The Buttermarket

Years after the group of explorers parted ways, purely through the natural progression of life, two of us met up again, to explore one of Shrewsbury's "biggest entertainment venue," the Buttermarket. This building was built in 1835, and served as a warehouse for the Shropshire Union Canal. It later became a warehouse for the nearby train station, but by the 1970s it was dilapidated and abandoned.
It was made into a nightclub, and was then closed down.
A few years ago, I saw it covered in scaffolding and knew someone somewhere had purchased it and was fixing it up, turning it back into a nightclub.

Within a month or so it would be full of people. But I would get there first.

Sadly we didn't bring a decent camera but my phone does have the capacity to perceive light particles and transfer an image onto its screen. It's just... ugh... Just watch.

Remember, we don't vandalize, force entry, or steal. We are explorers and we leave these places exactly how we find them.

As my friend and I made our way up the Buttermarket scaffolding we came to the realization that the building was actually climbable without scaffolding. Of course, had I known that sooner I would have explored it when it was properly abandoned, and not under redesign.

The view was good, not really captured very well with my phone. But you can see the castle in the background beyond the train station.Click an awful picture to see it awfully big.

On the roof was a rather funky contraption, designed to launch the Buttermarkets own personal Bat symbol to the skies, back when it was a club.

Presumably this has been used since it re-opened.

 Somewhere nearby we found an open air vent- Seriously the coolest means of entering a building I have ever used in my entire time as an urban explorer. The air vent led us into the actual building, and from there numerous blurry photographs followed.

It was a bit of a waste. These pictures could have been so much more impressive, but there you can see the Buttermarket as you've never seen it before. This place is now a thriving nightclub. Which means now it's probably a lot dirtier. From the balcony we were able to get some photographs of the expansive ground floor. But given this is on a phone, they didn't come out so well.

And yes, the pictures ARE indeed awful. But the adventure was had, and that was unique. On our way down to the ground floor, we set off an alarm and had to flee out the way we came, and then hide from a security guard, similar to our Music Hall adventure. In this case we had been too deep in the building to know if the security had arrived, but peeking over the edge I realized he had arrived, and was shining a torch around. I ducked back over as he seemed to notice me, and I wasn't sure if he'd managed to catch me in the flashlight or not.
While my mind raced with escape plans, none were feasible. Light from the nearby buildings cast our shadow across the wall of the building- we had to stay low and keep still. Would crawling work? Possibly but the royal mail sorting warehouse was right behind us, and they don't sleep! They would surely see us.

In the end we lay there quietly until we heard the alarm switch off and the security car drive away. And then we escaped.
For my colleague and I, it was a nice adventure- very nostalgic. The two of us hadn't done anything like this in a long time.

In terms of photography, it sucked. But that was our fault. The Buttermarket is a wonderful old building and the adventure made unique by its refurbishment.

Shame about the photographs but there will be other opportunities at other places...