M and TJ's urb-ex pages...

OK, so what exactly is Urb-Ex?

The word is an acronym created from the words URBan and EXploration - and basically it refers to the pastime of visiting abandoned buildings and the like, often derelict and decaying, for the purpose of exploration, and/or photographically documenting urban decay. The average Urb-Exer will visit a huge range of buildings and many will have their own particular favourite types - for example, military installations, hospitals and asylums (our own favourite), industrial, religious, underground and sewers, and even residential sites such as abandoned houses etc.

Sadly many newly abandoned buildings all too soon receive the attention of the two worst enemies of Urb-Ex; the chav and the pikey. Chavs seem hell bent on wreaking destruction by way of wanton vandalism, often leaving obscene graffiti behind in their wake as well. Paradoxically though graffiti can also arouse interest, amusement and even compliments when it is in the form of spray paint urban art rather than simply mindless name "tagging"...

Take for example this bold and somewhat derogatory statement in Latin - SEEN LEFT - carved into a stone door lintel at the Greaco-Roman Temple of Philae, presumably by a bored Roman soldier garrisoned there some time during the occupation of Egypt.

"B. Mure Stultus Est" = B. Mure is thick!!!

This particular example of sarcastic wit and spiteful repartee is almost certainly the best part of TWO THOUSAND years old! Consider too the names smoked onto the roofs with candles or burning torches in places like the relieving chambers above the Pharaoh's tomb in the Great Pyramid, or those within the Mortuary Temple of Rameses the Great. Here may be found a veritable Who's Who dating back as far as the early 1700s... on the face of it this graffiti is no different to "Bazza was 'ere" or the like, until you realise that many of the names such as Giovanni Belzoni, - SEEN BELOW RIGHT IN KHAFRE'S PYRAMID - Henry Salt, or Bernardino Drovetti, are those of the very first Egyptologists.

And it's odd to think that these august personages could actually be regarded as early Urb-Exers! The nature of the exploration they were conducting can be regarded as "educated trespass" but it's also fair to say that in far too many cases it was actually little more than state sponsored smash and grab! However I digress - just occasionally a talented spray paint urban artist will leave behind a work to wonder at - take a look at some of the offerings we photographed within the tunnel and clearing yard at Farleigh Down sidings. Graffiti then is not always a negative thing, but all too often it is little more than childishly obscene daubs with aerosol paint left behind by morons with the collective IQ of the average amoeba.

The pikey on the other hand, also referred to as the "metal thief", is totally selfish in his ruthless determination to rip out anything worth a bean from any building irrespective of it's history or aesthetics. They usually start with the lead flashings on the roofs because until very recently lead was the salvage metal of choice with the best scrap value. Decay rapidly sets in in the rooms below just as soon as water hits the plaster, and roof slates start to fly off in the first high winds, exponentially worsening the damp. And it doesn't usually take very long after the doors are shut for the last time before this sad process of evisceration begins. With the emergence of China as the new industrial super power their requirement for copper for the manufacture of printed circuit boards etc. by their burgeoning electronics industry has meant that copper has now shot up in price exponentially, so the pykeys are thieving electrical cable as well where ever they can find it. It is not unusual to enter building and see multi-coloured electrical spaghetti hanging down from walls and ceilings where some pykey has been disturbed mid harvest. Central heating radiators are a common target too, as are antique cast iron fire places and the like, and these hard faced individuals will often roll up at a site dressed in a high visibility vest and hard hat and brazenly harvest, load up and clear off in double quick time with Joe Public walking past only feet away! We have personally experienced exactly this phenomena at Aston Hall Mental Hospital near Derby in the summer of 2011 and we were completely taken in until they roared off in their van at a rate of knots with two radiators we had seen standing against a wall only a few minutes earlier.

ABOVE LEFT - Giovanni Battista Belzoni

The average Urb-Exer has a totally different attitude and approach to his target building. He also has an ethos completely at odds with that of the chav and the pikey. He will NOT enter the building by a route which requires the breaking down of, or removal of, any barrier to entry. He will instead seek a route in via somewhere which is already open, thus avoiding any question of his having committed a criminal offence in the form of "breaking and entering". Similarly he will never go on an exploration carrying tools which could be used to break in, not even the ubiquitous Swiss Army Knife. Despite the oft seen signage on abandoned buildings and the like, shouting in bold print six inches high that ‘ trespassers will be prosecuted ’, the act of trespass, intentional or otherwise, is technically NOT a criminal offence - so trespassers cannot normally be prosecuted. You as the Urb-Exer in question can however end up getting "arrested under suspicion" of whatever the dibble decide to try to fit you up with if they are called out, and theoretically the arrest could end up as civil court case with you being sued. But in order for such a prosecution to be successful the landowner must prove a significant financial loss as a result of the trespass.

