The Visit
An impromtu Sunday evening explore took us to Wallerscote as its quite close by and wanted to see it for a while, access was quite good fun with a nice bit of barbed wire climbing. Inside the place is huge but now only used by lots of pigeons it seems.. We missed an encounter with secca by mere minutes as well
The History
Founded by a couple of chaps named John Brunner and Ludwig Mond in 1973 they began producing soda ash about a year later. They used brine solution, ammonia and limestone to produce sodium carbonate in pure form. I understand that at its peak the factory produced 200,000 tons of soda ash a year meaning that the Brunner Mond company became the largest producer of the product in the country and the worlds largest alkali exporter. Wallerscote island Works was completed in 1926. the construction consists of silos and huge metal sheds although all were integral parts of the original structure. The company later became part of ICI which is now owned by Tata. Sodium Carbonate is a widely used in industry for casting and glassmaking. It is commonly used in chemistry as a base and an electrolyte. It is also used domestically in detergents, dyes and toothpaste as well as tasty sherbet sweets!
An impromtu Sunday evening explore took us to Wallerscote as its quite close by and wanted to see it for a while, access was quite good fun with a nice bit of barbed wire climbing. Inside the place is huge but now only used by lots of pigeons it seems.. We missed an encounter with secca by mere minutes as well
The History
Founded by a couple of chaps named John Brunner and Ludwig Mond in 1973 they began producing soda ash about a year later. They used brine solution, ammonia and limestone to produce sodium carbonate in pure form. I understand that at its peak the factory produced 200,000 tons of soda ash a year meaning that the Brunner Mond company became the largest producer of the product in the country and the worlds largest alkali exporter. Wallerscote island Works was completed in 1926. the construction consists of silos and huge metal sheds although all were integral parts of the original structure. The company later became part of ICI which is now owned by Tata. Sodium Carbonate is a widely used in industry for casting and glassmaking. It is commonly used in chemistry as a base and an electrolyte. It is also used domestically in detergents, dyes and toothpaste as well as tasty sherbet sweets!
