For my first explore of 2022, I visited this derelict college campus, which stands in the middle of a town. There are a few different buildings there but I was on my lunch break and only had time for a quick explore of one of them. I might go back in the future to have a look at the others and try to get some better pictures.
The building I chose has a distinctive circular shape. It was built as a hall of residence but was more recently used as offices, prior to its closure in 2016. I wasn’t sure how old it was at the time, but I’ve since found out it was built in 1979. That makes it one of the newest buildings I’ve explored (Polphaill and the abattoir also dated from the 1970s), as well as making it exactly the same age as me. I like to think I’ve aged better than it has 😉 .
I was amazed at how easy it was to access this place. It was literally just a case of walking onto the campus grounds from a nearby street and then walking into the building. Of course, being wide open in the middle of a large town means it’s attracted a lot of vandalism and is in very bad condition now. Just about every window that isn’t boarded up has been smashed, and anything even remotely worth taking has gone.
I entered through the back door. The building has three floors and is in a sort of “doughnut” plan, with a circular courtyard in the centre. On each level a single corridor runs right round. The outer rooms are mostly very dark as all of the outer windows were boarded up, but the windows that face into the courtyard were left uncovered, so the rooms on that side are a lot lighter. I set off around the ground floor corridor, looking in most of the rooms to see if I could find anything of interest. Most rooms were empty, but a few still contained cupboards, shelves or the remains of kitchen units.
At the front of the building, a single storey wing projected outwards, containing some larger rooms. These were presumably some sort of communal area, though once again it was hard to tell much more about them when they were so trashed.
Although I did venture up to the first floor, finding it very similar to the ground floor, I stayed away from the top level for my own safety. It looks to be in an even worse state than the rest of the building, with parts of the roof now missing.
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