Be Excellent To Each Other

Bit of a nonsensical title really. What I really mean is the buildings that make you the saddest when you walk past them.
I've always had a strange soft-spot for tumbledown, forgotten old places. It's kind of perverse, because while I desperately don't want them demolished, I don't want them scrubbed, renovated and modernised either. I think I just like the look of neglected buildings and the sad kick I get from looking at them.
Anyway, I'll kick things off with a pub I walk past most days on the way into work.


This is (was) The Flying Scud public house on the Hackney Road in Haggerston, London. I've just looked it up online, and it's been closed since June 1994, following a botched criminal investigation that saw the landlord unlawfully shot by police who then tried to plant a stun-gun in the premises (link). Anyway, the building's in a terrible state and it's such a shame that nobody's seen fit to reopen it. Happily, with the rapid gentrification of the area I reckon it stands a fair chance of survival, but you can never tell.

Got to be Battersea Power Station, for me. They keep trying to do little things with it, but it's such an amazing building it deserves more.

We need to have pictures too guys, otherwise how am I suppose to get my sad kicks?

Cheers Shin. They'll probably propose what they always propose - 'A leisure centre for the 21st century with luxury flats and shops!'

Shin's already beaten me to it, which I'm taking as an insult as I've been in Shrewsbury for about 20 years longer than her

Go down to the industrial estate outside Rye in Sussex. They have some awesome huge buildings that are falling down. There's one metal structure that is the size of a couple of football pitches which is just contorted and twisted beyond belief.

Oh, it might have been this I saw:
http://www.ryeandbattleobserver.co.uk/video/Footage-of-major-factory-fire.4276980.jp

Pontypridd railway station is an impressive derelict building... that's still in use! The locals are not impressed, as it's a glorious, huge Victorian railway station (of identical design to the other large stations in the area like Cardiff Central and Newport) that has been essentially cannibalised. There was once room for four platforms but now the original station houses only one, with ugly metal railings prevent people falling off onto the disused trackbeds. Instead of using the station as built, a second 'new' platform has been built opposite, for reasons I'll never understand.

Frankly, it's a disgrace...



...as is Barry Island station, which was once a huge four-platform terminus for holiday makers... and is now a crumbling ruin.



So is the old Aberdare station...

Alright, here's another one that gets me going. It's on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, London.


I don't actually know much about this one, other than that it appears to have been connected in some way to the fabric trade which was pretty ubiquitous to the area in the 19th century. As with so many buildings in the area, it's got loading bays and little hand operated cranes on the walls which show its industrial past. It's a bit difficult to tell from the pic, but this place is in seriously bad nick - you can see though the windows as you walk past and the floorboards are so rotten and waterlogged that they're hanging right down into the floor below. It's the only building on the street in anywhere near this condition and is in a pretty central location so I really can't understand how and why it's been left like this. It's like a sad, solitary reminder of the areas Victorian past

This made me think of a building in my hometown I see every day and just one day wish... wish... I can either buy to live in or make it the powerhouse of my multi-national company.



The building on the right is known as the Benlow Works and used to produce 'Aeolian Orchestrelle' organ players. Check out them stunning semi-circle windows at the top (alright the view of the Nestle works and the rest of Harlington is godawful) which are one selling feature, but the other side is a classic massive clock (much like Harold Lloyd hung off of in "The Man on the Clock") which sadly has its hands pointing both down :/

It is great to know people give a sh*t about these buildings deep down, I just thought I was weird of giving them adoration

There are so many wonderfully ornate and elaborate Victorian stations dotted around South Wales, they really are a legacy of a massive investment in splendour, that the Victorians did so well.

I especially like the growth of sea-side stations such as Barry Island that grew off the back off city dwellers flocking to the coast.

My favourite building at the moment is the old Art College in Newport (S.Wales) it's been derelict for years and years and now has some scaffolding and netting around it - hopefully to be re-developed but likely to be just gypsies stealing the ornate copper flashings from the roof.

I love the building because it reminds me that once upon a time someone thought that Newport was worthy of having both a grand railway station and a grand college. It's so ace, it even has a dome which really is the true test of a building's architectural prowess. Fact.

Newport Old Art College

(Due to my Luddite status I'm not sure how to 'do' images - so that might work?)

Being of the construction type, I was lucky enough to be involved in a project for the redevelopment of Ebbw Vale steelwork's old Works Office - walking around the derelict offices taking photos and having a poke around was one of the best days in work ever. The site at the peak of its production was colossal, it employed about 80,000 people. (Who all used to get paid in cash by the way!)

Thankfully the plan is currently to turn it into a museum type place rather than fancy dan flats apartments like everything else these days.

The trouble is, these old abandoned buildings are just so expensive to refurbish when compared to the cost of a new build of a similar size. Redevelopment of an old building relies so much on reusing what is there. The existing internal layout (stair cores, lift shafts etc.) eventually becomes a burden. Changes in building regulations (in terms of level access and fire safety) mean that the size, shape, orientation of a building prohibits an economic development. There's a point where it is simply cheaper and easier to tear the old building down (!), throw up a steel frame, clad it and fit it out to the layout that suits your needs. It really is a cost driven decision.

Edited for that dodgy link and some bad grammar!