'It was less than two years ago, yet I yearn for the days we went out and got in eight' - @slobberchops, Summer 2023.
2024 sucked for exploring. Compared to the years before, it was a fucking disaster. Travelling 70 miles and getting to four locations is not fun. Then there's the other 70 miles for the return trip.
In the summer of 2023, we made several visits to South Yorkshire, which would be the last fruitful visits in terms of ‘decent derp return per expedition’.
Most were derps, but that’s fine with me. You can’t be accused of stealing valuables from a shithole, can you?
I am seeing more and more burglars and thieves masquerading as explorers on Facebook in recently deceased people's properties.
There are also more cops, and more people are bragging about being chased by those cops. Is this Urban Exploring today? I watch Facebook but rarely comment. It seems to be about the 'explorer celebrities' now and not the real content.
It looked like a public park, and that was unexpected. Google Maps showed it as private, so this was a bonus. We could walk in, and not have the customary ‘OY’ yelled at us when passing the gatehouse.
It was also easy to see. A short jaunt up a certain pathway and we could view the target. It was not an old building, but a gaggle of newer ones.
Lady Mabel's College was supposed to date back to the 1800s, and yet these looked to have been built possibly in the 1970s.
A consequence of the historic building closing and these other ones were collateral damage?
..but the 'real' Lady Mabel building has not closed down, so what happened here?...
The Lady Mabel College campus was located at Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire, England. The college was a women's teacher training college for physical education.
We were going to have a good look around what looked like a partial construction site, come campus and bollocks to the old house.
You can book a tour of the historic college, and I can guarantee this will not include the old campus.
Well… whoops, but this comment is five years old, and besides mountains of dirt everywhere, fuck all seems to have been done.
We were not to know it, but the very first building was going to cause the most interest, and that's overstating things.
Where did the students go every day to listen to their boring lecture, trying to look interested but all the while, trying even more so to keep awake?
This is a separate hi-fi tape deck unit. I had one, in the early nineties, but even then, cassette tapes were seriously out of fashion. The VHS tape sat on top will not fit in there, and if you are old enough that does not need to be explained.
I have seen some YouTube videos of 'Lady Mabel's College Campus' from years before. These units look to have been sitting here for the best part of ten years..., maybe longer.
If you straighten out the sofa, a good time could be had. Budweiser though? Hardly the King of Beers at least in my mind.
Perhaps it was the 'security team' mentioned above who downed all these are now currently asleep on the other side of that window and about to nurse a hangover?
Amazingly sturdy considering the front door is wide open and the wind and rain can come freely and wreak havoc on the floorboards.
Ugh, I would not like to do the washing up. Plenty of plates left in the cupboards, so little point, although they are likely to be as dirty as the ones left on the top.
I think I would rather have one of the rooms that have no tree boughs coming through your window. No or little light would also be a factor.
Why the big pile of earth if you are going to do nothing with it? Leaping on a nearby roof is a little easier, but I am sure that was not the idea.
While most of the doors were surprisingly locked, many windows beckoned us in, including this one @anidiotexplores vaulted through, with myself in tow.
These corridors once would have been bustling with life, full of students, getting pissed and having a good time. That's what college is about… right?
Built-in wardrobes and shelves, what else would you expect?
Dead trees poking through your windows, is an optional extra. Some fool must have paid for this additional feature.
When you want to leave the college, the best way is through window and then it's a short hike up a mountain (as demonstrated by @anidiotexplores). Who says the local authorities don't have healthy exercise benefits as a priority?
Chairs are left to help out the needy. I mean it would not pass health and safety standards for quick exits in case of a fire, but there’s little in the way of flammable material inside.
While it looks like modern architecture lost in the middle of the Amazon jungle, this is Rotherham, South Yorkshire.. a particularly discarded run-down town as you will find from some of my future posts in the area.
We left quietly, in search of more wrecks to find, and found some.
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