So this is my first report but definitely not my first explore, annoyingly some of my favourites have now been demolished and are now impossible to report on
A little history
Founded in 1871 as Turner Brothers to manufacture cotton cloth, The manufacture of asbestos began on the site in 1879. By 1970 the factory had an annual output of 2,250,000 yards of asbestos cloth and 5,500,000 miles of asbestos yarn. Then in 1879 it became the first business to weave asbestos cloth with power driven machinery.
By 1998 the company was acquired by Federal Mogul which ended up in financial difficulty and filled for chapter 11 due to asbestos claims leaving roughly a £400 million pension fund deficit.
Being one of the first to industrialise asbestos and its eventual demise it became entangled with multiple issues due to asbestos litigation, Asbestos rated diseases had become recognised due to a death of a worker at their factory in 1924. This began multiple parliamentary inquiries and reports into asbestos related disease. The company instructed their lawyers to strongly defend these claims however.
The Explore
Naturally finding people to visit a asbestos factory was slightly harder than I previously anticipated so I ended up going alone on this one. Unfortunately most of the buildings I found were pretty well secured (its like they really don't want anyone getting asbestos related illnesses, go figure). The site itself is pretty massive I vaguely remember waling around 12 miles and didn't see a soul while I was there.
This part was incredibly springy possibly for the room where they tested composite armour for the MOD (info from a local not sure how accurate it is)
Thanks for reading, I hope this post is up to scratch.