The Abbey Forgate Brothel

  (DISCLAIMER: As an overall nice human being, I do not force entry, vandalize, steal, or disclose means of entry or location if it isn't obvious. I do this to protect locations and respect them. Trespass without forced entry is a civil offence rather than a criminal one, which isn't worth acting on unless one causes damage, steals, has ill intent, etc. I simply photograph and leave everything as I find it. I do not condone breaking and entering, and I do not condone what I do. I'm a danger to myself and a terrible role model. )

As you head to the Abbey from the town centre, you'll come across New York Pork right before the overhead railway bridge. I recently went in to try the food, and found it very tasty and remarkably filling, and the customer service was also pretty awesome too. I feel sorry for them purely because of where they're situated. For strategic business it's perfect, right by the Wakeman College. Architecturally the building is gorgeous. Structurally, there's nothing wrong with it. But the upstairs needs a little TLC after a very dodgy history. Allegedly it was a brothel and crack den, but now it's all boarded up and smashed, apart from New York Pork. They've inherited a mess but they've made something of it.

 The building itself always intrigued me on my trips to Shrewsbury. The portion of the building that is now New York Pork was, when I first came to visit, an Indian takeaway called Seven Spices. The main entrance was still on the corner but the immediate doors on either side of the corner door were suspiciously ajar.
 The first is in the above  picture, on the left by the green skip and the second is on the right under the white archway, both leading to the rest of the building which, for as long as I've been coming to Shrewsbury, I've been told was a brothel. My initial visits to Shrewsbury started in 2004, and I moved here permanently in 2010. People I have spoken to have said it was known to be a crack house as far back as 1994, and a thread at www.shrewsburyforum.co.uk dated 2006 reveals that the police knew about it but rather than directly interfere decided that by leaving this place where it is, they could at least monitor who came and went. According to the forum, one could get "dubious substances" quite easily if they went here, but the same person who posted that also pointed out that it was a place to avoid if you wanted to maintain ownership of your posessions and limbs. Of course this could well be a generalisation based on the lifestyle. While drugs and prositution aren't really my thing, that doesn't make the people who do those things bad people. I do know lovely people who do drugs and I do know lovely people who have worked in sex, and I know of some people best avoided who do none of those things. Although that's not to say that dubious types didn't go to this place at Abbey Forgate. Behind closed doors, off the radar, operating by a different set of rules to those outside the house, dubious types do thrive. This is also why I'm picky with who I take with me on adventures. I've seen seemingly nice people realise they're off the radar and start smashing things and urinating everywhere, with no help from any intoxicating substances! I thankfully have better taste in humans now.

Given that the doors to this establishment were each on either side of the Seven Spices, and also given that there's a door leading into the back of Seven Spices from the ground floor of the brothel, the rumour was that the Seven Spices was actually part of the same establishment, and possibly a front.

Since I don't mix with the kind of people who would hang out in an establishment like this, I don't know for sure. This isn't my scene. I've personally never seen anyone come or go. I don't know anyone who has ever been there. If I knew someone who had been there then it would be great to get some clarity on things since a lot of its reputation seems to depend on gossip and speculation.
Naturally, I just took pictures of what I found and used them to continue speculating.

Google Streetview has some interesting nuggets to add to the story of this place. The timeline feature on that shows that the Seven Spices was still in business in 2009, but had closed down by 2012. In 2008, from what I have heard, there was a massive police raid and the place was shut down. The place remained an abandoned wreck ever since, with the exception of New York Pork occupying the ground floor and cellar.

During 2015, I did walk past at the time when some people were boarding up the windows and doors. I did something quite daring considering these people were essentially setting out to seal the building, and slipped inside, armed only with a camera phone. I managed to photograph the cellar in all its out-of-focus phone camera glory, and was then found by the people who were boarding up the place and escorrted out. I tend to be very unpopular with occupiers of active sites, and with good reason! Infiltration missions are the pinacle of cheekiness! Oddly enough the excuse that I just want to explore never goes over that well. Of course I'd never do this to a residential property. Corporate property or a derelict brothel, that's completely different. But even then I never force access, vandalise, steal or disclose means of entry. And as long as I maintain that then what I am doing is a civil offence, not a criminal one. As long as the line between corporate property and residential is not crossed, the crime of trespass remains victimless, and thats the way it should be. I'm simply an addict. Addicted to adventure. Addicted to fun. Addicted to enjoying life.

