Return to Tilstock

Just in case you all missed it, I was featured in the Shropshire Star and the Shrewsbury Chronicle recently for my rooftops of Shrewsbury shots. I was quite surprised by the latter paper. I knew I was going to be in the Shropshire Star but when I saw my face on the front of the Chronicle, my jaw dropped. And consequentially, and in addition to my blended feelings of excitement and terror, my inboxes on various social media sites are full of positive messages, which isn't what one ever expects when they upload controversial content onto the internet, so thats good too.

Today we're looking at military sites in Shropshire. It began with a simple mission to see a ROC post but given that it was close to a few other explorable sites, Tree Surgeon and I made a day of it. 

ROC posts became something of a bandwagon here at Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not. That is, I explored two in Shropshire and wrote about it for ya'll only to find that the third that I found had actually been broken into. I don't condone forced entry. It's not what I do. The two I found were just open for anyone. I understand the appeal though, what with them being freakin' nuclear bunkers dotted around the countryside that millions of people walk past on a regular basis, none the wiser. And judging people is Gods job. And also the justice systems. But I decided to lay off the ROC posts for a while, out of fear that I'd be pointing a giant arrow at some poor landowners little secret. I think the idea of trashing a nuclear bunker is stupid, but it does happen. Just look at the one in Church Stretton.

Todays ROC post in the vicinity of RAF Tilstock. How exciting! And by "vicinity" keep in mind that if you try to walk around an old military site you could use a huge chunk of your day and still miss most of what is there to find. These places are huge. I made the silly mistake of checking out RAF Montford Bridge, RAF Rednal, RAF Tilstock and RAF Condover all in the space of a week, and by the time I was done, I wanted my feet amputated. It didn't help that I missed so much on initial visits and had to revisit when I realised that I'd missed things.

When Tree Surgeon and I got to the ROC post though, we were saddened to find it welded shut, and exterior features in pretty poor shape.
Also nearby were some long abandoned tents and sleeping bags... maybe the landowner had dragged the campers down there and sealed the door... Tilstock is a pretty creepy place and my imagination runs wild.

It's so strange to think that below this innocent looking field is a subterranean bunker, sealed off from everyone. Although the term Bunker is inaccurate. These were nuclear monitoring posts, being little more than an underground office with (barely) toilet facilities, from which those stationed there could monitor the usage of nuclear weapons. Should there be an attack these posts were equipped with beds so that they could serve as a bunker. Of course, the air vents meant that they'd suffer from radiation anyway, the equipment to work with was crude and the idea itself was flawed because they were linked up via telegraph pole, which would of course be annihilated in a nuclear strike. But they're still pretty cool, when one can get in them. Over a thousand exist across the UK but many are either locked up or demolished. Those that remain tend to be in poor condition. What a shame! Tree Surgeon, my fellow explorer, made an excellent point- If he owned land that happened to have a nuclear bunker on it and he didn't want it getting trashed, he'd just build a shed over it. Nobody would know.

And that goes for Battle HQs too!

Unlike a ROC post, the Battle HQ dates back to World War II and was basically where the defense of a military installation could be organized from in the event of an attack. They often consisted of a hatch leading to a monitoring post, similar to a Pillbox, with steps leading deeper to the offices and toilets, and a rear exit. Every airfield that dates back to World War II apparently has one, although Rednalls was demolished, Montford Bridges is in a garden (BUILD A SHED OVER IT!!!) and Condovers is in a very prickly bush and full of water.
Tilstocks was flooded too on my last visit, but I wanted to show Tree Surgeon anyway. He loves the military stuff. But no, whoever owns this land has decided to fill it with dirt.

I'm not happy. If you want to see what the interior looked like on my earlier visit, click here.

Seriously, if anyone here owns land that happens to have abandoned underground military buildings on it, and you don't want people going down there, just build a shed over it! Not only will you preserve something awesome but you'll also have the knowledge that you secretly own an underground military building. How cool is that?

