RAF High Ercall sick quarters

(Photo credit: Graham Innes- click link for his Flickr)

Welcome to the sick quarters of RAF High Ercall. 

It's not usually my style to open with someone else's shot but credit goes to Graham Innes. As soon as I saw his drone photo I knew it was exactly what I needed, and would make a superb establishing shot of the building. I don't have a drone, nor should I be trusted with piloting one, or anything for that matter, but they are undeniably useful sometimes.  

As you can see, the sick quarters is shaped sort of like a backwards F. It's not immediately obvious due to the vegetation, but the lower arm is connected via a small diagonal passage. This is apparently the "decontamination annex" which sounds exciting. I assume it focused on the removal of chemical and biological contaminants, and making sure that people who came to the hospital were cleaned before they were brought into a room full of sick people. That makes sense. 

The sick quarters is actually some distance away from the other buildings of RAF High Ercall, which means it often gets overlooked. In fact on maps of RAF High Ercall, it's rarely included at all. Even the Luftwaffe's dossier of High Ercall doesn't feature it. It's just over the edge of the map.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I first explored Camelot theme park, I met a couple who showed me their photos of the main buildings at RAF High Ercall, and it looked incredible, but I was late to that party. It's all been repurposed now. I'm disappointed that I missed the opportunity, but not bitter. In urbex, you win some, you lose some. I'm sure there are people out there who look at what I have done, and feel the same way. That's just the nature of the game. Camelot is actually a great example. Nobody is going to climb that roller coaster ever again. 

High Ercall's sick quarters, on the other hand, go largely ignored, even by other urbexers. The entire complex is just quietly tucked out of the way. Of course it's only a matter of time before someone does something with it, so I decided to get there first.

So this is the top branch of the backwards F. It's most notable feature is a water tower. In the 1940s this building would have been full of patient beds, but on my visit, it was full of rubble. There were just piles of bricks all over the floor, and my photos of it seem to have disappeared mysteriously. They're probably mis-filed somewhere, and I'll probably stumble across them in five years when I'm working on some other blog. But until then, this is what we've got. Fortunately my interior shots of the rest of the building are still with us. I'm not completely lacking in organisational ability. 

While the airfield itself started construction in 1938, this hospital wasn't built until 1941. But even then, it was expected to be obsolete and demolished in about a decade. Its survival into the 21st Century makes it quite remarkable from a heritage standpoint, and I actually think it deserves better than to quietly rot away. Structurally it's still sound, and it even has a bomb shelter. 

Despite its dilapidated condition, it seems that it has been used for storing farm equipment. But even then, there's not much of it here, and it's all in a state of similar decay.

Prior to my visit there was actually another building. It's long gone, but it does show up on old streetview images from 2009. My partner found a photo of it from 1987.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Apparently this building was the ambulance station and also the mortuary. I'm not sure how it can be both, but this isn't a case of conflicting sources. The same source claims it was both.

My only guess is that when it came to plane mishaps, a lot of people were dead before they made it here, and it was just far easier to just get them out of the ambulance and into the mortuary straight away. But having never seen the interior of this building, I don't know.  

It sure is cool to see this place still derelict nearly four decades ago. Look closely and you can see a ladder on the water tower. Now that would have been fun to get a view from!

It's time to slip inside the remaining buildings! 

So, referring back to the opening drone shot, I'm entering through the top right corner into the vertical bit of the F-shaped building. The door to the left goes further down this building, while the dark shadowy doorways lead to the decontamination annex and the portion with the water tower. 

Up at this end of the building, it's mostly just smaller rooms that I presume were offices for the hospital staff. There was probably a kitchen and store rooms too. 

As far as decay goes, it's quite pretty. The wall has collapsed inward, and nature has just clawed its way in. 

The takeover of nature is evident throughout the building. Ivy is creeping all over the floor, and I love it.

RAF High Ercall has quite an interesting history, compared to other old airfields in Shropshire. During the war it also served as a Nightfighter station. That is, planes that were modified to be more effective for night time missions.

The nightfighters of High Ercall were quite successful, shooting down five luftwaffe bombers during the war. Four of these were by a squadron led by Wing Commander Max Aitken, the son of the minister of aircraft production. Max Aitken was something of a legend. It's said that he once flew his plane under Ironbridge's titular iron bridge. His logbook, now in an RAF museum, doesn't support this story, but it's still a testament to his skills and reputation that such seemingly insane and borderline suicidal stunts have been attributed to him. 

