Howdy! Thank you for tuning in to (and perhaps returning to) my Photo Blog, I really appreciate you coming along for the ride (seat belts are not provided, helmets are optional, but you might want gloves, it gets sticky in here sometimes….) I use this space to chronicle my adventures as I walkabout my hometown Birmingham. I’m a photographer, I take a lot of candid photos of people out and about, a street photographer I guess you could call me.

Recently I’ve found added satisfaction in fleshing out my photos with a bit of dashed out, non-pc, ill-thought out prose. Thus far I’ve been using my Blog to detail my main objective for 2020, that being the documentation of Brum’s old subways, pedestrian bridges and connecting concrete spaces that remain hereabout, before they’re lost in the hurry and carelessness to forget the City’s past ‘mistakes’. I’m not bitter, I’m bloody annoyed. It’s sacrilege, eradicating all evidence of the past. Regardless of whether you like something or not, it’s still our collective heritage, not something we should forget about.

However, this week I thought I’d take a step sideways. Those of you who know me, will be aware that I enjoy shooting the grimier side of life, and that I spend a lot of my time looking at places that have been left behind, forgotten about. Leftover spaces, empty places and urban wildernesses. I’m not unique in this, there’s plenty of folk who enjoy these places and write or photograph them far more eloquently than I. The abandoned, the derelict, the trashed and the ruins. The desire to explore such spaces has spawned a plethora of YouTube channels and Instagram feeds, all themed around the on-trend nominate ‘Urbex’ or ‘Urban Exploration’. There’s plenty of good Peeps out there getting their freak on urbexing regularly, properly equipped, gripped and sorted, check them out on the Tube of You if you want to see how it’s done well.

Me? I’m just a wannabee.

I won’t lie, this broken decayed aesthetic really appeals to me, it scratches a really weird itch, to see what life is like without people. I guess it’s that morbid fascination, imagining a post-apocalyptic world, but made real. Walking through the partly destroyed remains of buildings, examining the decay as nature reclaims these places feels like a sort of urban archaeology, finding and documenting the evidence of people left behind. I remember very vividly a visit to Skagen, north Denmark back in the early 90s, wandering along the coast there. My friend Magnus and I climbed up into these huge concrete gun emplacements that were slowly disappearing into the sands. They’re vast structures, weighing thousands of tons, once part of Nazi Germany’s ridiculous Atlantic Wall built to defend the Motherland. Inside it stank of urine, decades of morbid graffiti lined the walls. We smoked some weed and chilled, scrawling our names like so many others on the walls. So, urbexing, I kinda liked it even back then, but it’s only really recently that I’ve embraced it. And, yeah I guess it’s links into why I do what I do with the subways today.

My friend Andy gave me a nudge, a heads up about an old building in Digbeth (where else!?!) that was apparently easy to access – someone had torn a rear fire door off, so if you knew where to look, you could just walk in…. He did warn me upfront, it’s a junkie hole that’s been completely trashed since the incumbent business went bump a few years ago. And also, take a torch! So, torch in hand, with my mate Wali as back-up, we went on a bear hunt in Diggers.

Wali and I walked up Warwick Street just up from the Spotted Dog pub at the ‘top’ of Digbeth. I’d been advised to visit a bit later in the morning, to allow those abiding in the old factory to vacate in search of food and diversions. This area is very much in flux, with swathes of land being cleared or constructed, cranes and demolition nibblers compete for the same airspace as buildings rise and fall. Our destination doesn’t look very promising from the rear, great blank walls of old brick and there’s a fair bit of fly tipped rubbish about. The road is gritty and narrow, the air noisome with the reeks of waste and industry. Boxes and cartons await whirring forklifts, lorries loom, parked up on the pavement, workers fagging it in doorways, waiting interminably. There, on the right, an opening in the wall, a door lying amidst making a wonky ramp up moist litter-strewn steps. We walked in, just like that.

I found out after visiting this place that the fire door had been torn off by the emergency services trying to access the building during a recent fire. A Homeless man died despite desperate attempts to reach him. It’s not the first fire here, one in 2014 gutted much of the back-end of building where Wali and I entered. The place has a sepulchral atmosphere, urban necrosis.

The sudden quiet is punctuated by liquid sounds from the gloomy depths behind what I guess were office windows. Pools of water plop and the drops echo like memories of Wookie Hole, limestone stalactites dangle their lifeless fingers, squeezed through from the ceilings above, evidence that the roof-seals disappeared a long time. Our feet alternately plash and crunch through water and glass, it’s oddly satisfying in the gloom. A pigeon is hooting, distorted by distance, somewhere in the building above us. It sounds corrupted and wrong, like malice aforethought.

