Modern Brick Factory

A small modern ceramic plant that once produced colourful decorative facing bricks. It closed because of a property dispute: after a divorce, the former owners were unable to divide their shared debts and put the factory up for sale — though buyers appear to be in no hurry, while other, more entrepreneurial people have already cut a hole in the fence and made off with every last metre of electrical wiring.

The site consists of a single two-bay workshop, closely resembling similar factories in other countries — most likely built and fitted out to a standard turnkey design, a sort of “factory, all inclusive.” Inside there is one extruder, two tunnel kilns, dozens of drying chambers, an office section, and a former workshop. The office wing has preserved its furniture, folders of documents, and some office equipment; the changing room still has lockers, showers, and toilets — along with an enormous and ominous pile of dirty socks.

The workshop roof has skylights, so during the day the interior creates the strange illusion of artificial lighting. Outside the workshop, conveyors and one tall silo tower for bulk raw materials have survived. Among the more unusual features: there is a beer kiosk inside the workshop. The kilns, it seems, ran on coal; the workers ran on beer. Raw materials and fuel were delivered by lorry. In front of the workshop there was once an open-air finished-goods yard — now just an empty expanse.

The gatehouse is closed and deserted, everything coated in dust and slowly being claimed by cobwebs. You can enter the workshop through a missing wall section near the conveyor, since the gates and doors are padlocked from the inside. From outside, the site reads as thoroughly ambiguous — there is nothing anywhere to indicate this is a factory at all, just an enormous blue hangar standing in the middle of fields. The gate carries a for-sale notice with no explanation, only a phone number. There are two cameras, but no one left to watch them. Every now and then someone does come to check the premises and cut back the encroaching grass.