Anyway, ever since my initial visit to RAF Tilstock I had wanted to revisit with a decent camera. And so I finally got around to it. RAF Tilstock is one of the creepiest places I've ever been to. It's basically a collection of abandoned military buildings scattered throughout some woods, and the surrounding area.

It really has a horror movie vibe to it, doesn't it?

As a bit of backstory, Tilstock opened in 1915 as a training base for the British army in trench warfare. It was designed to accomodate 30,000 people, and as the war progressed it became used for storage too, with its own railway depot on the Shrewsbury-Crewe line. A hospital was also added as casualties rose. Tilstocks size also led to the recruitment of Shropshires first female police officers, to arrest locals from trespassing onto the military site.

After the first world war, Tilstock remained property of the British government. In 1939 it was turned into an camp for Polish, Austrian and German refugees. As World War II picked up it also served as a prisoner of war camp.

The airfield was constructed in 1942 and was mainly used by the RAF for training. It retained this function after the war, but ceased military function in 1964 when the airfield became used for skydiving instead.
At least, part of it was. Most of the runways are now gone although one can still see where they once were. Only a portion of the collossal airfield is now used. The surrounding buildings are scattered around it, and I have probably only seen a portion of what there is to find.

Tree Surgeon seems to think this particular building was a pumping station. Fellow blogger Chelsea The Adventurer says it's haunted by ghosts who can't spell. She might be onto something...

This building was intriguing. I actually have a low-resolution map of Tilstock airfield which, while blurred in parts, does coherently list the functions of some of the buildings. Given that since the 1940s a lot has changed, new buildings have been built and some have been demolished. But we put it over Google Maps to ascertain where everything was. This was apparently a block of offices. Today it's an eerie emptied out building with numbered doors, and evidence of a kitchen at the back.

The last remaining artefact is a solitary plate.

The remaining ruins were clustered around the woods. This yellow walled building was apparently the "SLB Chamber." I have no idea what that is, but it had old rusty shelving units, and nails in the walls, presumably for hanging stuff, and some kind of ceiling harness.

And in a back room a (presumably) homeless person had made a bed.

My map of Retro Tilstock became quite out of focus on some of the other buildings, possibly due to a fold or something on the original scan. But the building below definitely looks like it may have had external doors to two lots of toilets or something.

Enquires. As you can see, if this place is haunted by ghosts who can't spell, it's definitely a trait they took with them from their time alive.

I have no idea what this bizarre cluster of bricks is. Did it once have a roof? But it would have been a teeny building unless several feet of wall was knocked down. But if that was the case, it seems improbable that it would all still be level. Perhaps the building itself was partially below ground and has now been filled in.

Moving on, one of the most photographed parts of Tilstock is the room with the car in. I've seen plenty of pictures of this car in one piece but today it is in several. Someone has tried to position the front and back together. Nobodies put the roof back on yet.

There are two very creepy bomb shelters where we took temporary refuge in as the weather took a turn for the worse. One of them had a couple of sleeping bags in, evidence that people did indeed come here to sleep.

 Unlike modern bunkers, World War II bomb shelters weren't subterranean, just covered in dirt. Nukes weren't heard of yet, and the idea was just to not be seen by the bombers, hence why they had blackouts in all the towns and cities. Both the shelters we found can't have been the only ones, since there's no way these two could hold everyone who would have worked here. They have identical layouts, with a main door at one end and a shaft at the other that would have provided a means of climbing out. One of these had a chair in. Both were cool to photograph.

By far the creepiest part of Tilstock is a pitch black labyrinth which the map labels as the Operations Block. Now it's derelict, and slowly falling apart, with certain parts of it flooding and leaking. I decided to take as few flash photographs as possible, allowing the torches to illuminate everything so that the photographs actually capture just how eerie this labyrinth really is. I feel some of the flash photographs rob it of this quality, although I did use it for some pictures. Part of me was expecting to find the beds of homeless people, as we'd found previously, but there was nobody here. Even the graffiti was more scarce than the other ruins, although thats not to say that there wasn't some gems. Very few people explore this place, it seems.

