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Report - - Coryton Refinery Power Station - Essex - Jan 2016 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Coryton Refinery Power Station - Essex - Jan 2016

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Speed

Got Epic Slow?
Regular User
Coryton closed in 2012, this unfortunately managed to clash with me buying my first house, moving to the other side of the country and starting a new job. Unsurprisingly i didn't really have time to check it out properly until early 2015. At this point it still looked very intact and live. We had a couple of pokes but not only was it quite well secure i couldn't seem to interest anyone else in it at all. 'All pipes and tanks' they said! Every time we went down south we would take a look and decide it was too risky to try and would probably spoil whatever the 'main event' for the trip was going to be (Tilbury, Foulness etc etc.)

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and i see @slayaaaa and @Maniac have been. At first this surprised me a little as i honestly had pretty much given up with the place. Far away, secure, no one else interested.. I was expecting it to become another one of those places that over the years have just quietly slipped away and been missed. The fact that these guys had actually been there and not only made the effort to get in but subsequently discovered this quite frankly epic power plant brought a big smile to my face. Not only have they found something epic but it was just great to see the continuing trend of places getting well and truly nailed! It was only last summer that i was still bitching about how few people made the effort to actually explore and how i felt i had to do everything myself or see it missed. Now the UE world really seems to have turned a corner and so much good stuff is done so promptly i almost feel like like i can't keep up! I guess i just want to say well done all! Not just for here but Kellingley Redcar etc etc. Job well and truly done so far and i needent to have lifted a finger myself really!

So on to the actual report hey. First attempt was a disaster, security is still pretty good so you need to be careful. I returned again this week for another go. After some tweaks to the plan all went well and i had a great morning mooching around the site. Little is left of the actual refinery now. Mainly just chimneys so i concentrated on the power station itself.

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This Is the sight that meets you as you approach the station. A great 1950s building, glass bricks and a rather inviting sign and open door!

Popping in the basement level i started to have a poke around. It is fairly clear that the station would have originally had four units and has been extended at some point, possibly in the 1980s, to house a fifth.​

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The epic was coming thick and fast already. Cool signs, enamels, workers graffiti and a good look inside one of the condenser units that had been dismantled

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I also met this guy in there who seemed keen to shake my hand

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I left him a tip :thumb

It was still pretty dark inside so i popped out to have a look at the chimneys and boilers. There are 5 Chimneys as you would expect. Three smaller original items and two larger more modern additions. This also tallies up with the boilers. Three original and two larger and more modern. There isn't really much of a boiler house to speak of. the boilers are external and only the firing face is inside the building.

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Heading back inside i checked out the firing faces. No Hopkinsons gauges here unfortunately.

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Speed

Got Epic Slow?
Regular User
Heading through into the 'main event' as it were. Starting at unit 1 we find that, well... Its not there! Unit 1 turbine and boiler appeared to have been out of use for quite some time and the bulk had been removed. Only a control panel and sealed off boiler hulk remained really.

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Unit 2 was much better, a nice Metropolitan Vickers turbine. Presumably there would have been a row of 4 of these originally, now each one is different.

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On to unit 3. I dont really know why but this hardly even looked like a turbine generator. There were pipes sprouting all over the place. It also appeared to be mostly dismantled on the turbine side.

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And then Unit 4 different again, an AEI alternator and a tiny turbine sprouting two massive pipes. Remember down stairs the plinths and condenser equipment look almost the same for all four of these. I not sure quite how that worked as i would have thought you would need to change the lot.

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Last but not least Unit 5. This was much more modern. Siemens turbine and AEG generator.. So modern it's not even british! The adjacent control room seemed to date from the same era. As did the wash room facilities and a few other bits and bobs.

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And all four together taken from the crane gantry. The crane was pretty good too. It appeared as though it had been 'crashed' at some point tho with the cage all bent and buckled.

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Last thing i decided to do was check out the turbine side of the station. Doors lead out onto a gantry that took me over to a lovely 1950s substation building. Not much inside but great to look at and the log book suggesting power was only switched off in September. Did we miss it with the lights on i wonder?

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Last off some photos from the trek back out. A Lot of the refinery has gone now just leaving the chimneys standing in no man's land.

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The Lone Ranger

Safety is paramount!
Staff member
Moderator
Pretty stunning that :thumb

I can probably find out the story behind Whistlerwhite Spannerman, if there was one. A lot of the Coryton Employees made the move offshore, have about 6 of them on my rig, a couple I knew from when I worked down there myself.
 

Maniac

rebmeM LD82
Regular User
Nice one @Speed I'm glad you got to see the place, you've covered it really well there. I've still not seen the powerplant, as on the first visit we didn't even know this existed and it was pissing down with rain, cold and dark! I must go back and see the whole place before it gets too much more flattened.

Also "Did we miss it with the lights on" - Yes we did! June last year when I very first scoped this place out the lights were well and truly on, place was list up like a Christmas tree, but activity on the site was also much much more prevalent.
 
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Gabe

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Ive got a job, a girlfriend, a flat, other friends, holidays to take, bills to pay, you know the usual shit someone approaching 30 who doesn't live with his parents have.

Why complain about the life they have chosen to lead, if anyone is bitching about having a wife and a job, then quit your fucking job and get a divorce and actually explore more
 

tumbles

Crusty Juggler
Staff member
Moderator
Ive got a job, a girlfriend, a flat, other friends, holidays to take, bills to pay, you know the usual shit someone approaching 30 who doesn't live with his parents have.

Why complain about the life they have chosen to lead, if anyone is bitching about having a wife and a job, then quit your fucking job and get a divorce and actually explore more

I don't think Els or anyone else was actually complaining, it was good humoured.
 

The_Raw

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Great report @Speed, looks full of win this place. Just trying to think of a good humoured comment as funny as this one - "if anyone is bitching about having a wife and a job, then quit your fucking job and get a divorce and actually explore more"..... Nope, I must have got my good humour mixed up with my bad humour :p
 
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