Yo yo yo, ok so the Hartlepool (steetley magnesite) adventure was mint. Me and my mate Milky drove there and arrived about noon time. The weather was a bit hit and miss, raining here and there and quite windy but just as we were parking it brightened up loads which was a relief. Milky is shooting pics of this place for his final project at Newcastle College. Me and him used to go wandering around other weird places like Cherry knowles mental asylum in Sunderland and we both started to get really interested in abandoned and derelict places so it was high time we checked out some new groud.
Maybe i should give a bit of back round about steetley before i wack my pics up …
1937:Site acquired by Steetley. New process allows magnesium to be produced from sea water.
1938: Plant opens and expands rapidly.
1961:Chimney built which is seen across Hartlepool.
1962: World’s largest settling tank built on the site.
1967: 5,147 tons of magnesium produced a week.
1997:Britmag takes over the site from Redland.
2002:Britmag goes into administration, and the site is reborn as CJC Chemicals.
2005:CJC also falls on hard times and the area falls into disrepair.
2005:Culford Properties become free-holders of the site and draw up plans for a 500-home estate.
2006: Children caught by the Mail diving into the settling tanks.
2007: (August) Children snapped by local resident playing among the rubble.
2007: (September) English Nature opposes building plans because of breeding birds near the site.
2007: (October) The council puts £100,000 aside in case they have to clear the site.
So yeah, the place is pretty old and has fallen into massive disrepair… probably mostly due to the gangs of scallys nicking all the metal from it to sell as scrap. There must have been about 5 crews of lads working different parts of the site while we were there. Whether they were part of the same team i dont know. We were a bit worried at first. Wandering around an empty expansive wasteland, far from help with potentially over a thousand pounds worth of camera equipment… and them with crowbars, blowtorches and saws. But they just told us not to take any pics of them and they were sound.
But anyway, enough talk. Heres a load of shots i took. Some ive boosted up coz i was lazy and didnt expose them properly but mainly ive just added my watermark coz im quite proud of these.
As you can see, the place is a mess, but the colour from the rust, grass and erosion from the left over chemicals has made it an amazingly colourful place. I thought it was amazing.
We have plans to revisit, since milky has to take more shots. So i probably will too and i’ll post up here.
hope youve enjoyed these as much as i did taking them.