 I used the camera flash for the above shot. Outside the building a tree was growing out of the wall, and in this room one can see the roots spreading down across the brickwork. Click the picture to see it big.

 One of the coolest remaining features was the telephone exchange.

As you can see, the ceiling vents are gradually collapsing, and many are already lying around the ruins. 

This large room contained a wall hatch at the end, making me think it was some kind of food area. I don't know what the things hanging from the ceiling are though. 

Curiously, this room was the one that had the most graffiti. 

But by far the coolest aspect was this satanic teddy bear that had been nailed up high on the wall. 

The toilet block had been mostly stripped. According to myths, the toilet block is the most haunted part, for some reason. I guess when the people who used to work here died and pondered their next step, coming back to haunt the toilet of their former workplace seemed like a fantastic option.

Keep in mind, this place probably wasn't actually attacked during the war, and the people who were stationed here likely did not die here. But then whether this place is haunted all depends on what you think ghosts are. Is it really logical to leap to the conclusion of spirits of the dead when all one ever really experiences is a spooky atmosphere, vague apparitions or strange noise? It's the mediums who say that these things are the spirits of the dead, due to the ghosts telling them in a voice that conveniently only they can hear. But they're professionals, and they get paid lots of money to do what they do, so they must be legit, right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the idea of ghosts. In fact I've had more than my fair share of events that I cannot explain. But for me there simply isn't a link behind what is typically percieved and what we're led to believe these things are by alleged professionals. I mean, even if an apparition resembles someone who has died, there are countless reports of them resembling people who are still alive. A person can't just ignore one chunk of detail just because it clashes with the outcome that they want. That's illogical. I think there's something outside the sphere of our conventional perceptions, but I'm not convinced it's the spirits of the dead.

 Still in better condition than some of the toilets I've seen in pubs and clubs...

One of the pitch black toilets was flooded, and I discovered that shining my torch on it caused the water to reflect on the wall, and I spent an embarassing amount of time entertaining myself with this, creating ripples across the room.

As a side effect of exploring in the middle of winter, it was dark outside by the time we left this building, and since the rain was coming down heavily Tree Surgeon got in touch with his partner for a ride home. Of course, it would take a while before she got there so there was still some exploring to do!

The next building we checked out had an overabundance of graffiti, and as we examined it we realised there was a story here.

The Higher Heath Crew is written on the wall there, in pencil for some reason. And right next to it, also in pencil, was "Pink Panther." I guess this is the tag of someone who is part of the Higher Heath Crew.

A little further along as this drawing of a guy, also in pencil. Next to it was a story. 

 The story, allegedly written  by a girl, claims that she was raped by a guy called Barry. The picture of the guy is actually a surprisingly detailed picture of Barry, and upon further inspection, it was surrounded with insults pointing at him.

 What does Sunboy even mean?

 Among the insults, someone had misspelled Queer and been corrected. Sorry guys, it's not the ghosts who can't spell, just the Higher Heath Crew!

And if that wasn't anticlimatic enough for you, the overall opinion of Barry is that he's actually none of the things this wall says he is, just white. Lovely. Barry's getting off light there. No pun intended.

The next building, still part of the Operations block, had a room with barred windows, which made me wonder if it was for detaining people. It was the only room with barred windows. The overgrowth of nature claiming back this space really made it eerie.

And then Tree Surgeons partner showed up, the rain was coming down heavily and we were glad to be out of the woods. Although we explored a few more places away from Tilstock before we went home, but thats another story.

If you have any stories or information about this place or any other featured on this blog, please feel free to get in touch and if you want, follow me on Twitter and Instagram. And if you want my eternal love, click the donate button at the top corner, and put some pennies to my adventure fund. All donations will go to equipment that I can use to make this blog better.

