Barn Cottage

I have a couple of small blogs that I want to power through before I write about some big industrial bonanza on my travel blog, where I've just done a spaceship. As far as urbex goes, Shropshire is an over-grazed pasture, but it still has a few small hidden gems that might fly under the radar of the "Nobody will like me unless I use clickbait" type of urbexers. And if there's even a shred of a story to be told, then I will sink my teeth into it.

And that brings us to Barn Cottage. 

It's an adorable little ruin sitting in a field in the Shropshire countryside. It's fenced off, for the safety of the public, and also has a couple of signs warning people not to enter. But, spoiler alert, that's exactly what I did. 

Afterwards, I ended up speaking to an elderly man who told me that he used to play in it as a child, and it was abandoned even then. He said that back then it was possible to get upstairs. 

Today there is no upstairs, but I absolutely love these tales of vintage pre-internet urbex. I think it's fascinating that people have always been drawn to that sort of thing. I've found stories of people exploring abandoned places as far back as the 1700s. The internet has drawn attention to urbex, but it has always existed. 

Can Barn Cottage really be considered urbex today? It's not urban and it's barely exploring. But fuck it, we're going in anyway. 

The first occupants of Barn Cottage, as far as I can tell, were a chap called Lancelot Corfield and his wife Amelia. And I just love this duo already. They sound like they stepped right out of a fairy tale. How can any couple be called Lancelot and Amelia without being the main characters of some epic story?

But interestingly, this isn't the first Lancelot Corfield to exist in Shropshire, nor would he be the last. The Corfield family is pretty huge, and the first Lancelot Corfield popped up in Hughley in 1592, when he was born to 42-year-old Richard Corfield and his nineteen-year-old wife, Elizabeth. 

Lancelot would name one of his own sons Lancelot, and the name just got passed down until the birth of our Lancelot in 1828. He was also born in Hughley to a farmer. His future wife, Amelia, was born a little while later in 1832. As a teenager she worked as a servant for the Pritchard family in Broseley. 

The annoying thing about using records for research is that even though it gives me a huge tidal wave of information, there's very little of the human element. Lancelot and Amelia married in 1855, but I don't know how they met or fell in love. These are the stories I would love to tell, but they don't get passed along by the census records. It's a huge shame. 

Between 1855 and 1867, the two had five children, Sarah, Jane, Amelia, Lancelot Jr and Thomas. It's not all surprising that the firstborn son was named after his father, but it is interesting that they had already two daughters before they decided to name one after Amelia. As a farming family in rural Shropshire, I wasn't expecting to find much on them, but Lancelot does occasionally get mentioned in the papers for growing some damn good parsnips or something. He was also fined in 1875 for being drunk and disorderly with his buddies, so he also had a bit of a wild side. 

The Corfield's had moved into Barn Cottage at some point before 1881, but by then most of their children had grown up, so only the younger two came with them. Lancelot Jr was seventeen and Thomas was thirteen. It seems that having raised their children to adulthood, their move to Barn Cottage was a means of downsizing once their household was quieter. Barn Cottage was just accommodation for farm workers, with tenancy offered in exchange for service. As a result, Lancelot and both of the boys were employees to a larger farm. 

But Lancelot was clearly prominent in the community. Documents would refer to him as "Lancelot Corfield of Barn Cottage." Even the local rags mention of Jane's wedding in 1882 referred to her as "the daughter of Lancelot Corfield of Barn Cottage." Their tenancy of this building was a defining characteristic. 

Lancelot died in 1891, but his wife and two sons continued living here. His daughter Amelia would also move back into the house, presumably to keep her widowed mother company. Thomas Corfield worked as a blacksmith, and Lancelot Jr worked as a waggoner. In 1893, he was involved in some controversy for making a horse with an injured leg pull a waggon roughly eight miles from Barn Cottage into Shrewsbury. When he was challenged about this, he was quick to point the finger at the man who had sold him the horse, who would later claim that the horse had been crippled for four years, and should really be put down. Both men were charged for animal abuse.

