Cementarium

For a long time now Shoreham cement has been on the husk of a planning permission commitee. Shorehams owners planned to redevelop the site and eventually reopen it sometime in 2010. Now i dont know anything about the cement industry, but from what ive seen from some of the sites in london that take up less then 1/8th of shoreham's size and still perform the same task, surley it would be easier and cheaper just to demolish the entire site and build a new one on top of it?.

In the 2-3 years its been since my last visit the site has become even worse. Every single walkway, platform, support and machine is covered in rust, presumably beyond repair, but the owners must have a plan, right?.

I had some free time in the week so i headed down with Site (AKA Garyface). As we arrived we were disappointed to find the site was crawling with builders. Crap. Now i had been driving for an hour to get here so i wasn't ready to give up without a fight. We headed over the fence and down towards the nearest building, just as a door opened and a worker came out right in front of us. We dived into a nearby bush and prayed we hadn't been seen. We stayed down for a few minutes until the worker drove off round the corner in his truck.

We made a break for the building again and ran straight into a room with no way out. Damn, try the next one?, blocked, next one?, also blocked. As we entered the next room we heard the rumbling of a truck coming towards us so with nowhere else to go we squeezed through a letterbox sized window covered in broken glass and finally arrived in the main turbine room.

Now it might be because i have done some bigger sites since i last visited Shoreham, but my memories of the huge concrete supports holding up the large metal pipes were instantly shattered. They seemed a hell of a lot smaller at only 2 stories high. Nevertheless we were here now so we started taking pictures.

One of the main reasons i like Shoreham is the graffiti that litters the site. Of course you still have your crap tags done by prepubescent kids trying to impress their local crew. But apart from that the rest have clearly had a lot of time and effort put into them, you could even call some of them "art".

By now the workers had left for the day and we had been walking around the dusty buildings for almost 5 hours and i was about ready to go so we headed back out and over the fence.

As always a good trip at Shore ham but i cant help wonder how its future will pan out.