And just to give a little back to the world, and balance the universe after all the media attention I've had, I want to draw your attention to a few other creative people. One of my favourite bloggers is Chelsea The Adventurer. She writes about her outdoors adventures and a lot of cool things, while also letting me tag along sometimes in low-budget Power Ranger attire. She's supported this blog a lot so click her link and check her blog out. Another one of the blogs I regularly check out is by Violet Fenn. It's called Sex Death Rock n Roll, and since I can't put it more plainly than she puts it herself, I'll just quote her own description of her blog content- "Sex toy reviews and other things that people apparently don't like being immiediately faced with when opening a web page." I love her style of writing. Go check her out.
A friend of mine who joined me on an adventure back in 2012 has recently started a Facebook page called Hidden Oswestry which looks at various historical and obscure secrets of Oswestry, where I used to live. I've actually consulted this guy a lot during research of some of the blog posts here, such as Brogyntyn Hall, which remains one of my most popular posts because it's so detailed. The guy knows his stuff, and since his page is so similar in theme to mine, it would be unfair not to give him some exposure.
And as a fourth one, I want to draw some attention to my friend Mina's Cosplay page. I've worked with Mina on creative projects in the past. She's a great actress, her cosplays are really good, and she deserves more attention. With the right boost she could really take off. Sure, she's not got the success of some of the others I've listed but we all start somewhere and I think the best thing I can do now that I'm getting noticed is to help others ascend too. But that's all I'm listing today, otherwise this blog will become more praise of other people than my own content, but I'll list more next time. In the mean time, please check these guys out and wait for my next piece.

Thanks for reading! Stay awesome!

The view from the Parade

Time for a new adventure! It's almost a new year, with new challenges, new adventures, new conquests, all within the same old town that is Shrewsbury, best known for being the birthplace of Charlie D, our Lord and Master whose shrine is almost visible from todays adventure. Shrewsbury is also home of the first ever skyscraper, the artist of the walking dead, and a billion other creative minds, some of which I've met and others I'd love to meet. I would be bold enough to say that Darwin is an over-milked teat unfairly overshadowing what else the town has to offer, but last time I dared speak such blasphemy, his divine powers devolved me all the way back to being a quadruped, and that just wasn't practical for me. I imagine if I was at least feline I could do wonders with a Go-Pro, but this wasn't to be. But I digress.

There is a lot of beauty in this world. One of the things I never want to do is reach a point where I take it all for granted. I could stay in and watch TV or read, and be a sensible adult and buy those newspaper things everyone harps on about. However, in my experience it's very difficult to be happy and read the newspaper, or watch the news. The news comes on, tells you "Good Evening" and then spends your time telling you exactly why it isn't that at all. And here in the UK we "have to" pay TV license (Plot twist- we actually don't!). You see, there's a lot of fear mongering going on. I stopped paying TV license when I realised I shouldn't be paying my money to sit on my bottom, being made to feel miserable in my downtime, and I stopped watching TV altogether when I realised that I had options other than sitting on my bottom feeling miserable. It concerns me greatly that as a species our recreational activities are becoming as automonous as our work.

When it comes to rooftopping, there is still fear. Unlike TV license fear, rooftopping fear actually has an instinctive logical reason and isn't just a product of fear mongering. But even so, it's an instinct best ignored.
While I am wary of the consequences of my actions sometimes, from either gravity or from an authority figure who catches me in the act, I like to think I have the skills to avoid these consequences, and also I have hope that the police would understand that I am a danger only to myself and that the experience I am seeking is one that, upon knowing it is obtainable, is not one I can simply grow old without experiencing. The police are humans just like me and you. They understand that we do not pay 40-50 thousand pounds a year just for them to get rid of people sat on rooftops with cameras.