Amelia Corfield would die in 1894. In fact, both mother and daughter died, which is very curious. The younger Amelia died in June at the age of 33, and her mother Amelia passed away in October. 

Having lost the head of the household, the Corfield family left Barn Cottage. Thomas got married, and moved to Wednesbury where he continued to be a blacksmith. Lancelot Jr got married and moved back into the house where he'd been born, worked as a garden labourer, and named his own son Lancelot. One of the Lancelot's faced further legal trouble in 1925 for riding a motorcycle dangerously but it's unclear which one this is. 

I quite like that I've been able to find something about them, beyond dates of birth, death and residency, even if none of it is particularly positive. 

The house itself is a ruin but has a few small features that help it cling on to any character it once had. It's strange to think that this was where Amelia Corfield prepared meals for her family.

In 1911 Barn Cottage was occupied by John Humphreys and his wife Elizabeth. Both were born in Wales to farming families in 1872 and 1873. They married in 1896 and had six children between 1898 and 1911. These were Ethel, Another John, Llewellyn, Margaret, Winifred and Maud. When they came to Barn Cottage it was once again under an employment basis, with John working as a shepherd on the farm. 

But it's weird to think of a family of eight living in such a tiny cottage. In many ways this is a great insight into the living conditions of the era. A large family crammed into a tiny space, earning a living off the land, and probably shitting in a privy shed outside. And they didn't know any better. This was normal for them. The living conditions of today would sound like science fiction. 

But apparently Barn Cottage wasn't for them, because they'd all moved out by 1921. John and Elizabeth went on to have even more children, and they all grew up and scattered around Shropshire. The boys predominantly worked in farming while the girls became servants. Most of them died in the 1980s. Their time here was really just a small footnote in their lives. 

All that's left of the upstairs is this fireplace. At one time this was crackling away in John and Elizabeth's bedroom. 

Directly below it is the larger fireplace. It's weird to imagine this blazing away while John sat and ate his dinner. 

In 1921 Barn Cottage was occupied by William Preece and his wife Eliza, the daughter of a road labourer. It seems that these guys had always lived in the area, and married in 1900. They had six children prior to moving into Barn Cottage, but their eldest three, Annie, Agnes and Elsie had all gone by the time they moved in. But that's okay, because they had three more. 

So living with them at Barn Cottage was fifteen-year-old William, who also worked on the farm with his father, Florence who was thirteen, Alice who was ten, John who was eight, Edith who was five and Hilda who was two.

I actually don't know what happened to Annie and Agnes, but Elsie worked as a kitchen maid, and died in 1923 when she was just nineteen. I've tried to find out what happened there, but nothing seems to come up. Her name just sits in the death records, standing out conspicuously in a list of people who died in their sixties or older. 

Her father, William, made more of a media splash when he passed away in 1926, with his obituary pointing out that he was a member of his local workers union. Evidently he was a pretty prominent figure in the community. 

By the 1930s, none of the Preece family were living in Barn Cottage. This isn't at all surprising really. If occupation is conditional for employment, and the farms devoted employee was dead, then the family can't really stick around. Worth noting is that little Hilda Preece went on to become a tailor for the military during the war. That's pretty cool. 

Thomas Morgan, the enigmatic owner of Barn Cottage, placed an advert in the paper in February 1951, advertising it alongside a job vacancy for a farm worker. In May, the Minshull family moved in. This was John and Beatrice, and their seven children, one of which was a newborn. 

The only problem is, John didn't stick around. He stopped working on the farm in August, and the family was given notice to leave the cottage. But John just flat-out abandoned his family, seemingly not even telling them that he'd stopped working at the farm, leaving his wife with seven children with no income, nowhere to go, and no plan. 

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can all agree, John's a bit of a cunt. Unless he actually was dead, in which case I take it back. The only information I have is that he vanished, and his family were now living in a house whose tenancy was dependant on employment that they were not able to provide. Being a single parent to seven is two full-time jobs already. 

