I looked upon Excelsior Works and those dreadful memories came flowing back in an instant.
Long, long ago on a distant remote block-chain, I wrote about my brief experience at working in such a factory, where one was constantly heckled by bullies, forced to smoke at knife-point and live out your tea-breaks in the smoking room where bellows of it belched out whenever anyone opened the nicotine encrusted door.
Shuddering I wiped the experience out of my head, knowing that most of these shitty cotton factories now look just like this one standing in front of me, relics from a bygone era.
If I was to find to discover a brown-coloured room tarred with what looks like vintage shit within its depths, I could be certain of its origins.
How to get in such an imperious old building was my present conundrum. Walking in the front door rarely works and this one was locked firmly.
We casually walked into what looked like a builder’s yard, hoping the owner had no Rottweiler’s off-lead that would eat us alive.
Being Saturday has its advantages, there was not a soul about and what's more the yard appeared to give us entry into the old works.
Having checked out a few quite boring and empty rooms, I came across this one. There was some building work going on here.
Not a place we want to be in; we moved on quickly experiencing one room that obviously had rats living underneath the sacks as I heard squeaks while treading over them in my conquest to find something remotely interesting.
The town of Huddersfield appears to have more than its fair share of these troublesome rodents, and I had seen a few on that same day at various locations.
This area did look like part of Excelsior Works but not the main factory area. It was a little like a rabbit warren with passages going everywhere.
I vainly tried to capture this web created by a giant spider that was lurking in the shadows. It didn't come out quite as anticipated.
One larger area containing very little of interest led up to the huge chimney.
Peering up there gained me little beside the expected light close to the top.
Through this archway where @anidiotexplores lurks, we found a bagful of old tapes, not in the English tongue.
I didn’t pick up the books as I can’t understand Punjabi or Urdu or Hindi, it is one of those.
After some scouring around and getting quite bored we noticed 'the hole'. Someone had tried to seal 'the hole' which had been broken open, only to cause a partial roof collapse.
"Are you going through, there could be gold bullion inside", I jested to @anidiotexplores.
I didn’t take much and I watched as he crawled through this ridiculously lethal hole just to see what was on the other side.
“Come through”, was the expected yell.
Fucking hell, here we go again
I crawled through the hole trying in earnest not to touch anything. The other side hosted a support pole and I knew this was fragile territory I was in.
’...@anidiotexplores requires soothing medicinal smoked herbs to navigate the hole and impart the inner calmness for such a feat'…
I wish I could say it was worth the effort. The other side opened up a wide-open space which required another climb in the far corner.
We had made the roof and all that was needed was yet another climb that was around 15 feet down into the old factory.
The rusty metal girders seemed sturdy enough but shimmying that wide wooden beam and trusting the wooden old office structure NOT to collapse was going too far.
If that all collapsed there was no way out and for what? It looked quite bare down there with little of interest, not even a 'brown room'.
Scoping out the back areas sought us precious nothing in terms of alternative routes for once. It was that climb or this was it.
I wouldn’t call Excelsior Works a failure, more a lesson in how far should you go. While ‘the hole’ was dangerous, it shows you that you are responsible for your own actions.
I loved Excelsior Works as once again the challenge and risk gave me that buzz I get from places that are not walk-ins. Live dangerously.
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'Tales of the Urban Explorer'
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