Remove fear from your life and the world is yours for the taking. It's a beautiful world, and it should be enjoyed by everyone.

And thats what I planned on telling anyone if I got caught recently climbing the Parade Shopping Centre!

This is perhaps one of the trickiest climbs ever, but it was so worth the effort.

Construction of this epic building began in 1826 and ended in 1830. It was originally the Royal Salop Infirmary, and is rumoured to be haunted by the ghosts of former patients and nurses. You can see in the above photo near the door two apparitions of dead traffic cones, squashed beneath parking videos. You can tell that they're ghosts because they're blue, not red. A medium told me so. An expansion was added in 1870, and in 1915 balconies were added so that patients who had fought in the first world war could enjoy a view of the river.
After the second world war, an operating theatre suite was added to the roof, and a sluice block. However these features were apparently removed when it became a shopping centre with some 30+ flats on the upper floors, apparently to bring it back to its original look.
It ceased being a hospital in 1977 and today is a shopping centre.

Because Shrewsbury is a sloped town built on a hill, the Parade Shopping Centre in spite of not being a tall building has a pretty epic view from the top.

Click a picture to see it big.

Above looks over the river to Abbey Forgate, and the Lord Hill Column in the distance. 

Above: The golden illuminated building in the middle-background is the library.It is there that we'd be able to see the shrine to our Lord and Master Charlie D, if only we were higher... Or if he was higher. You make the effort, Darwin!

And then we have this excellent shot of the rest of Shrewsbury, showing St Juliens and St Alkmunds churches, with the market tower and St Chads looming in the distance.

Here's a "close up" from further along the roof.

St Marys Church is actually right next to the Parade but since it was impossible to climb this place with a tripod, I wasn't able to capture the entire tower in a long exposure, as there wasn't a means to angle the camera correctly. But I do like how the stars came out in the shot, and lets face it, you saw plenty of St Mary's in the last post. 

Which brings me to the cheeky part. You see, something like a gorilla-pod would really work wonders for long exposures on rooftops. I work for pittance and I'm currently in dispute with the DWP to find out why around £76 a month is getting deducted from my minimum wage earnings. So far they've found no reason for why it is happening, and my bosses are stumped too, and yet this money has gone, and when I say naughty things like "If there's no record of why it's being taken, can I have it back?" they cease their correspondence. And while I am still earning enough to live off, (so don't worry for me on that front) it means I'm a little strained for luxury purchases. It also makes me wonder how many other people this is happening to, where their hard earned money is stolen by the powers that be without explanation, and without assistance in rectifying the mistakes. I think the reason why we're not taught law in school is because this way authority figures can come along and do things and we just go along with it even if they are in the wrong. But I digress.

I lack the immediate financial means to give Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not the push it deserves, and up in the corner of this blog is a donate button. All donations will go to the adventure fund and this will include a smaller, portable tripod with bendy legs that wrap around things, as well as a go-pro. I know it's cheeky to ask, but I so rarely get less than a thousand reads and if each reader donated just £1 the result would be phenominal.

Of course, since it's cheeky to ask there's no pressure. Whats far more important to me is that you all check your payslips, and question anything odd, and most importantly of all, be nice to each other. So many complain about how bad the world is, but surely that would ease the pressure. The government will probably always be rather shit. What matters is how we treat each other.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to follow my Twitter and Instagram, and share over the social media.

Stay awesome!

New shots from Waitrose

I've told this story many times before. The building in Shrewsbury that is currently Waitrose was the gateway drug that led to my addiction to exploring. It was on a night in 2010 that I overheard a bunch of teenagers discussing exploring the abandoned Burger King building. I asked them to show me the way in, and as a result I got to explore the entire building, from its cellar to its roof. It was labyrinthian, and full of photo opportunities. I didn't know well enough to get as many photos as I should have, and due to it being so well known to the younglings of Shrewsbury, it didn't last that long.