Mr Morgan did eventually seek legal action to shift the Minshulls from Barn Cottage, and the media kinda portrayed him as some sort of ogre. But if we look at the dates, John left in August 1951, and Mr Morgan finally took legal action to evict the family in June 1952, giving Beatrice until September to sort everything out. That seems pretty generous, although it's still pretty lousy for poor Beatrice who perhaps didn't have much of a support network. Her defence in court was described as "a rather dismal story of the defendants circumstances," and they did ask Mr Morgan if he could give her more time. Rather coldly, he just said that he was short on farm labourers, and that tenancy at Barn Cottage is on a service basis. The house should be used to accommodate a future employee.

And that does make sense, and he did give her well over a year to sort stuff out, but his words kinda fall flat when we consider that it can't have been abandoned much later than Beatrice Minshulls eviction. I have the first-hand account of an old gent who claimed that he played in this house as a child when it was abandoned. But then Mr Morgan also passed away in 1960, so perhaps that's why. Employing people is kinda difficult when you're dead. 

I do wonder what became of Beatrice Minshull and her children. Her horde of seven would all be elderly now. I also wonder about John Minshull who seemingly vanished. I haven't been able to find much on him. The local papers at the time talk about a different John Minshull, one who ran away at the age of seventeen to marry his love, eighteen-year-old Hazel Castor. But that can't possibly be the same guy. I kinda wish it was, because his story is well-documented and quite lovely. Despite being dismissed as teenage runaways in the 1950s, they were still happily married in 1998. 

But for John Minshull the runaway husband, and his poor wife Beatrice, the trail runs cold. 

It's sad really, because as much as these records can give me a glimpse into the lives of past occupants, there's so much to their stories that remains hidden. 

Apart from names in a register, the only clue that they ever existed is this crumbly little house. 

With the house so ruinous, it's kinda nice to see the door still intact. This is the door that Beatrice Minshull once walked through with her horde of children, thinking that she and her husband were going to make a nice little life for themselves. It's the same door she later closed for the last time, miserable at the unexpected turn that her life had taken. 

It seems she passed away in Cheshire in 1966.

That's all I've got. Poor Barn Cottage isn't any urbexers wet dream, and it's certainly not this blogs magnum opus. But for this renegade tourist it made for a fun jolly into the Shropshire countryside to catalogue something that often goes overlooked.

As always, you can stay updated with my blog is you follow my antisocial media. Boomer 4chan, otherwise known as Facebook, has confirmed that angry reactions are more valuable to the algorithm than anything else. It's learned that people engage with content more if they see something they don't like, and consequently it's making you angry on purpose. So the best way to see this blog and pull the wool over their eyes is to anger-react my posts and tell me that I ruined your day and/or life. 

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Anyway, thanks for reading!

Black Mountain Chapel

Todays blog is a small one. I have a quick cluster of little places to write about before I get to something big over on my travel blog. If you've been following that, I just did a spaceship. 

Locally, I feel like I've been over-grazing the pasture somewhat, but one thing I can always count on is a lonely derelict chapel.

But on this particular day, I couldn't even get that! When I got to this one, I found that it was already in the process of being renovated. But it was open, so I decided to check it out anyway. 

Derelict chapels are scattered all over the rural parts of the country. In the days of old, before motorised transport connected us all, a cute rural chapel would be the communal hub for a multitude of hamlets and farms. It served a purpose in those simpler times. It wasn't just about worshiping Daddy G upstairs. For many churchgoers it was their social life. 

But times change, and the cute little rural chapels of yesteryear have largely died out. This ones closure is a little sadder than most, purely because it has a graveyard attached. People are interred here, and it's sad to see their final resting places so neglected. Of course, we see that even at active churches, but it's sad nonetheless.

I always like to take a moment in graveyards, and ponder the stories of the people here. All that's left of these people is a name on a rock, but they were still real people with aspirations, dreams, and struggles of their own. I wish I had the time and resources to tell all of their stories.

The chapel was founded in 1862, and is a Methodist chapel. I'm no expert on all of the numerous denominations of Christianity. I think having such a fragmented religion kinda defeats the point of there being One True God. I don't actually know what makes Methodists different from any other type of Christianity. From what I can tell, there was a couple of chaps named Charles and John Wesley in the 1700s who had such a methodical approach to religion that their students referred to it as methodism. 