The post-police raid brothel remained sealed until I finally found a way in. And before anyone asks, I won't tell you how. What I will admit is that I could not get back to the cellar again, although later on the lovely staff at New York Pork did help complete the saga by showing me down there, which I was thrilled about seeing as I have a real camera now. In terms of NYP's connection, there is an internal door between them and the brothel area, but this is sealed. New York Pork has nothing to do with the earlier incarnation of this building.

So when did it become a brothel? What was it before? Here's a shot from Google Maps!

The white door in the left is one means of entry to the brothel. Currently it leads to the back of New York Pork and to their cellar, before ending in the locked doorway that leads to the rest of the building. But in the centre of this picture is a bricked up doorway that seems to match the other door on the far side of the restaurant entrance. In fact if this were still a functioning door then the building would be symetrical. The flooring behind the functioning white door is actually indicative that this piece was actually an alleyway and was only incorporated into the building later.

But you see that yellow box on the bricked up doorway??? Well that's not there anymore but it was in 2012 and I'm seriously kicking myself that I didn't notice. Shroppiemon from Facebooks "Memory of Shropshire" group has got a photo for me though. Here it is!

Unused freakin' sweets dispensers! A final, lingering sign of what this building once was! Apparently it was a newsagents where the local kids would get their sweets, and these are a fixture from those days that was never removed when the newsagents closed down. The newsagents seems to have been there from the 1950s up until the 1980s. This place became a tattoo parlour by 1987, before the Seven Spices opened, so the fact that these sweets dispensers managed to remain on the wall throughout several latter business incarnations is quite something.

So what was there to see? I was intrigued. In fact loads of people have told me that they'd love to see what this place looks like inside. This place had been on my wish-list for ages and I was thrilled when I finally found a way inside!

Curiously, when I was inside, the front door was actually open but access was prevented by a huge board of wood nailed over it. But at the time of writing, the board has been removed and the door has been closed and padlocked. So someone still cares about keeping this place secure.

 Very curious graffiti. 2006? That's a bit early, given the information I've had on the place.

This little horse door knocker was on the doorstep. Presumably it was knocked off the door when they removed the board and locked it up. I tried to post it into the mailbox so that it would at least remain with the property, but the mailbox was sealed shut.

So what's inside???

Well, pretty freakin' colours! Who owned this brothel? Mr Blobby?

If you look closely at the above picture you'll see in the centre of the hallway by the door my arch nemesis (after Gravity), Columbidae. Better known as the pigeon. These feathery bastards have quite a knack for lurking in the darkness and waiting until I'm an inch away from them before flapping rapidly up into the air and away, usually bescumbering at the same time. And that's usually the part when my Other arch nemesis, Gravity, likes to enter the game and things get messy.

Someday I'll get you, Gravity.

This particular pigeon wasn't a problem. It sat in that doorway innocently while I checked out the two doorways on the left. One was full of old mattresses, and contained a sink.

Now just to clarify, since this is a massive crime scene, involving a lot of drugs, prostitution, police raiding and criminals, I didn't touch a single thing! Partly because I didn't want my fingerprints on a crime scene and partly because I didn't want any residue getting from this crime scene getting onto my fingers. Granted, the only white sticky body fluid to pass through this place in any recent period of time is bird poo, but I don't want that on my fingers either.

The kitchen was colourful.

I actually really like those cupboards. That black door there connects to the old alleyway that would ordinarily connect to the back of New York Pork, the cellar and the outside world. I tried to open the door but the door handle was broken. The door was inpenetrable.

So onto the upstairs!

Before focusing on the immediate upstairs floor, I'm going to first show whats up another set of stairs, at the very top of the building.

 You see, this is where I spent the least amount of time, for reasons that will seem obvious. But first, let's look at this yellow door. Written on it in red pen is "Knock door and wait for bark." Did one of the prostitutes have a pet dog? Or did she bark? This is odd, and this yellow door was inpenetrable, which made it all the more intriguing. What's in there?

 The door next to it, I almost pushed open only to find two of my enemies were perched on top of it. Had I opened this the two would have flapped around and really just irritated me. Keep in mind that while the pictures look bright and colourful, I did only have my camera flash and phone light to guide me, which made the dreaded pigeons element of surprise stronger.

 Ultimately, I concluded that I had to go through that door and gave the door a kick to wake the birds up. As predicted, they flapped wildly around the room that they were in. It didn't occur to them to actually vacate the room so that I could check it out, and since it was so small I opted to not enter the room with the two rapidly flapping avians. Instead I took a shot through the door which revealed it was some kind of bathroom.

 Still in better condition than some of the toilet facilities in pubs and clubs.