Max Aitken. (Photo not mine, obviously)

As a nightfighter station, High Ercall temporarily hosting the top-secret and retrospectively ridiculous unit codenamed Turbinlite in June 1942. That is, some aircraft were fitted with giant torches, with the aim of illuminating attacking jets so that the accompanying aircraft could shoot them down. This proved to be too much of a faff to efficiently co-ordinate, and eventually advancements in radar technology made the whole concept obsolete. 

(Photo of the Turbinlite taken from Wikipedia)

But for a time, Turbinlite was an intriguing prospect, and while it was stationed at High Ercall, it attracted King George VI to Shropshire to check it out. Here he is greeting the troops. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

What I love about this shot is that they've clumsily brushed out the Turbinlite aircraft in the background, because it was top secret and the media didn't want even a background image of it falling into enemy hands, just in case the Nazis decided to make their own giant flying torch. 

I find the entire concept quite entertaining. Whenever we see "Top secret," it makes us think of really shady shit, like Area 51 and MK Ultra. What if Area 51 is just where they stick flashlights on planes?

But as amusing as the idea is, it doesn't really have much to do with the sick quarters. Although I imagine a top secret military operation, regardless of how silly it might sound, wouldn't publicise any medical mishaps. Fortunately, not all of the incidents at High Ercall were top secret.

Here we have an antique scale for weighing potato sacks. 

In 1944, a chap stationed here named Dennis Moore claimed that there was actually a very low incident rate at High Ercall. The size of the hospital certainly does indicate that. In June 1942 High Ercall had 2,183 people stationed there, including 225 WAAFs and 309 Americans. I think if injuries and sickness were really that prevalent, then the hospital would need to be bigger. 

The airfield was bombed in March 1941, but with  no casualties and very minor damage, unless one includes the water pipes. If the Germans achieved anything, it was causing the airfields toilets to freeze over in the cold weather. 

That October, two Czechs named Josef Kloboucnik and Sgt Josef Klvacek requested permission to land at High Ercall. Their request was denied due to there being too many obstructions on the runway. They instead tried to make it to Atcham before crashing nearby. Their plane was found to have bullet holes, indicating that they had been in some sort of aerial skirmish, and their bodies were allegedly taken to the mortuary here for a bit. 

Two other men who were likely brought to the mortuary here were Geoffrey Butcher and his radio operator Irwin Wiskar. They crashed a mile away during a night training exercise in May 1941. Geoffrey Butcher had been offered a scholarship at Oxford University just before the war broke out. He never got to explore his potential there. 

Geoffrey Butcher (Photo not mine, obviously)

The biggest incidents seemed to be related to mishaps on the airfield. Perhaps the most colourful case to pass through the mortuary was in December 1941 when a man tripped and fell onto the planes propeller while removing the wedge that they stick under the aircrafts wheels to stop it rolling away. That probably gave the folks at the mortuary some interesting work, to say the least. But Dennis Moore claims that most accidents were caused by the vehicles hitting obstacles, and he seems to be right.

In June 1942 an American pilot collided with a lorry, and in November a 21-year-old former butcher named Desmond Gale landed his Hurricane plane only for it to swerve off the runway, hit a concrete slab and flip over. 

And then there's the story of Jim Harris. In August 1942 he noticed that a plane was out of control and about to hit the building that he was working in. He screamed for everyone to run, but he then froze in the doorway while everyone else scrambled. Despite heading right for him, the planes nose suddenly plunged downwards, and the aircraft crashed and burst into flames, with its engines landing on either side of Jim. At first everyone thought Jim was dead, and were amazed to see him emerge unscathed. The pilots had actually plunged the plane downwards on purpose. They were doomed anyway, but their last action was saving the people in the building.

Jim Harris in an aircraft, looking more chilled than he was on the day he almost died. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

These people were, of course, brought to the mortuary. I don't know much about the people who were treated in the actual hospital. I'm sure they were plentiful, but unfortunately deaths make the headlines more often than injuries and illness. 

I did find one story of a crew of ten who made an emergency landing at High Ercall and needed their wounds treated after a battle above France in September 1943. And then after the war, a planes engine failed as it was making its way down the runway. The plane kept driving along and crashed. That pilot being treated here for mild injury. 

There's minimal information out there, but I assume this place was a lot busier than that. 

This is the passageway to the decontamination annex, and it is deliciously creepy. It clearly served some sort of purpose as an agricultural store room but the ivy is reaching in, and if left undisturbed could someday form a veil to pass through to get to the rest of the facility.

The natural decay in this place is pretty awesome. There's no graffiti or vandalism, but as the archived images would suggest, it was derelict nearly forty years ago and possibly longer. That's a long time for a place to be abandoned and not vandalised. 

In the corner on the floor we can see the remains of shower fixtures. 