But that sounds awfully vague. They were big on social progress, including the abolition of slavery, and allowing female preachers, but that doesn't seem like something that would be exclusive to one denomination. Although I can see it being unpopular with some of the more cuntish less-progressive churches. Perhaps they were fairly unique in the 1700s. 

Let's just slip inside and check this place out. 

I've spoken disparagingly of the one true God before. All of them. 

But that's not to say I'm lacking in a spiritual side. I'm actually a pretty deep thinker when it comes to the nature of reality and all that. When we really think about it, humans are just lumps of atoms that woke up and decided that they existed. The human brain is about three lbs of meat, with a texture similar to tofu, made of ordinary atoms like Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen, all of which can be found in a loaf of bread. And yet here we are, not just existing but knowing we exist. I don't think bread does that. At least, I hope it doesn't.  

But all this pondering doesn't really draw me to any particular religion. Given that humanity existed for thousands of years before all of them were founded, I think it's very unlikely that anyone got it right.

But even so, I respect chapels and churches as places of quiet reflection, comfort, and peace.

This chapel is very clean, and nothing like the photos I'd seen online, such is a consequence of getting here after renovation has started. The pews don't quite look like they belong here, and have likely replaced the original ones. The little raised platforms that they're sitting on definitely look new too. 

But it's still kinda nice. Just... inauthentic. I'd like it more if it looked as old as it is. 

The chapel closed in 1971, lasting just over a century, and yet there's actually very little historic information on it. It pops up in records from 1901, but only because someone had dumped fifty tons of stone on the road outside and nobody knew what to do about it. 

It's mentioned again in 1964 as a place for people to meet prior to going on a hunt. Gotta love the irony of meeting at a place that should celebrate life just to then go out and snuff it out. 

The pulpit has a fresh coat of paint, and behind it is a whole collection of pre-renovation relics that haven't been dealt with yet. This is the good shit. Now I feel like I'm urbexing. 

This is cool. These might have been here since the chapel closed in 1971. 

Despite the fact that the chapel closed and fell into disrepair, it seems that burials continued to happen in the graveyard outside. The most recent burial that I've found online was a man named John Edwards in 1999, but there are probably more since then.

And that's good. Abandoned graveyards are sadder than abandoned chapels.

In 2001 a meeting was held to discuss the future of the chapel, which had fallen into dereliction.  This meeting is presumably what led to its relatively recent renovation, albeit slowly.

And since my visit, it's become something of a communal creative hub. It's held art exhibitions and creative writing workshops, and I absolutely love that! I think that's a perfect use for a chapel, serving a community in a new way that gets young people actually engaging in activities. This is what we need more of. 

I've found quite a lot of artwork online, by young people, that depicts the chapel itself. I'll include a few pieces here. 

(Image credit: Ann Baker)

(image credit: Peter Wright)

(Image credit: Priscilla Smith)

At least I think this is the work of young people. If anyone here is eighty, just take the compliment. 

And that's pretty much all I've got to say on Black Mountain Chapel. It's cute, but not that exciting from an urbex perspective. I guess if it's been renovated then it isn't anything from an urbex perspective anymore. I wish I'd seen the place when it was derelict, but I am glad it's been given another chance. Hopefully it will continue to go from strength to strength.

I've got a couple of small blogs to do before I do something huge and exciting on the travel blog. In the meantime, the best way to stay updated with my blogs is to follow my social media.

I'm active on Facebook. Facebook has actually admitted to placing more algorithmic value in the anger reaction, generating engagement through outrage by showing you the things that make you angry. They're making you miserable on purpose. So to make sure you actually see my posts, and to screw them over a bit, anger react my blog posts and tell me that I've ruined your day.

I assume Twitter and Instagram are pretty similar. Follow me there and tell me how shit I am.

But the likes of Bluesky, Vero and Cara are versions of what Twitter and Instagram should be, with the latter two being for artists and photographers. On these sites, people actually see who they choose to follow, so follow me there!

Thanks for reading!

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!