We’re snapping photos of course as we creep cautiously through the moistening gloom. Beyond a wall of broken glass a vast darkness awaits, deep and wet like a well. Brick pillars painted white, punctuate the darkness like vitiliginous ghosts holding up the roof of the Underworld. It would have been very very easy to turn around and walk out, the space here is immensely deep and full of unknowns. Your mind plays tricks on you in places like this, fears growing large in the dark. Uneasiness settles like a shroud. It’s wise to mistrust in here.

In buildings so decayed you can’t help but feel on edge. It would be foolish to feel otherwise. My security torch feels puny against the dark immensity. We stick together, cautiously stalking through a long flooded corridor, it’s walls jaundiced yellow like mustard gas. Rotten wood pallets have been strewn together in a pathway across, it’s like walking on sponge cakes. A large fire was lit here (on the right). I don’t know if it was the fire, but Wali and I have seen evidence of several already. My photos make this place look deceptively bright, it really wasn’t, it was dingy, wet and rather sad.

There’s an open doorway at the end. It’s utterly black. I poke my torch through, a narrow corridor goes off at ninety degrees, my torch illuminating doors, broken furniture and open maws of complete darkness. These are toilets, store rooms, a service room with electrical works, it’s really difficult to see. There are noises ahead, or behind, it’s difficult to focus on where. I shine my torch around, doorways revealing smaller corridors to rooms filled with shadows and indeterminate shapes. Cables, pipes and plaster dangle from the ceiling, my spidey senses are tingling.

The floor is foul with wet detritus and I feel very alive and conscious of my pulse. As I walk along a wide doorway opens out, yawning darkness, I can see absolutely nothing but I can hear everything. My little torch illumines an unhappy figure scrawled on yet more albino pillars. There’s so much water here, it’s flooded wall to wall, the droplets plash a sinister tune. I briefly wonder what this place would have been for, there’s nothing here but the oppressive weight of the building.

Wali is a few paces behind me but it feels like he’s miles away faced with this darkness. Someone has scrawled ‘Fuck this place’ on a niche opposite. I feel actual claustrophobia for the first time in my life, so we retreat and escape from the implied threat of our fears. Braver souls with better torches would perhaps have soldiered deeper in. Apparently the reception area at the very front of the building had a nice art-deco feel back in the day, but faced with such an untrustworthy route I conclude it’s not worth the risk.

I know there’s a way up out of this dark basement, so we re-trace our route through the shadowy basement. My fumbling in the dark leads us through a broken door along a corridor of offices with glass doors painted blind to the darkness. The office doors look like they’ve been kicked at from the inside, hemorrhaging internally, we’re not tempted and enter none of these rooms. It’s a no-brainer, there maybe zombies inside, eeek! Part of me is really enjoying the thrill of the explore, marvelling at how decrepit this place is, another part is a bit unnerved and dreading the undead.

The light here is poor, my torch doesn’t illuminate much except sudden fears. It doesn’t feel safe and there are noises from within, rats in the walls, so we move through quickly. Light falls beyond a corner further on and lo, a stairwell. It’s darker than before but, my torch lights the way, the stone steps glittering like mica. There are steps down, revealing a sub-basement area filled with a vast pile of rubbish. I demure, choosing instead the route heavenwards, the bannister is covered in mould and rust. I’m glad I wore gloves….

The steps are covered in debris, my torch flashes across dripping remains, papers, boxes of feminine hygiene products , needles, silver cylinders, the disregards and thrown. It’s crunchy, spongy and wet. Rounding a corner I find the remains of another fire door, torn in two jagged pieces on the floor, gaping like a dead mouth.

A doorway beyond floods light relief upon us and we stumble out into a huge industrial space. Sunlight pours in through the naked skeletal remains of the roof, vast apexes of rusted steel spanning the emptiness. It’s a vast, vacant expanse, filled with nothing but the breeze. It’s takes minute for my eyes to adjust and the relief of light chases those ridiculous fears away. Immediately behind the stairwell a wall full of windows gazes blank and unknowing out over the Digbeth landscape. I walk over to look out through cracks in the glass, I’m back in Snapping mode, but then I find my eyes drawn to the far corner of the room where some of the roof survives.

In this relative shelter is a mess, used packets, cans, bottles and schools of hungry needles, floating in puddles around an island of wooden boards. There’s space for people to lie amidst this filth. It makes me intensely sad, I feel weird like I’ve invaded their privacy, even here amidst the utter depths they have that right. So I move away, taking photos of the vast, open interior of girders, pillars and sky. Lots and lots of sky. It’s far too much sky for a place where weatherproofing is but a memory.

