British Aerospace (BAe)
Filton /
Account written by: Groobs
Oh Daddy.
Little did we know what we were in for with this place! As mentioned on the
news page, I’d spotted (well, you can hardly miss it to be fair) what I later
discovered to be the ‘Pegasus’ Building of BAe’s abandoned Filton site in
Bristol, on my way home from a mate’s house a few weeks previous. The grand
scale of the building must have distracted me so much that I hadn’t realised
that the Pegasus building was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. This is
possibly the largest, most comprehensive and interesting abandoned site we’ve
ever seen – and I’d genuinely love to hear from anyone that has found an
industrial site bigger, I was in awe of just how much there was to see and do
here. It’s big on variety too, with multi-storey office buildings, basement and
foundation crawlspaces, a large infirmary and lots of technical thingamies all
over the place. Countless documents are scattered around almost every room you
visit, some of which are really intriguing. To my mind, it’s an urbex heaven.
British
Aerospace have been responsible for some impressive pieces of kit over the
years, from weapons systems and avionics, such as the Rapier missile system,
through to aircraft such as the BAe146, a small passenger jet, one of which is
still used within the Queens Flight RAF Squadron. Much of what can be seen at
Filton, alludes to decades of innovation and development. Echoes of lapsed and
outdated technology bring to mind the long gone golden era of home-grown British
aviation engineering. As far as we could tell, it would seem that the site was
abandoned in the mid nineties, but it seems fairly difficult to establish
exactly why such a large and prominent site was closed.
UncleEggMan and I had been ponderously scratching
our chins over a few beers the night before, trying to decide what our target
was going to be for the next day, with so many choices, and without having any
accurate or reliable info on Filton – it was touch and go. We very nearly went
to the abandoned Roundway Asylum in Devizes, but decided that variety was the
spice of life and it was time for a visit to an industrial target. We were
prepped and on the road by
Having a really
easy drive up was a bit of a treat, with the only stumbling block being a £3.60
bill for two lame coffees at some motorway services. Greedy parasites. We were
soon parked up in a residential street near the perimeter and doing the usual
fence check. Quite a tough one to crack this, as almost all of it is in plain
view of shops, local residents and traffic – but a conveniently placed A-Frame
roadsign trestle thing served as a fantastic ladder with which to scale one of
the walls. We’re in.
The first area
was the old machine rooms, where it seems milling and grinding of various
components occurred. It wasn’t long before we realised how special this place
was. Not only is it big on overall atmosphere, but there are some fantastic
relics in every place you care to look. Old payslips and personal effects lie
under years of dust in old staff lockers, with dates as far back as 1983 all
over them, and there’s just too much mad-scientist-style machinery to mention
too, I wanted to get pictures of it all, but I’d still be there now. The wind
began to pick up, making those first ten minute nerves even tighter as bangs
and crashes filled the large workshops. We carefully moved through this part of
the site without any major events, until we reached a dead end and backtracked
to our entry point to try and head round the inside of the perimeter. We
successfully made our way round to the back of the Pegasus building, where we
discovered a tiny floor-level entrance point. After some deliberation, we chose
to leave this for now, despite the fact that this could arguably be the prime
cut of the site, due to the fact that we had a lot of gear and there didn’t
appear to be any guarantee we’d be able to use the same point as an exit. We
aimed to come back and make it the last thing we did. It turns out we were so
well entertained by the rest of what was on offer, we left it too late and
needed to head back without going in.
Stealth and
slickness were the order of the day, despite the inherent lack of anyone who gave
a damn, there is still a HUGE section of the West site still in use. A
surprisingly large infirmary and welfare office was next, stuffed full of
medical records and industrial injury reports scattered over desks. This was
followed by a thorough exploration of one of the multi-storey office buildings
which took up a good deal of our time (and UncleEggMan’s camera
batteries). From the flooded basement and sublevel crawlspaces to the
gale-force rooftop, with such delights as airlock rooms, test chambers and
elevator shafts in-between, we sure were kept busy. The day just went on and
on, with choice find after choice find – until we were just about out of time.
We’d recce’d our exit route across some open ground, from the safety of one of
the tower blocks and it was time to execute the plan.
We were over
that stuff like an ex-girlfriend and were soon preparing to get through the
perimeter and leave. A line of trees separates the open ground and the
sharp-pointy-topped fence (which itself sits on top of a considerable drop down
a 12ft granite wall, onto the pavement below) and it was here that we gathered
ourselves and checked for pedestrians below. We were resigned to being spotted
leaving by traffic, but dropping in on some passer by – covered in black
clothes and pigeon poo was not necessary. I was down first, followed by all the
gear, and then an ankle-testing leap of faith from UncleEggMan. It was
at this point that luck threw us a gift-wrapped turd. You know when you offer
your hand to someone to shake in triumph, but their mind is on something else?
And there’s that awkward few seconds before you draw it back – well, that’s
what was going on here – as UncleEggMan was less concerned with my
stupid “Top-Gun-I’ll-Be-Your-Wingman-Anyday” antics, and more worried about the
random Cop car that just happened to be driving past as two weirdo’s in black
gear jumped down the wall. Arse.
We were quizzed
by the Cop, who I felt deserved the truth – given that his first question was ‘So,
where you guys been then?’ and the ‘…in the nearby pub…’ response
was going to wash about as well as my pigeon-tarnished jacket. It turns out
that the truth was all he wanted, and he explained that material had been going
missing from the active part of the site and so security was actually much
tighter than we’d perhaps imagined, and we’d essentially been very lucky.
Really good cop actually, nice guy, with the required sense of humour. So, with
slightly dented pride, but a massive sense of relief at being branded
weird-asses, rather than crims – we made our way back to the Purple-Hearse for
what is expected to become a favourite post-ex meal; quiche and twiglets. But
for all the nourishment that fine meal offered, nothing comes close to getting
such a bellyful of urbex as offered by BAe Filton… and we estimate we’d only
done ¼ of the place.
PLEASE NOTE: ALL INFO CORRECT AT TIME OF WRITING;
HOWEVER THIS SITE HAS RECENTLY BEEN DEMOLISHED ( 2007 )
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BACK TO URBAN EXPLORATION <<<