A lot of security measures were taken to ensure it wasn't explored again. When it became Waitrose we did utilise the scaffolding to once again get a rooftop view, and also expansion down the rest of the street, but it was never a consistent place to explore. I was quite happy when I found out it actually was climbable, but the bad news was that all this time I had been blind to it. I had fallen into the sneakiest of all mental traps, the dreaded comfort zone.

And that to me was a real buzzkill,given that when I first started this whole thing, my mind was blown open. Suddenly everything was a ladder and I set about seeing my home town from just about every angle imaginable. The trouble was, I gained my little collection of frequent rooftops, and fell into that comfort zone where I could look at a building and say "I can get up there," and stopped looking at other buildings and asking "... but can I get up there?"

Well I sure showed myself. Never question your own potential. Unless you try, your chances of success are always going to be zero, but rest assured, if I was to write a blog about the places I tried to explore but couldn't, it would have twice as many articles as this one in a matter of months. But trying and failing isn't defeat. Failing to try is defeat.

I don't force entry, vandalise, steal or disclose means of entry, and the view from Waitrose is pretty goddamn epic.
Too epic to turn down, you see. I am addicted to existence. I'm in love with existence. If I just stayed in and watched TV, I feel like I'd be being unfaithful to existence. Existence itself wouldn't mind. Existence is a polygamist. Everyone can love existence.

Click a picture to see it big.

I'm not sure what caused the light anomaly to the left of the clocktower, but on a long exposure it could be anything! It looks like a meteor falling from space, which is pretty cool.

 It's a shame that at night the Christmas Reindeer has his lights switched off and gets fenced up.

The corner of Barclays. For this shot, I actually sat there for ages. Since it's a long exposure on a busy street, it actually took a while for there to be a trafficless thirty seconds. Thirty seconds doesn't sound like much but when you're waiting for a camera to go "click" and you can hear an approaching vehicle, it's the longest thirty seconds you'll ever sit through.
On a long exposure, any traffic will appear as twin-streaks of light, of which I now have about two hundred of this street corner.

Further down Castle Street, you can see St Mary's graveyard on the left, and a big modern building on the right. I'm not sure what that is.

Here are the familiar St Juliens and St Alkmunds Churches. In the darkness I could barely see them but a long exposure works wonders.

But my favourite shot is of St Mary's!

Overall, I'm really glad to have rediscovered access to this rooftop. Of course, the full explore is no longer there as the building is no longer a giant derelict fast food outlet, but the view is amazing and for me it's very nostalgic as its accessibility over the last five years has been very inconsistent. But given that one of my favourite rooftops, the flag tower, has now been made inaccessible, I feel like some kind of balance has been restored by the rediscovery of this one.

In regards to life itself, it occurs to me that this is likely to be the final blog post of 2015, so let me review it over a couple paragraphs. I want to point out also that January 8th will be the two-year anniversary of "Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not." That is, exactly two years since I decided to document my adventures here on the internet. When I started, it was just a side project, while I dabbled in other areas of creative expression. I wasn't sure where I was heading, but if you're a creative mind then you'll know, I had to head somewhere! A lot of my readers tell me that my own writing style has improved since the earlier articles, but honestly I think that this is because I care more.

In regards to my personal life I feel like my life is now entering into a golden era of sorts, and that is odd because so often golden eras are only noticable in hindsight. 2015 is the year I initiated a social reboot, leaving the negative and the toxic behind me. It was especially difficult to start from scratch because, and this brings us full circle with what I was talking about earlier, toxic people do provide a comfort zone. When one faces absolute solitude without them, it becomes very easy to just stay put. And yet with the people of the past left in the past, absolute solitude actually equated to being less lonely. Life is strange like that. When you stop to wipe dog crap off the bottom of your shoe, it doesn't mean the dog crap won. It means you're smart enough to wipe dog crap off your shoe.  Gradually, with the absence of negative influences, my mind was able to evolve in the direction it should always have been evolving.