There’s parquet flooring, still intact in places, hinting at a greater whole, it must have looked wonderful in here. Now it’s crazy, diseased like leprosy, warped and bloated by moisture and time. A large oblong gap in the floor drops thirty feet to the floor below. I believe it housed the machinery for the business’s conveyor belt, moving orders to and from the delivery area beneath us (I’ve looked at old pix of the building). Now it’s just a gaping, dangerous hole, filled with broken things. It’s easy to imagine people stumbling in, blind ruined minds falling in the night. The destruction is as epic as it is dismal. Sledgehammer handles are dotted about amidst the ruinations, evidence of drug fueled throw-downs or maniacal expressions of the marginalized. Be it major or minor, our capacity for destruction is unparalleled.

Wali and I drifted around this huge space, both of us barely speaking, concentrating on where we’re putting our feet. The external windows are mostly smashed, those that aren’t are covered in graffiti. I confess I love windows like this, utilitarian and completely uniform in appearance, yet en masse in an industrial building they’re just absolutely right. The light in here must have been amazing when the sun was out. Wali spots the opening for the freight lift in a corner, it looks like a square cave full of rust. He mutters stuff and nonsense about it probably not being safe, then promptly goes into it and voila, nothing happens. No plummeting to his doom today.

What this vast space was for I can only imagine – sorting and storing the supplies, probably in rows of metal shelving, stacks and pallets ready for picking and dispatch. The lift is big enough for a hand pushed pallet truck and an operator. It feels very familiar, despite the carnage and decay. There are signs and bits of things lying about, broken mementos that have lasted but they are few and very far between. We drift around to the far side, where more dark doorways await and exterior windows glitter dimly. Colourful graffiti offers some promise.

On the far right hand side, some narrow doors lead into offices, work-spaces and what looks like a dining area for staff. The walls had been torn out, hacked away, distraught doors propped like friday night pissheads, pallets piled up against one side, like a barricade. I called in loud ‘Hallooo’s before squeezing through for a look-see. The smell hit me as I lumbered passed by a pox-ridden plaster wall, lurid smells of smoke, charcoal and moisture, the stench of extinguished fire. It’s very strong, like a nauseating incense. Most of the rooms here have duvets bundled in corners and dry crevices almost like firelighters, you can see how these events take hold. A room at the front, overlooking Bradford Street is completely burnt, black like cancer. I held back the camera, taking photos of this room just felt wrong. I walked away after inexplicably getting all catholic again and apologizing to thin air. My Mom would have smiled.

Retreating, I find Wali waiting patiently and we move onward to examine the graffiti laden walls on the far left hand side. Intact wooden doors look like the entrance to a more senior suite of rooms, they are shut firmly from within, more pallets bar the way. I see movement within, a person stumbling about in the ill-lit gloom, I see motionless body shapes on the floor. I leave them to it, there’s plenty more to explore without impinging on their private pastimes, no need for a confrontation.

To the far side, a square door-less opening leads out to what looks like another loading area, fronted by huge iron gates painted hospital green. A riot of buddleia populates the floor, crowding all competition out. It’s a bland uninteresting area, devoid of anything leftover from before. However some bright spark has painted a rinky-dink Pink Panther on the wall. I like it, it makes me grin and puts a tune in my head, ‘Yeah he’s the one and only, truly original, Panther pink from head to toe.’ We move on.

On this side of the complex a mirror image of the expanse of parquet and pillars, but it feels even more derelict, weedy goat willows stumble up the walls, broken branches fill the floor making navigation difficult. We keep our explore here to a minimum, there’s not much to see aside from the walls of graffiti. There’s a lot of that here, it’s good too, but oddly it doesn’t interest me. Usually I enjoy street art, but it’s not the thrill I’m seeking here, even though for others it’s why they invest so much time exploring these places, to find these treasured walls. I guess I’m more archaeologist than piss artist (but only just).

Eventually we move back to the blue painted stairwell. Looking up we’ve both glimpsed another smaller floor, a dull grey extension of glassy-eyed offices lying like lead shot above the ruined roof trusses. Torch reignited, we clamber up the steps. It’s more of the same, litter, needles, cans, moisture, sadness. And this is just the steps. At the top light pours in through aluminum rectangles where the windows once were. The ceiling structure lunges at you, plasterboard, strips of steel, cables, pipework, dangling traps for the unwary, the industrial web of an unseen spidery behemoth perhaps.

Nope, just people destroying stuff. What was obviously once a suite of god-awful 1970s offices and facility rooms have been almost completely wrecked, only the studs and prongs in the floor evidence the outlines of each room. The floor is awful, piles of wet plasterboard covering much of the space, the entire right-hand side is un-navigable. On the left side a path, green with mossy algae and lichen sashays across, it is relatively easy, passing pillars covered in the yet more shit-house wisdom and the epithets of the stoned Immaculates. Even the graffiti up here is dull.