Looking out across the landing, I saw that more rooms awaited!

 The first room there was another sink, but someone had booted this at a nearby cupboard.

 In the above shot, I seem to have captured a pigeon taking off, its wings spread vertically. It reminded me of the bat I captured by chance at Pitchford Hall. Now, in an area like this, sharing a room with a frightened pigeon is no big deal. The room was big enough for us both.

There's some interesting graffiti on the wall. 

 It's actually quite ominous. I'm not sure how many people frequented this house, but I'm sure it had its regulars. And based on this graffiti it seems it had its dangerous types too. Some would say that's a given seeing as this place was a drug house and a brothel, but honestly I try to avoid judging based on generalisation. Judging people is for God, and for the justice system. And I firmly believe that if one is doing no harm then live and let live.

Into the larger room I went, this one not as pitch black as the others due to lots of windows. That didn't mean I could be totally without my phone light though! And look at that- two little pigeons sat on a fridge.

 No big deal, you might think. This rooms big enough for me and two pigeons. You'd think so, but look below. There's a third pigeon on another fridge.

 And here, a fourth pigeon on the window.

 And another pigeon on another fridge next to another sink.

Why does this place have so many fridges and sinks? Literally every room has a sink! The downstairs mattress room had one. All the upstairs rooms we've seen so far have one. But you know what's odd? There's no toilet! Where did people go when they needed to go???

 But finally there are two more pigeons on top of this cupboard. So I was in fact sharing this spacious room with seven panicking pigeons flapping around.

 Let me just tell you, you do not know fear until you're in an unfamiliar pitch black room with seven flying rats shooting unpredictably everywhere. It's not so much rational fear, since they're not going to attack me. It's just instinctive, and pretty soon one is jumping at every flutter of feathers.

I checked out this smaller kitchen area. There were two pigeons in this tiny room. By that point I concluded that I was done with pigeons and went downstairs. 

Downstairs the layout is very similar, but a lot easier to relax in due to having less pigeon! But this little kitchen area made me chuckle, due to the wall scribblings praising someone called Jayne who was presumably one of the women who worked here. The room had this lovely blue colour.

 It sure is weird seeing graffiti here, knowing that it predates the place becoming abandoned. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only trespasser this place has had. This sort of conquest is something to brag about, as a lot of people such as "urban explorers" seem to think that they are the only people in the world who can sneak into abandoned properties and photograph them. Jokes on them! This miscreant adventurer has hit one of Shrewsburys holy grails of abandoned spots. And so far I'm the only trespasser it's had. Much like the abandoned gym.
But I digress. Scribbled on the door there, it requests that any mail and catalogues be posted through the next door mailbox.

And here we have some of the Pro Jayne graffiti.

Beneath the Pigeon apocalypse room, situated directly above New York Pork, is this red room, complete with a sun painted on the wall. 

The next room was pink.

There are pale patches on the walls where pictures presumably hung. But that just raises the question of why other things were left.

The Calendar doesn't have a year on it, but the last time the first of January fell on a Saturday was 2011 and before that, 2005.

Over by the window, there was a hanging bunny.

Delightfully morbid.

Finally, there was a little bathroom that was curiously covered in graffiti. It was odd because most of the place had graffiti but this was the focal point. And all this was written by the previous occupiers.  A lot of it was telephone numbers. A lot of it was drug related. Some of it was poetic. Someone had taken to writing awful, awful jokes. And I don't mean bad taste. I mean eye rolling jokes that I personally love. In fact I've recently started a photography habit where I tell a perfectly composed model a terrible joke just to snap that loss of composure smile that says "That is so lame, why am I even laughing?" If anything it's good for ice breaking.

  See, these names, Wacky, Linda and Fluke are familiar to me! Back when I was a teenager, my friends and I would do our best to get someone to buy us alcohol, and then we'd do what bored teenagers do which is sit in a park and drink it. And sometimes we'd share the alcohol with homeless people. If my memory is right, Wacky and Linda were homeless people, and Fluke was their dog. Looks like they frequented this place back in the day, and possibly even squatted here.

 Ah, Jesus is here too.

 

  

I read every word of the wall scribblings, although I won't publish every photograph. The wallspace dedicated to praising Fluke the dog was particularly touching. The characters who once inhabited this room came to life through what they left behind, and regardless of whether or not you or I condone or condemn their lifestyle, their humanity was written on these walls. They were just people too, trying to get from one day to the next in their own way.
Some will say I'm too nice or maybe even naive but I try to see the best in everyone. I don't think anyone is unloveable (Although coming home from an abandoned brothel covered in cobwebs and smelling of pigeon dung means that if anyones a candidate for being unloveable it's totally me!) and I don't think anyone should be alone.