It's not the best after eighty years of being disused, but we can clearly see where the showers once were in this decontamination unit, and that's pretty cool. People being admitted into the hospital would have been taken here first, showered and changed into clean garments before entering the main ward. 

This corridor leads down to the bottom of the vertical part of the F-shaped building, and I guess as far as relics go it's pretty interesting. 

Evidently this is the part that the farmer used the most, although even these carts look pretty ancient. 

In the 1940s this room would have been full of beds for patients. I haven't been able to find any vintage internal shots of this particular sick quarters, but I'll include one from another airfield to give a rough idea of how this area may have looked.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

It's not clear when High Ercall hospital closed, but I assume it was shortly before the airfield itself. Following the war, things predictably calmed down a bit. In 1951, High Ercall began serving as a relief landing ground for any training flights that couldn't make it back to their main base, but primarily it was just used for storing and scrapping old aircraft. It was said that during this time it held over 1,700 planes, and some were actually sold for ridiculously low prices to whoever wanted one. The last planes left in 1957 and the airfield closed for good in 1962. While many of the hangars and buildings have been repurposed, the hospital seems to have gone untouched. 

The last part of the hospital, and personally my favourite bit, is the air raid shelter. 

Seriously, who doesn't love an air raid shelter?

 

It's so cool to see this still intact. Back in the 1940s, when the siren went off, the nursing staff and presumably any able-bodied patient would head for this shelter to wait out the bombing. It's entirely likely that they came here during the bombing in 1941. 

I am curious about how anyone in hospital with a crippling injury would have made it down here. These shelters really only cater to the able-bodied. 

Air raid shelters are always pretty cramped, even when it's just me down here, but I love that this one is still accessible. I think it's important to see it, and get a glimpse of what conditions were like. Just picture this shelter packed with people, waiting out the blitz. All they'd be able to hear is the siren wailing, the sound of overhead aircraft, and the dropping of bombs in the distance. They'd have no option other than to wait it out, wondering about the extent of the devastation on the surface. Their homes might be destroyed and their loved ones might be dead, and they'd be kept wondering until the blitz ended.

And that's why I really dislike the cringey clickbait taglines that Youtubers like to slap on their videos. The truth is enough. It doesn't need sensationalising. Let these people keep their dignity. 

That's all I have for the RAF Sick Quarters. In my opinion it's a very important location from a heritage standpoint, and it absolutely deserves more than this. Those who worked tirelessly to tend to the sick and the injured deserve to have their efforts remembered. 

Development was proposed in 2023 with the aim of making the old sick quarters into four houses. This was approved with the understanding that it would be respectful to the location's history. It's not a listed building but it is regarded as a heritage asset. The plan was to convert the buildings respectfully, and retain historic features like the water tower, and also have information boards explaining the history of the site. The air raid shelter was to be turned into a bat roost.

It all sounds pretty cool. 

But as is often the case, the developers don't give a shit about British heritage or history. This year one of the buildings was just flat-out demolished instead of renovated, and suddenly a whole new construction was underway. The council ordered it all to stop and for the new building to be taken down. It was appealed, but the council stuck to their guns. 

It's nice that they care, but it's a little too late. Of course if they'd cared from the start then it wouldn't have fallen into dereliction to begin with. 

It's times like this that really reflect why urbex is important. I may have missed the mortuary but I snapped the rest of it before it was gone forever. The fact that trespass is required in order to document history is a greater crime than the trespass itself. 

But that's all I've got. In order to stay updated with my blog, the best way is by following me on the quagmire of broken dreams that is social media. I'm on Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter for some reason. But my hope is that the likes of Bluesky (what Twitter should be) Vero (what Instagram should be) and Cara (Instagram for artists) take off and give us some actual positive social media. I'm on those too, waiting patiently as they grow. 

Thanks for reading!

Some abandoned house

 

I think almost everyone who has ever done urbex has made the joke at some point that they are the perfect person to ask for help hiding a body. 

I actually said it to my partner back in June. But the facetious remark really fell flat when my brother came over and the first thing out of his mouth was "did you hear about that body found in an abandoned house?" 

And it turned out that the house in question was this one. I had already explored it but hadn't yet written about it. I'd thought it bland at the time, and just chucked it onto my to-do list to research later. 

I really won't go too deep into recent news. I know some urbex kids like to call houses "the murder mansion" and use it for all their clickbait, but I'm not about that. This only happened a few months ago. It's all very fresh.

