If there is one location I've written about more than any other on here, one place I could spend literally days boring the hell out of people with, it's Pyestock - or, to rightly give it it's proper title, the National Gas Turbine Establishment Pyestock, most often shortened to NGTE Pyestock, or arguably the greatest derelict location the UK ever had. Those words, and that acronym, even the name 'Ively Road' (the road that leads past, and into the site) instantly tend to make explorers such as myself who have been in the game more than a decade and visited the site in it's glory days go all misty-eyed and reminisce about 'the good old days' running away from Gurkha security guards cycling - and later driving - around the site. That and the constant nervous energy walking through the woods along the fence line, trying to make it through the 'no man's land' between the double fences where security would also patrol, sliding under or climbing over the tangled maze of enormous blue pipes snaking around the site, nervously checking around corners for the security patrols, clambering down into the depths of the sub-surface Cell 3, fumbling through the so-called 'Monk's Tunnel' which handily connected Cell 3 and Cell 4 with the 'Computer Building' in the centre of the site - a godsend for avoiding security.

They really were the good old days and I had four incredible trips there in 2010. Sadly, as is the case with all locations, all good things must come to an end. In 2013 the bulldozers and long reach grabbers were assembling, and within a year or so the entire site was gone. Well, almost all of it. After the site closed for good in 2001 the Anechoic Chamber carried on fulfilling it's role as an active test facility, only shutting down in 2017. I have fond memories of the deafening roar produced by the exhausts on one side of the building whilst wandering around the northern end of the site on my own one fraught trip, having been separated from my companions. This part of the site gave the 'new' explorers who hadn't been around to see Pyestock in it's glory days a taste of just how enormous and epic the place used to be. Alas it's a part I never got into, I had one attempt there on a horrible cold rainy day in January 2018, after trudging all the way up the wasteland from the south end of the site, past the only three recognisable structures remaining at that point - the electrical substation compound (still active), the sunken trench partly filled with water which used to contain Cell 3, and the road bridge in the middle of the site which carried cars and people over a mass of pipework - we found the chamber at the far north end sealed. After having a very very close call with security, twice, and after clambering around everything looking for a way in we threw in the towel and buggered off, tail between our legs. The Anechoic Chamber is now in the process of demolition prep, it's stripped of it's distinctive foam blocks and the exhauster side has been demolished, so it won't be long for this world.

There is, however, one part still hanging on. Separated from the rest of the site, across Ively Road and on a different parcel of land sits the water treatment plant. Totally overlooked by everyone during the years Pyestock was explorable, for obvious reasons, it was even overlooked by the people who only did the Anechoic Chamber. Like the rest of Pyestock it was designed to be big, as the volume of water it would have to treat was of course huge. Everything at Pyestock was built to a massive scale during it's expansions in the 1950s and 1960s, and the water treatment plant was no exception. Like the rest of the site it closed around 2001 and will likely be demolished at some point, the ground between it and the developer's site office at the main area of redevelopment has already been cleared, and new shitty houses are spreading like a rash northwards across the land which once housed so much epic.

These were all taken on my phone, as I didn't expect to be going here - we simply swung past as we were in the area.

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In the last photo, the developer's site office can be seen on the right hand side, and the taller grey concrete building just visible behind it is the Anechoic Chamber. The elevated pipeline on the left would at one point have snaked it's way all the way over into the main site.

This will probably be the last time I ever see this place, although when the housing estate is complete part of me would like to see what an affront to history looks like for myself.

Great post, and thank you for sharing your awesome location and memories with us!

I can relate somewhat to the nostalgia and sentimentality you describe about this place. I have a lot of those feelings for a place here in Texas that is mostly gone now (but also still has one solitary building hanging on!). It was a meat packing plant called Swift Armory (the Armory was added when they were bought out by Swift) in Fort Worth, Texas. In its heyday, the location was literally its own city, called Niles City. The city was surrounded by and eventually annexed by the much larger city of Fort Worth. Not long after, Swift Meat Packing slowly began to fade away.

Even though we know the existence of places like this is finite, it's still hard to say goodbye.

Great post! This was the site where you went inside the tanks on one of your previous write-ups, right? Or am I thinking of a different place?

Posted by Aran Great post! This was the site where you went inside the tanks on one of your previous write-ups, right? Or am I thinking of a different place?

That's a different place! Unfortunately the only way up into the largest concrete tank here was by shimmying up a very sketchy looking rope as the metal stairs had been cut off right at the top. Not something worth falling off for!

This place looks amazing and it makes me angry that I've never left North America lol