As an eerie additional note, I've since learned that all the people who wrote on these walls are now dead. That scarf hanging up belonged to Wacky. Even the dog is now dead. It makes this room a very eerie memorial to their lives, that nobody gets to see.
The world is a big sandcastle.

I mentioned the cellar earlier. A little while after exploring the upper floors and started putting this article together, I paid New York Pork a visit purely because if I'm going to write and publish an article about a crackhouse and a brothel, I wanted there to be some positive publicity for the shop downstairs. And the only way to genuinely do that is to sample their food, so I went in to buy some and strike up conversation with the staff there about the building. Of course, having snuck into the cellar a year earlier, I knew the layout and expressed that I wasn't able to capture it perfectly due to having a phone at the time. And the chap working the counter was very friendly and offered to show me the cellar while I waited for my food.

Given the proximity of this place to the Abbey, you can guess why I was so interested, right?

 Over yonder is a ceiling window that would have gone out onto the alleyway that was later incorporated into the building itself.

 And here we have a bricked up archway. But don't get too excited. It only leads to another part of the already accessible cellar. However...

This bricked up archway goes under the street, pointing right at a church. I'm sad to see it like this. On my earlier phone-camera adventure, there was slightly more to it. This means I'm going to have to upload a lousy-quality before shot too. Damn. But as you can see, a year ago this passageway was a lot more telling.

Likewise for this wider archway, now blocked up but still visible. In the previous year, it was still bricked up but now seems to have been bricked up again.

Which begs the question- why? Did someone knock that bricked archway through and then re-seal it?

But anyway, what's one to make of these archways?

Well the proximity to the Abbey is of interest. The Abbey itself was a great deal more massive than it is now, due to Thomas Telford deciding it would look better if there was a road going through it instead. Rumours of underground tunnels connected to the Abbey reach ridiculous proportions, but there was local establishments such as The Globe and The Crown that show signs of having once been connected to this building underground. The brothel is in the vicinity, and that last archway is pointing in the Abbey's direction. Of course nothings conclusive but it certainly fuels the fire of underground tunnel speculation.

So what was this building when it was first built? That I'd love to know.

And that's all I've got of the Abbey Forgate Brothel.

Before I finish this blog post, I want to remind you all of my friend Zena's fundraiser to improve the quality of life of her niece with cystic fibrosis. A lot of my readers have donated to my fundraisers in the past to get me my camera, so I know my readers are kind and generous. Zena is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet attempting to do something selfless for someone who isn't even old enough to understand or thank her. So if you can help with that, please click here to find out more.

Meanwhile, to keep you updated, I recently went to Whitby where I was able to photograph a multitude of photogenic people, and of course I took to the rooftops too, as you'd expect. Whitby is actually a stunning town by the sea and has some terrific views. Although the sights are also on ground level too, although down there I'm sharing space with 100 other photographers. Real photographers, with decent equipment.

But it did give me an interesting chance to work on camera angles and editing in a whole new area of interest, the photography of people. So upon returning to Shropshire I asked a friend of mine if she wouldn't mind being photographed at Vanity House, seeing as it happens to be practically on her doorstep. She agreed, knowing I'm not a professional photographer, nor am I particularly experienced with photographing or editing human subjects. But it's all good practice so it was appreciated and I have a few gems from a multitude of photos, and my friend greatly enjoyed Vanity House.

I re-photographed Vanity House too, partially, because the usual stuff has happened where other people come to these places and arrange things to create some sensationalisation or "mythology" behind the house, such as putting a dozen clocks on a desk and saying that the owner was obsessed with time for some reason, and expecting everyone who goes there to think that this has really been unmoved since abandonment. Vanity House has had something of a Christmas makeover, with decorations put up in various places, much like Christmas House.
I do tend to dislike such changes. Abandoned houses are creepy enough. But what we did find was a diary from 1955 which spoke about life on the farm back when Vanity House was lived in. Except this diary had a cow die every other day. The book was filled with cows getting sick, cows aborting their babies, cows dying. It was quite grim. Anyway I'll fiddle a4bout with editing on the pictures of my friend, purely for practice purposes, and if I like any of the outcomes I'll stick them online.

Meantime, please follow my Instagram and Twitter, and if you can shed any light on this place in Abbey Forgate please get in touch! Most importantly be good to each other and make someone smile today!

Thanks for reading! Stay awesome!