It's strange now to think of "Me" in times gone by because that isn't me anymore. It feels like I'm writing for a fictional character that I was portraying. I feel that all the tragedy of early 2015 was a giant push forward. Future Me is going to be awesome. I'd so sleep with Future Me... (but I doubt I'm Future Me's type...) But regardless, the future is bright for me. I hope it is bright for you too, whoever you are, sat there on the recieving end of my verbal rubbish. We're all capable of initiating the change we want in our lives.

Think on that. What do you want from life? Is anyone really stopping you?

Follow my Instagram, and my Twitter, and please please share this page, or better yet, donate to the blog fund in the top right corner. All donations will go to pushing Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not and its continued development.
My next blog will be facing the world with the knowledge that I was trapped in this comfort zone. There is one place in Shrewsbury I've always looked at and thought "I wish I could climb that." And at long last, this itch will be scratched.

Thanks for reading. Stay awesome!

Shrewsbury from higher up than you

The title of this blog post was actually going to be the original title of any web presence my work would have online, but the Oswestry Rooftopper pointed out that it was a teeny bit inaccurate, what with the exploration of abandoned buildings and not exclusive rooftopping, and so he came up with Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not so that the title would be less contradictory. Roughly four years later I explored rural Shropshire, and Camelot, so that really backfired.

But both titles have a hint of cheekiness that I love.

It was the more recent explores of Camelot and Calcott Hall that involved fast talking, sneaking and avoidance of security that made me realise how much I miss my old rooftopping days. The stealth element doesn't usually have such a large role in your typical abandoned houses out in the countryside that I have been focusing on. However, when one is scaling buildings in a town with a thriving night life, being seen can cut an adventure short.

Since obtaining a decent camera I've been eager to revisit the rooftops, especially since so many of my older rooftop photos are from 2010 through to 2012, most of which you can find in the earlier posts of this blog. But in my photo collection there are no recent photos of Shrewsbury from the rooftops. So I decided to compile some of my recent rooftop activity on one blog post and link you back to the older posts as we go.

Let's start at the eyesore of Shrewsbury, Princess House. Home of the hub of human misery that is the Job Centre. Original article here!

And I have to say this: Wow! I've obviously gone to the page itself to get a URL for the link there, and I'm quite blown away by how far the picture quality has come since those days. These are proud times.

Remember, click a picture to see it big.

Princess House is a very tricky building to scale. (No, I'm not going to tell you how. Rest assured, it requires no excessive force or vandalism.) This place remains one of my favourite vantage points, with a tasty view of the square, and the bottom of Pride Hill where the spire of the rooftop maze and the flag tower can just be seen.

And here we have a lovely view of the Music Hall, and the Market Hall tower, with St Chads looming in the distance. This was the rooftop where I did my first ever panorama, showing St Marys, St Alkmunds and St Juliens church. (By the way, I'd love to be able to turn St Juliens into a link to a previous blog post too. The view from the top must be spectacular and I know some of my readers have been up there. So if anyone can slip in a good word and get me access I will love them forever.) But back to the panorama! It's not the most focused shot of all time but I love it. Click to see it big!

Curiously, the eagle statue that has been on top of Princess House for years was missing. It's either been removed by the staff of the building or by a rooftopping thief. It was there earlier this year though so it is a recent absence. It's sad to see the statue not there anymore.

Anyway, moving on, I mentioned a flag tower, didn't I? It's been one of the hardest rooftops to get to for five years now, and it seems that its accessibility is at an end. These are sad times, but not unpredictable and as such I was able to make the most of it in its final days. You can read the original article here.

The flag tower, up until 2012, still had the rope attached to it for a flag, although evidence suggests my rooftopping posse of old, nor Tree Surgeon my current explorer buddy, are not the only humans to have come up here. What evidence is that??? Well it's covered in signatures. And some of them are dated decades ago, while others are a lot more recent, although I'm sure some of the dates are bluffing.The ones that are genuinely decades old are a lot more faded.