Still, the windows overlooking the vast roof trusses offer a cool view across to the similarly derelict Stone Galleon building opposite. The brick roof struts between the iron trusses are covered in pools of glass and water, the reflections are rather nice though. The derelict building looks tantalizingly close, and these window frames, hey they’re easy to climb through, eh? I could cross that easy, no sweat. The drop to the parquet and pillars beneath gives me cause to pause, yeah, that’s death and nonsense for any idiots who clamber out there. It’s just not worth it, despite being an Idiot Third Class, Sir! Tantalizingly close though…

After the thrills of the lower floors, arriving at the top feels a little anti-climactic. It’s a bit like going to the seaside and realizing it’s November. These offices would perhaps have been interesting before all the destruction, now there’s nothing of the original infrastructure, except piles upon piles of plaster debris. At the far end of the space there’s a toilet block, someone has sprayed up a Poo emoji on a wonky cubicle. Classic.

The room is so full of crap it resists any temptations to investigate potential spaces further on. I decide there aren’t any, the wall is an outside one, we can go no further. Examining this area a bit more closely I find a green porcelain toilet, sitting amidst the plaster rubble. I laugh out loud, grabbing some shots of it contrasted against a luridly blue wall of graff that looks like it hasn’t quite made up its mind yet. It works as an absurd composition. Strewn around are bits of old company paraphernalia, bags and invoice papers headed with ‘John Heath Ltd’, the company certainly went down the pan.

Doubling back we investigate the very front of this extension, looking over Bradford Street. There’s more evidence of fire raising and bunking down here. There’s a book of Word Search puzzles, firelighter or intellectual pastime, who knows? A broken doorway (another one, surely not!) leads out onto a flat roof-space surrounded by a red brick parapet wall. This space is filled by a huge pool of water, it initially feels unwise to walk out here, so we edge our way around. It soon becomes apparent it is still pretty sturdy, so we start snapping.

The view looking over Bradford Street is pretty gee-whizz, I grab some shots looking back towards the City before Wali quietly points out the huge cracks in the wall. They’re literally inches wide and right be-fucking-side me! Fucking shitting hell. I feel a bit dizzy for a mo, my head full of ‘what if it had given way‘ scenarios, that all end with plummeting death, my legs upright and smashed akimbo. Fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuck. How had I not noticed that?!? My anus retracts almost to my nose in shocked mortality.

Wali’s taking pictures of the scrawls on the cracked parapet. I wander back inside, I find a bashed out kitchenette area and a door torn into pieces revealing the weird patterns inside. The stairwell continues upwards to the top and the lift-shaft. My torch reveals a hatch but it’s locked. Teeming about me are little menstrual red boxes of ‘Simplicity’, there’s hundreds, perhaps thousands of these super-absorbent feckers. Not enough to soak up the pervasive moisture though.

Behind me Wali has appeared at the bottom of the steps, seeing what I’m up too. As I retrace my steps down a patch of plaster on the wall falls to the ground, dislodged by the errant breeze. Wali jumps in surprise, unmanning him somewhat, cursing ‘what the fucks‘ under his bluff moustache. I’m sure he’s a bit paler than a minute ago. Two harem-scarem moments in less than five minutes has us both eyeing the other. ‘You had enough Bud?’, I ask. Wali nods sagely, like he hasn’t shat himself at all. I notice a staircase to one side, a different one, that would probably take us into those decorated reception areas. At the bottom I can see hints of rubbish, water, destroyed furniture, lambent darkness. I shake my head, nah, at Wali and we retrace our steps back and round, downwards.

Mere moments later, three floors down and much crunching across, we’re back out on Warwick Street. Noises return, cars flash by, people and sky, normality restored for what that’s worth. It feels annoyingly loud and intrusive after the hush of Kingfield Heath. It’s just a building after all, easily entered and right there in the City, you can literally walk the fuck in. We didn’t have to climb or crawl, no safety jacket required. Yet it felt otherworldly, I can’t properly explain without sounding ridiculous or romantic. That firedoor felt like a portal, entering into a dystopian Narnia, fraught with destruction and nihilistic woes. It was oddly magical too, but it’s bloody easy to say that isn’t it, I’m a vicarious visitor, not a denizen bound to weals of addiction.

‘Dystopian Narnia‘ sounds good though, eh? I’ll stick with that for now, and put my how-now-brown trousers through the wash.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, returning to the subways for more adventures underground and overground. Be well!