I went here some time before a body was found there (and hopefully before the body was put there) and I freely admit my visit was for the silliest of reasons. You see, some guy showed up in the comments of a past blog post, telling people to go follow his Facebook page because he allegedly had better urbex spots than me. But then he showed up in my inbox asking for locations, and I thought this was all a bit cheeky. So rather than hand him any urbex spots, I decided to just find his. One of us knows how to use Google. It's only existed for a quarter of a century. 

It turned out that the only place he'd been that I hadn't was this place. I was going to call it something silly like "Petty Revenge Manor" but that name probably isn't appropriate if someone has been murdered here. I had hoped that a better name would emerge through the narrative, but there isn't anything. It's just some abandoned house. 

The house is all boarded up, obviously unloved, and completely hidden from the street. Just getting here seems to take more effort than it's worth. And yet someone had ripped the boards off one of the doors and broken in. 

The house is just a big and empty. It feels like someone was in the process of renovating it but then stopped for some reason. The one thing I did like about it was its fireplaces. They're all really cute. 

I'd say the adorable fireplaces are a defining feature of this house, although that's not saying much. The only direction is up, really. 

As far as urbex goes, this place has Rightmove vibes. I know some urbexers do use Rightmove to find vacant properties, and they're almost always just empty houses. They get mocked by Urbexers who aren't motivated solely by the need to keep the youtube ball rolling. I'll probably get mocked too, and it's okay. This time I deserve it. 

The house first shows up on maps in the 1930s, when it was lived in by a dairy farmer named William. William had been born in Bridgnorth in 1900. He married his wife Hilda in 1928 and they moved here together, being the first occupants of the house. Presumably it was a farm at the time, given his occupation, although the town has grown and the surroundings are considerably less rural now. 

William and Hilda had two daughters here, named Margaret and Barbara, and records show that they were living here together in 1939. 

But details about them are vague, and given that Margaret and Barbara have children and grandchildren who still live in the area, I haven't really dug that deep. But what I find really interesting is that even though the family eventually moved out, later documents would keep referring back to the fact that they used to live here.  

For example, Hilda died in 1975, and her obituary says exactly where she lived when she died, but then casually adds that she used to live here, as if that's significant in some way. It's as if people were going to read it and say "Oh, they mean that Hilda." 

I suppose it could just be that she'd only recently moved out, but then they did the exact same thing with William for his obituary in 1991, and he was living in Berkshire by then. 

So there is something intriguing here. Their obituaries put emphasis on the two of them once living in this house, but I have absolutely no idea why. Perhaps they were just really well-known dairy farmers. 

There's a tiny room just next to the stairs, and it seems that someone has used it as a bit of a dumping ground for all their renovation clutter and whatever former belongings happened to be lying around. 

Once again, the fireplace is cute. 

There are these old Christmas coasters up on the mantlepiece. 

There's an old graphics tablet here. 

And then next to that room is a slightly larger one that has some very adorable wallpaper that really gives the house that grandma vibe. I can totally see a pensioner chilling out in this place. 

And that brings us to our next occupant for this house, a chap called Thomas.

 

Thomas was born in 1908, and he must have moved in with his wife Hilda shortly after William and the other Hilda moved out.

It sure is a fun coincidence that two women called Hilda have occupied this house. I don't think I've ever even met one Hilda. 

But I digress. Thomas and Hilda did have two children, Beryl and Bob, I really doubt they came here with them. This would have been a place that they retired to.

I have no idea what happened to Hilda, but Thomas died in Shrewsbury Hospital in 1991, and suddenly this house was vacant. 

Regardless of how exciting a place is or isn't, I do enjoy looking at abandoned places and imagining how they would have looked when they were furnished and loved.

But I can't really do that with this house, because in 1998 it underwent a dramatic renovation. According to the article in question, the house had an extension to give it a lounge, a play room, three additional bedrooms and an ensuite. 

That's like the majority of the house. What did it look like before???

I assume these changes were made by the final occupants of the house, a couple from Sheffield who I shall not name. They're still alive, and researching the living is a bit creepy. I'm a renegade historian, not a stalker. I'm not sure when the house became vacant, but streetview shows the driveway become gradually more dishevelled between 2009 and 2017. Given the inclusion of a "play room," I assume the occupants had children, and quite a bit of dosh to throw into this place, all of which makes its current state rather mysterious. I mean, why invest in such a project if it's just going to be allowed to fall into ruin? Presumably they sold it, and it's the current owners who have it in developmental limbo.

The kitchen is quite nice. It's very spacious. I could totally lie on the ground and make dust angels if I really wanted to, and if I fancied getting tetanus, and that's more than I can say for my kitchen. 

And now onto the best part of any abandoned house, the teeny downstairs toilet: 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

In the airing cupboard there's this teeny football. 

