decay and abandonment

[lazyclimber]

Hello, I'm sort of new here - I'd been a lurker years ago and over my life have visited a number of sites, as a kid playing in abandoned and ruined houses and then as an adult in both organised and "informal" settings and was encouraged by a close friend to sign up to post some photos and updates.

I'm a big fan of long decayed sites, with nature taking things back from ruined buildings to long abandoned roads and infrastrucutre. Follower of abandonedspaces on twitter.

In terms of exploring history, particular highlights have been the railway station at Canfranc around 20 years ago and a couple of times subsequently and old crofters houses on the western isles.

I've also enjoyed some formal and semi-formal 'tours' - such as the Queensway Tunnel in Liverpool, and tours down the Aldwych branch of the London Underground as well as stations in Madrid and New York over the years.

Recent explores have been RAF bishops court for which I've updated an existing report and Stephenstown House near Dundalk for which I tried to do a new report - although I might have done it wrong or put it in the wrong place as I can't find it again.

I travel a lot so not really local to anywhere. Or perhaps I'm local to everywhere.

 

[HughieD]

Welcome @lazyclimber
Looking forward to seeing your reports. Get a Canfranc one up. Would love to see your take on it.

 

[Exploring with Andy]

Hi, welcome, and thanks for taking the time to post a good introduction.

We recently removed the residential section as it caused no end of problems. We will still accept residential sites of particular merit, however your Stephenstown House report didn't make it through approval. It sounds like you've been to some interesting places over the years though, and I'm sure many of members would like to see some of those, so please don't be put off and feel free to post up as a few more places.

 

[lazyclimber]

Thanks for the replies, both.

I think Stephenstown House is an interesting one, as it's clearly decayed former mansion house far from the point where it could ever be revived - in Ireland there are a lot of these sorts of places - 5-8 bed detached houses, or minor stately homes, that fell into decay and disrepair. There's one actually for sale not far from where I live - the issues being mainly with heating and maintaining them - if they were, say, in Suffolk they'd be snapped up for redevelopment. I expect it to continue to fall down until nothing other than the stone shell remains, which is a shame, in terms of some of the carvings and things inside that would have had some architectual merit, but I find it lovely to see the ferns growing in the joists and the moss and ivy encroaching on the walls.

But I do see the issue that there could be with residential, particularly in terms of ownership, resale, and general notability - where I live is relatively poor, and there are a lot of nondescript abandoned residential places that I've explored but are of no real notable value. Unfortunately, many of the photos I have are non notable residential of one form or another

I'll dig out some of the old Canfranc photos - where would be best to post these, in a new thread or in an older one as an update - as some must be 20 or so years old.

 

[Exploring with Andy]

I'll dig out some of the old Canfranc photos - where would be best to post these, in a new thread or in an older one as an update - as some must be 20 or so years old.

In a new thread would be best, cheers. That was it makes it easier to identify different visits easily, especially with your visit being so long ago. Just remember to include the approximate visit date in the title.