that the move is a "big step forward for UK public health science".
The new facilities, based on the site currently owned by GSK, will create a centre for research, health improvement and protection working on international health threats, such as Ebola.
The Explore
Well I wasn’t expecting this….
I find myself over in Harlow a lot, my oldest friend lives there, a few of my mates from racing days live there blah blah blah
This particular day I’d been out on the lash there the night before and was feeling a little rough, so we ended up having brekkie in a typical Essex greasy spoon. Full of tough guys and travellers, although all in the same boat as me, messy headed and starving hungry lol
My drinking partner from the previous night doesn’t really get exploring and as I’m explaining it to her she notices my attention is drawn to the big green building opposite.
“Oh I’m surprised you haven’t done that” she quips
To which I reply, “I’d love to but it’s not empty”
She replies with music to my ears
“It’s been closed since 2013”
2000 and fucking thirteen!!
What a prick, I drive around this area all the time and never once thought of googling the place
So that was it, a WhatsApp group was formed of the likely suspects and a plan was in the making
So with a drive around the site and the help from good old google maps I had a rough idea what was going on and headed home and waited for the rest.
Then it kinda went wrong
Well it turned out not to be my turn to drive…..
@drzexplorez picks me up and we stop at the shop for some refreshments
We head to Harlow and meet up with @oakley & @slayaaaa, like I said the normal crew
Now we knew getting caught in here could be an issue, GSK are worth billions and at a guess wouldn’t hesitate to prosecute 4 urchins they found on their property. So after a quick debrief regarding what to do if we got busted we decided to go for it.
After finding a way into the huge site we decided to head for the first tall building we could see. The plan was to hit the roof first and see what we could see.
We headed up to the main building and spotted the immense walkway and headed up onto it as it seemed the most logical way in to the buildings and it was…..
Once inside it was pretty impressive, every part of the site was clinically clean and was ear on perfect. We headed upwards and soon found lab upon lab upon office upon meeting room etc.
All areas looking like they had never seen any use.
We made our way to roof of the first building and snapped away at the pretty cool views.
Heading back into the building to head over to the main building we stumbled into a pile of PPE wear and in the name of a comical selfie decided to put it on for a few pictures.
It was at this point it went wrong, very very wrong
Half dressed in the white suites and with our camera gear all set up for selfies, the door next to me swung open and that awful feeling of being busted descended upon us.
I looked at Oakley, he looked at Slayaaaa he looked at DRZ and he looked back at me and we all shat ourselves as in walked a lady in a GSK security uniform. She kinda reminded me of a high school headmistress and I knew at that point we were getting arrested…
The following conversation happened, although I’m slightly paraphrasing
GSK: Hi
Us: Hiya (whilst trying not to snigger)
GSK: Erm, I wasn’t aware we had anyone on site today
Me: Oh sorry ( fuck fuck fuck think fast ) we must have missed you on the way in, we are just finishing off our survey and we will be done
GSK: That’s ok, be careful if you go upstairs though as I have turned a few of the lights off
Us: ok thanks
And as calmly as she walked in on us she turned around and went, not a care in the world
With that we broke out in a huge and very childish giggling fit, fed by nerves and dragon soop.
Now any sensible person would have cut their losses and bailed, but nope our intrepid bunch of idiots decided to take the fact we were now “official” and abuse it to our hearts content.
Boldly we wandered back over the bridge into the taller of the two buildings and helped ourselves to refreshments from the still active tea machine in the reception and display area.
It seemed that this area may still be occasionally used as there are plans for what’s happening to the site up on the walls and an awesome model too.
This building was pretty much the same as the other apart from a huge canteen area and some very nice stairways and architecture.
Again we headed for the roof ad snapped away.
At this point Slayaaaa and Oakley had to make a move leaving me and DRZ to explore a funny building in the corner of the site that didn’t really fit in with the rest of it.
Well this turned out to be the Anti-doping test centre for the 2012 Olympics.
Again like the previous buildings this was mainly full of labs but you could see this lot had been used as it was in a proper mess.
Whilst walking into one of the labs and peering out of the window blinds it became apparent that our cover had been blown as I could now see 3 car loads of people in Hi-Viz waving their arms about and looking pretty frustrated, So we hid up for a bit to see what was occurring.
The second they jumped into their cars and roared off around the site we left as quietly and quickly as we had got in.
However we did go back the next night to do the boiler house and get some night time shots along with @UrbanDuck, @WildBoyz and @mrstewie.
Of a night the place is something else, towering over you like some mad city skyscraper, it’s hard to imagine it’s in the UK, let alone Harlow lol
Enjoy the pics, sorry there are loads but there’s a lot to see here
The externals and some roof shots
Love the story.