I'd like to relate a little story which hopefully illustrates what I am saying about the Urb-Exer's ethos. In 2001 we visited a Grade II* listed building having viewed a really interesting report and accompanying photographs in an Urb-Ex forum before hand. The building had looked to be in quite good condition on the photographs with no particularly bad water damage anywhere other than in one wing which had clearly suffered a fire. Imagine then how appalled we were when we discovered during our exploration that the roof had been opened to the elements and the lead flashings were stashed in cupboards in the corridor below. Cast iron fireplaces had been removed from the walls and stock piled ready for removal, and the highly ornate wooden staircase which had originally come from a Mediaeval Bishop's palace was in the process of having all of it's wooden carvings and balustrades removed, presumably for re-sale as architectural salvage. It was pretty obvious that this was NOT the work of pykeys - why leave so much of this stuff behind having invested the time and effort to rip it out? The normal modus operandi of a pykey is to literally rip and tear stuff out, load it into a van, and once it is full they itty off sharpish. If their trip has been successful they will then come back for more, repeating this process and stripping the building out in small bites - they seldom stock pile even on a building with little or no security, and especially NOT on a building sited in plain view of a farm not a hundred yards away! Taking all this into account we strongly suspected it was actually the owner who was ripping this stuff out and opening the roofs to accelerate the decay. It's sad to say but more often than not a listed building which deteriorates beyond repair will be put to the bulldozer, so what better way to get rid of a thorn in your side if you are keen to sell the land a listed building stands upon? The number of "mystery" fires which break out in such buildings is very high too - Denbigh Asylum for example SEE ABOVE RIGHT - and that is also a way that unscrupulous listed building owners can bypass listing regulations. There was nothing we could do there and then but we resolved to contact the County Architect for the area the building was situated in, and he, after initially exhibiting a most off hand attitude because we hinted at being Urb-Exers, eventually took an interest in what we had to say and went after the building's owner - an away goal for the Urb-Ex community! Sadly though we need to score many, many more before we even begin to redress the balance at the current time.

Assuming then that the Urb-Exer hasn't got light fingers or is tooled up, or (God forbid) has actually broken in, then the worst that is likely to happen is that he will get bitten by an unleashed guard dog, or biffed over the head by a security ape who hasn't realised that HE is actually the one committing a serious offence in the form of assault by so doing! Basically if caught on site and challenged a sensible Urb-Exer will politely agree to leave without any argument and 9 times out of 10 that is the end of it. Saying that it's still always best to proceed quietly and discretely - avoiding a confrontation is eminently preferable to trying to extricate oneself from one!

So are the risks inherent in the Urb-Ex environment relatively low? Well, assuming you ignore the very real dangers of falling through rotten floors, down deep pits and chasms in the dark, treading on broken glass, sharp metal et all.... etc etc etc... OK, it can get a bit dodgy in some ways, but if you dress appropriately, light your way properly and tread warily, then it's an exciting and rewarding hobby. Photographic opportunities on the Urb-Exer's average explore can be legion - the quality of light encountered within such twisted and decayed environments offers the complete spectrum from stygian gloom shot through with shafts of light, to colour and shadow moulded and shaped by the surroundings within which the Urb-Ex photographer finds himself. Many photographers move rapidly beyond the "happy snappy" phase; they will go to great lengths to set up an elaborate artistic canvas upon which they will paint, not with the aerosol can of their chav rivals, but with additional lighting to augment the natural light, pro or semi-pro models as the focus of their composition, and sometimes even specific props brought in and set up with infinite care and attention to detail.

If you are interested in the artistic side of Urb-Ex, especially the photography, then I really recommend "Beauty In Decay" readily available from Amazon and the like, ISBN-10: 0955912148. Some of the photographs in this book are truly amazing, as are the sites within which they were taken. Château Miranda features and it is interesting to compare that particular photographer's artistic insight to our "happy snappy" documentary approach at the same location, our pictures from which appear by following the relevant link a little lower down this page.

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		St. John's Asylum, Lincoln. ...under construction...