Royal Doulton.

Royal Doulton was founded in 1815 by John Doulton on a £100 investment, the company quickly achieved world wide acclaim due to its fine quality products and became the top victorian manufacturer of sanitory work.

The Factory on Nile St. was aquired by Johns son Henry in 1877 through buying major shares in Pinder Bourne & Co. makers of earthern ware and table ware, seven years later Doultons started production on Bone China.

In 1901 King Edward VII granted Doultons a royal warrant and the company changed its name to Royal Doulton.

The Nile St. factory closed in 2005 with the loss of 500 jobs, the site was then aquired by developers St. Modwen for 2.5 million.

Since the factory closed it is surprising at how much damage has been inflicted on the place virtually every window in sight is smashed as well as entire roof sections broken.

There have been at least 5 arson attacks on the place as well in the past 2 years.

The site is also very popular with copper thieves who are constantly in and out of there stealing any wire they can find.

When you first see Royal Doulton the first thing that strikes you is the size of the place, it is massive it actually looks in parts like a housing estate as it has its own internal streets running it through it.

How ever it has seen better days since its closure it has been vandalized, Stripped, Set on fire and smashed to pieces with hardly any of the original features remaining.

The only things that do remain are some of the production lines and heavy machinery, the most complete sections now are one of the old production lines and the old engine house at the far end of the factory.

Despite poor weather conditions and rain myself and Steamy met at 4am on a carpark a few miles out from the site and waited until the weather improved and the lighting became more adequote.

By 5am we where in the main complex and exploring the outer buildings, access to some parts was difficult to say the least but after finding a rather large pair of ladders all our troubles where over.

Surprisingly we covered the entire site in 2.5 hours but this was due to the close proximity of all the buildings, all in all this was a fantastic explore even though we didnt find any pottery.