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Report - - Coalbrookdale AGA Works - Feb 2023 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Coalbrookdale AGA Works - Feb 2023

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403forbiddenexploration

needs a new username this one's cringe
28DL Full Member
I know this site has been very well documented over the years, but I figured it would be a good first report for myself.

This may even be the final report of the site, as it's been almost entirely cleared out by now and demolition has already started on the southern part of the site.

The History

The history of this place dates back all the way to the 16th century when a blast furnace was first built on the site, though it blew up in 1703 and the site remained unused until Abraham Darby I acquired the site in 1708 and set about rebuilding the furnace, using coke as fuel instead of charcoal.

Some of the most noteworthy events over the next 100 years:

1709 - Darby established the Coalbrookdale Company
1714 - Darby forms a new partnership with John Chamberlain and Thomas Baylies
1715 - Second furnace built
1717 - Darby dies, Abraham Darby the Younger brought into the business not much later, when he was old enough
1767 - The company began producing the first cast iron rails. They would lay 813 tonnes of rails between Ketley, Horsehay and Coalbrookdale by 1771.
1754 - After the business was no longer profitable, experiments took place to produce bar iron from the pig iron in charcoal finery forges. This proved quite successful, and led to the partners building new furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley.
1778 - Abraham Darby III started working on producing the first cast iron bridge
1781 - The Iron Bridge was finally opened

The blast furnaces were closed down sometime around 1820, but the forges remained in use.

The Coalbrookdale Company later became part of an alliance of ironfounding companies called Light Castings Limited. This was absorbed by Allied Ironfounders Ltd in 1929, before in turn being absorbed by Glynwed - now AGA Foodservice. The site was used to produce AGA's cast iron cookers, until 2017 when the company decided the foundry was no longer needed, and moved most of its production to Ketley.

For more history, there is plenty more to be found online, including some of the previous reports:


The Explore

The rules state not to discuss how to access sites, so I won't. However I will say that the main entrance is a no-go. While the previous Armadillos have disappeared, they've instead been replaced by an even more prominent set of cameras in the centre of the main courtyard area.

Also, I apologise for the image quality - partly down to the smartphone being used to take the pictures and partly just my inability to take decent photos.

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As you can see, much of the southern part has been demolished so we didn't bother checking it out and instead focused on the northern part

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A small courtyard towards the east of the site

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I didn't dare climb on any of these buildings

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Some industrial thing inside that same building

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A rather empty interior

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More emptiness, and some graffiti

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Presumably a small office of some kind at the end of one of the buildings

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Signs from AGA

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Not sure if someone ran into this with a forklift or something

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Some old fuse boxes



../403
 
Last edited:

Mikeymutt

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Nicely done for your first report. It was such a short window getting there with everything in. But it was really nice.
 

Bikin Glynn

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Nice report, I thought this would be gone by now.
I went during the time of the armadillo invasion, never seen so many but u could still get round em all lol.
As above the old sheds were very photogenic
 
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