Location: Oxford, UK Gender: Male Total Likes: 2377 likes
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Precious Metals Refinery < on 7/6/2020 9:54 AM > | Reply with Quote
I pointed this place out to a friend of mine the other week as I couldn't venture into it due to being there on a weekday and there being a hell of a lot of activity around the site, but seeing his photos he was sending me when in there I knew I needed to give it a look myself. Fast forward a week and a bit and I returned, and a thoroughly enjoyable mooch was had.
The factory was built in 1950 and originally manufactured biscuits, however in 1962 it was bought by a new owner who turned it into a metal processing plant, in order to refine precious metals from scrap. The site also manufactured industrial chemicals, catalysts, inks and paints as a side product. During the late 1980s employment fell at the factory and it closed for good in the late 1990s. After closure the front portion of the site was bought by a company that manufactures industrial loading docks, which went some way to explain the multitude of artic truck trailers and supermarket rolling cages around the site. The rear portion was purchased by another metal processing company in 2011.
The middle part of the factory however is totally derelict. It's completely beaten to shit on the upper floors however the basement level is rather nice with original equipment and machinery still intact and decaying very nicely indeed, certainly showing the 20+ years of dereliction well. There is also a flooded sub-basement level which would need more resilient footwear to investigate properly but not being equipped for that I chose to spare my feet a soaking in the murky water.
Location: Oxford, UK Gender: Male Total Likes: 2377 likes
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Re: Precious Metals Refinery < Reply # 4 on 7/7/2020 10:13 AM > | Reply with Quote
Posted by YotaMan20 Sweet! What's going on in photo no. 8?
A lot of the buildings upper floors was laboratory space and the lower floors were refinery areas, so there were whole rooms filled with fume cupboards.