Nice view of Pride Hill too, and of the market hall with the clocktower.

With rooftop access down a large chunk of Shoplatch, I also got a close up of the market hall as well as a view down Mardol.

While I don't know the origins of the bizarre street called Mardol, which you can see in the above photo stretching off into the distance, the street I'm currently on, Shoplatch, derives from Schutts Place, which was in reference to the Schutte Family, who lived in the building that eventually became the Hole in the Wall. Centuries ago the Schutte family were called the Schitte family, due to their profession of waste disposal. So technically you might say Shoplatch derives from Shit Place, but it is far from true of the actual place! This is perhaps my favourite rooftop spot in the whole town!

Meanwhile from the Hole in the Wall, the furthest point one can get down before coming to the impassable Draytons Passage, one can get this view of St Chads, and just see the Maplin roof sticking up there in the corner.

Moving on to the rooftops of Barker Street... where's that? It's the one that connects Claremont Road to Welsh Bridge. These are tricky rooftops to get to, but so worth it. The last time any photos were taken, Claremont Church was still under reconstruction, and you can see that article here.

This particular rooftop is a real adventure to get to. Unobvious means of access, and quite the tricky little workout. On my most recent visit here I almost gave up, due to being so out of shape since the days I climbed buildings on a more regular basis. But I persevered. And as such we have a lovely view of Rowleys Mansion, and the carpark next to it.

Beneath this car park, I have reason to believe there may be tunnels. It's actually a real area of interest. 

Claremont Church itself is something of an eyesore on the exterior but inside it's now a real nice cafe though, and it's the one that holds the mental health meet up on the first weekend of every month that I mentioned on my last article. It sure is strange drinking nice coffee and meeting nice people in a building I once explored when it was derelict.

On this rooftop, which I admit I never noticed from ground level until I first made it up here around 2011, is this eagle statue.

Apparently this was the Eagle Star Building, and it was built in 1940, and finished in 1946, making it fairly young in architectural terms, especially in Shrewsbury! The building was made with a Neo-Tudor appearance so that it would fit in with the rest of the town... Something the architects of more modern buildings here totally failed to do. Before its construction, the location was used in the 1920s by WH Smiths, and before that in the 1900s by Boots. As of 1946 the building was used by Eagle Star Insurance, and while I don't know when it ceased being used by them, the Eagle Star Insurance Company itself was bought out by BAT industries in 1984. It is now owned by Zurich Financial Services, although they aren't doing anything with it. The building on the other hand is now an estate agents.

And that concludes todays post of some of my most recent rooftop shots of Shrewsbury! Finally, after so much time exploring rural Shropshire and gallivanting off to Lancashire, "Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not" lives up to the title.

Lastly, I've reinstalled the donate button at the top of the blog. Just so you know, I live in the town centre, and work for minimum wage. In the past my readers donations got me a camera which revolutionised the content of this blog, and now I want to give Shrewsbury From Where You Are Not another push. All donations to the blog will go entirely to the blog. A gorilla-pod is a fairly affordable item on the agenda. That's a teeny tripod with bendy legs that will be great for wrapping around scaffolding and other rooftop bits, since dragging an actual tripod up onto the rooftops is very tricky, and I sort of borrowed it from a friend years ago who probably wants it back by now. Also on the agenda are printing costs since a few people have asked about having large print outs of my pictures, but in the long term I'm also thinking of getting a Go Pro so that I can show you guys the rooftops from my perspective, and my aspirations and goals go way beyond that. I want to travel the world. I want to blog about the abandoned places I see so much of online but have yet to visit.
If you can spare money for the blog fund, I'll really appreciate it. Although I respect it if you can't. It's a lot to ask. But it worked for the camera, and if one doesn't try then ones chances of success will always be zero.

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