Moving on upstairs!

I cant really talk about the history of the house without mentioning the very recent discovery of a body here, but I also want to keep it brief because this only happened in June. The investigation is still ongoing. All I know is what the media has currently said, and that is that a 26-year-old homeless man has been arrested, along with a 21-year-old who is possibly an accomplice. The police came here and found the body of a man who was identified as 45-year-old Alexis De Naray, a local chef. 

The names are freely available on the internet, including the names of those arrested, but as the investigation is still ongoing, I don't think it's appropriate to point fingers until the verdict is absolute. And besides, it's always better to focus on the victim and remember them. From what I've heard, Alexis was one hell of a chef. One post on Facebook said that the culinary world will never be the same again.

I do have questions, like how the police knew to come here, but this is not the time or place to speculate on a criminal case that is still ongoing. An arrest has been made and a trial is commencing as I write this, and that's about as much as we can hope for when a dead body shows up. I feel like any expression of my own opinions at this stage is a little disrespectful. I offer my condolences to the family and loved ones of Alexis. 

There's a very cute bathroom up here. 

But what's really odd is that it has a fireplace. I have seen fireplaces in the bathrooms of abandoned houses before, but usually those houses are ancient. This one feels a little too modern to have such eccentricities. Perhaps this room was something else until the 1998 renovation. 

Moving onto the bedrooms, this one has an ensuite. I guess this is the one that was added to the house in 1998. 

But really, the rooms are just featureless and bland. I can 100% see why the urbexer who first came here then came to me for additional locations for their weird youtube channel (of which I would not be getting a cut of the ad revenue) and this brings me to my rant of the day. 

People who beg for locations and whine when I'm not forthcoming boil my piss a bit. They aren't really into urbex are they? They're into the fact that people on the internet are into urbex. If they themselves were truly into it, they'd put in the effort. Researching the history of this place was harder than finding it. In fact it was an infuriating challenge trying to find even a slither of information about it. But I did it, because I love what I do. I love the challenge, and  I love urbex. I visit places that I find by using my own initiative and effort, and you know what? Its not that hard. 

These people are all like "I don't know how to find my own places, stop gatekeeping" as if they're entitled to the rewards of other people's efforts. 

Urbex isn't hard. I've done it for fifteen years, and I've done it with a developmental disorder that seriously impacts my physical co-ordination, balance, depth perception, my motor functions, and my organisational abilities. And these fifteen years of urbex have still been easier than the year I spent working in a call centre. Get these urbex kids real jobs. 

The bedrooms are actually labelled with numbered signs, which is curious. I assume they were labelled for some kind of renovation that never took place. 

But I've seen some council plans, and much to my surprise they actually want to put a roundabout right where this house is. Do we really need another one? 

I guess there must have been a spike in sales of red paint in the area. 

This last bedroom has some rather pleasant wallpaper and another fireplace, but I guess these two things are the main things to see here. If you like fireplaces and wallpaper, this house is for you. Otherwise, it's pretty low-level urbex. 

I'll finish on a ray of sunshine, because that's exactly what this house isn't.

That's all I've got! If my next adventure is even half as exciting as this one then... well I'll be pissed because that won't be exciting enough.

As far as urbex goes, this really isn't that exciting. I felt like a Rightmove employee going around a house photographing empty rooms. There's barely anything to see. This isn't an urbex spot that has flaws so much as it is a flaw that can occasionally be urbexed. 

It is obvious that the house was cute once though. A lot of effort and love did once go into it. Someone paid a heap of money to have it extended quite considerably, and there are people still alive today who once called it home. Even if the house doesn't appeal to me, someone else will have memories of it, and be glad that photos were taken before it became a roundabout. Everywhere matters to someone. Even years after the roundabout is made, someone will love that the house that once stood there was photographed before it was lost. 

If you're here for more exciting adventures, over on my travel blog I'm currently exploring Poland. That's pretty cool. I have a few other bits and bobs to cover too, so my next blog will be there. But that's not to say I've over-grazed the local pasture. I know posts like this feel very much like barrel scrapes, but I assure you, the best is yet to be. 

To get regular updates, follow my social media platforms! I hate them, but this is the world we live in now, a world filled with brain rot and radicalised boomers. So follow me on Boomer 4chan, otherwise known as Facebook. I'm also on Twitter, otherwise known as Twatter, and I'm on Instagram, otherwise known as algorithm Hell. 

But there are places on the internet where social media is what it was originally built to be: Fun. Follow me on Bluesky, Vero and Cara. They have a lower user base, but are much less toxic.

Thanks for reading!