I had known about this site for many years as my father would always talk about the place when ever we went to gloucester as he remembered the director general of the site Jacob Bronowski from his tv appearances as a panellist on 'The Brains Trust' and later 'The acent of man'.I had being to stoke orchard as early as 1992 with my father but it held no interest for me then as we were looking for RAF Stoke Orchard which to my disgust is now a landfill site and not a trace could be found.
I had forgotten the place until working with Bubblehead in Gloucester last year
and I made a detour on the way home one friday afternoon so we could check it out.
for the folks not in the know about the site a brief history.Its main purpose was to investigate and develop alternate uses of coal. One process was distilling coal to extract oil. this process has always being costly so it never really caught on. As it is cheaper to drill oil out of the ground.The C.R.E operated from 1950 until the break-up of British Coal in the early 1990s. What remains of the C.R.E operates from an enclave in the office building.
The establishment covers a wide area from test labs, stokers and workshops.
I made a solo return trip a few months later and was prepared to go deeper into the site than the first visit managed so i was armed with universal keys to aid the explore.
It was fun climbing the ladder to the roof with one hand holding. as had my tripod in the other
The trip went no deeper as i had the utter misfortune to met the site manager, who at first was ok about it then changed his mind and rang his boss in bristol to find out what he should do
. It was never like this when i was younger people were normally cool with it.This was not great news as it take me 70 miles for nothing inaffect.still on the plus side i was never spotted on the roof of one of the labs
I had forgotten the place until working with Bubblehead in Gloucester last year
and I made a detour on the way home one friday afternoon so we could check it out.
for the folks not in the know about the site a brief history.Its main purpose was to investigate and develop alternate uses of coal. One process was distilling coal to extract oil. this process has always being costly so it never really caught on. As it is cheaper to drill oil out of the ground.The C.R.E operated from 1950 until the break-up of British Coal in the early 1990s. What remains of the C.R.E operates from an enclave in the office building.
The establishment covers a wide area from test labs, stokers and workshops.
I made a solo return trip a few months later and was prepared to go deeper into the site than the first visit managed so i was armed with universal keys to aid the explore.
It was fun climbing the ladder to the roof with one hand holding. as had my tripod in the other
The trip went no deeper as i had the utter misfortune to met the site manager, who at first was ok about it then changed his mind and rang his boss in bristol to find out what he should do
. It was never like this when i was younger people were normally cool with it.This was not great news as it take me 70 miles for nothing inaffect.still on the plus side i was never spotted on the roof of one of the labs
