Don't think this is accessible currently, brand new palisade fencing behind the lovely holey section of fence
unfortunately i believe this may still be the case, as of my last visit in october-ish. the holey wire fence has since been patched up with palisade fencing and there is no free access. even the river that flows below the compound is fenced.
there were also two dogs and I believe four security staff in total - two in the security box by the road and two on regular patrols, with angry sounding dogs. in terms of the interior of the compound, every building appears to have had metal sheet bolted to each and every entrance route. each security member had a radio and I assumed that motion detectors had been installed interior as every so often they’d gather around a specific building.
the security were employed by BA Property Services rather than a generic 3rd party company.
it’s also worth noting that the rectangular silver-roofed building you can see at the south end of the compound appears to still be in use as a data center, so is a high-security location with many many cameras.
it’s a shame to see but then again I’d imagine that this is a pretty high value asset to BA - and although there are people like ourselves only out to take photos & capture memories, we must also remember that there are people out to cause damage to the property and / or loot. arsonists, scrappers etc.
I get the impression that although the site was left nearly empty and guarded by a single / pair of third party security staff in the past, frequent urbex explorers (likely inspired by the place going viral on TikTok) caused BA to rethink their strategy.
the last time I had a look around this place there was a simple mesh fence around the property, with numerous holes cut. we even met a nice homeless bloke who appeared to be living in the north building. this was in June 2022.
hole in the fence found at the north of the compound, circa June 2022
cant help it
