The Brush Factory

 

When I heard that there was an abandoned brush factory, I wasn't initially that enthusiastic about it. It sounds like a rather boring topic. I don't really need to see where Boris Johnson gets his hair.

But to my susprise my visit there turned out to be quite an intriguing little mooch around some industrial leftovers from the past. There's some fascinating machinery here, and it's all rather inconspicuous behind this row of derelict houses. Had I not known, I probably would have dismissed them entirely. They look like the kind of place you take your children if you want to trade them for heroin. But these three houses are totally connected internally, while the factory itself sprawls out behind it.

 

  

Directly next to it was this building, all part of the same complex. Older images do depict them connected, and it's still kinda obvious if you look at the wall. This particular building still has the company sign faded on the wall too, and given that it has the once shuttered window next to a door, I think it may have been a public-facing front for the business.

The name of the street actually alludes to what the factory did, which indicates that this was quite a prominent place in its time. Streets in towns all over the country have names like "Church Street" or "Station Road." They're named for the facilities that they led to. So the brush factory was probably once a thriving industry, whereas now it's just rotting away. Some say it's due to be demolished, so by the time this blog goes out, it might not even be there anymore.

 

 

Slipping inside, we have this hallway directly in front of the main entrance. It doesn't look like the entrance to a thriving factory at all.

 

 

There's a pretty nice floor pattern here, buried under the debris.  

So logically, one would assume that these were built to be houses and then the houses were converted into offices when the factory was established. There's just one problem with that, and that's a plaque on the outside of the building that specifies that the houses were built in 1912. However, the street name shows up on maps from the late 1800s, which would indicate that the factory already existed when the houses were built. If they were built for the factory then wouldn't they look less house-like?

Interestingly there is an aerial photograph from 1937 that seems to show the terraced houses with what appears to be backyards walled off from the factory. The sole street-facing portion of the factory was the rectangular monstrosity connected to the houses. At some point after the 1930s, the factory acquired the houses and demolished one to improve vehicular access. The remaining houses were converted into offices. 

 

 

Here's an old office which still has some old brush heads on the top.

 

 

Brush heads can be found literally all over the premises, and if you take a shot every time you see one, you should be on dialysis pleasantly sloshed by the end of he blog. Apparently when the factory closed, whatever didn't sell was just left behind. The odd thing about this, of course, is that the ancestor of the old owners is still in business, manufacturing brushes elsewhere under a different business name. So this family-run company didn't close so much as rebrand and relocate.

 

 

This room has some graffiti. None of it's particulsrly artistic, but at least they're saying please, and warning of needles! Considerate imbeciles.

 

 Now enough of this wall scrawling. Onto the building!

 

 

In regards to the history, I am infuriated that I can find very little on the subject. Anyone who has been reading my blogs for even a few months will know that I love getting into the real meat of a place. I'm not satisfied unless I can tell you exactly what colour socks the manager was wearing when a place opened. I have arguably written the most in-depth pieces on locations like Baron Hill and Denbigh Asylum, my literary abilities standing tall in a cesspit of copy-and-paste bare bones wikipedia shittery.

But not today! The brush factory, so significant in its time that its street is named after it, has very little web presence. But that doesn't mean there's absolutely nothing to say. 

 

 

Upstairs I found a very creepy ladder leading up into the attic. 

 

 

I did poke my head up into the attic, but it was generic, and it had a pigeon in it, so I didn't stick around. 

This part of the building would have been someones home when it was first built in 1912. Presumably once the factory purchased it, it became used for storage. I'm not sure when the factory obtained it, but adverts from 1945 do reassure the customers that the company would bounce back stronger than ever after war time. It's possible that the houses were claimed then, as part of the company restoration. A later advert from 1951 claims that the high quality of the goods has always been and always will be maintained. 

Well, until they abandoned the place anyway.

 

 

Looks like someone has been squatting up here. I am loving these upstairs fireplaces though. That's something you don't see anymore.

 

 

What was once probably a bedroom is now decorated with big metal shelves, all of which were probably crammed with brushes back in the day.

 

 

There are still packaged brush heads here, wrapped up and ready to be shipped out. 

 

 

Down below in what was the lounge, there's this really pretty fireplace. It was likely bricked up when the factory acquired the property. It still feels homely. I can totally imagine a family chilling out in this place. 

 

 

But look at this! This is a gorgeous relic! It's an Atari! 

I have this exact model at home, albeit without any wires that help me hook it into anything. I also still have a box of floppy disks, each containing a myriad of games, none of which make much sense. There's a game about a little blue dude shooting enemies and collecting gems, and another about a little green dude on an alien planet shooting enemies and collecting random household appliances, one about a giant bouncy testicle. Atari games are fucking weird. They have no story, but that kinda adds to the charm.

 

The Atari, despite looking like just a fat keyboard, is the entire computer. The mouse and joystick plug into it, and it also connects to the TV. There's a floppy disk drive around the side. Shove them in and it loads a game. Mine was very temperamental when I last booted it up. Sometimes it took a few attempts to get it to load a game. 

But those games were epic and still some of my fondest childhood memories. Granted, a "fond memory" in my childhood is one where I was allowed a cooked meal and on a REALLY good day, given eye contact as if I was an actual human being. 

But even so, retro video games are the fondest of fond memories!

 

 

Some of the upper rooms are decayed more so than others. There's no roof here, and as such nature has gotten in.

 

 Another set of stairs lead down from the "house" portion of the factory, into the actual workshop.

 

 

All of the green things on the floor are bristles. Long ago, someone planned to make a brightly coloured brush, but that never came to be.

 

 

So records show that the brush factory was run by a chap called Frank, and a woman named Betty who shared his surname. She was likely married to him. Some records show that Frank was born in 1919 and was running the company as of 1931. That would have made him twelve, so at least one of those dates is wrong. But in addition to that, the brush factory has the generic business name of a humans first initials, followed by his surname and "& sons." In this case, Franks surname matches but not the first initial, indicating that Frank was not the progenitor of this brush-making enterprise, but likely one of the sons, or even the grandson of the founder. In fact, it's entirely possible that there were two Franks, a father and a son. That would explain how one could be twelve when the other inherited the company. Or maybe he's a time traveler.

Records show a "George" lived locally in the late 1800s, and shared the same surname, so that's a possibility for the founders identity but it isn't confirmed. 

Either way, Frank got the company, and he brought his wife (or even possibly sister) into the mix in 1931. It was under their leadership that the company would acquire the houses in front of the factory.

 

 

This desk fan is kinda cute.

 

 

There's a few old filing cabinets around.

 

 

Apart from a fire taking place here in the 1970s, I can't really find much else about the place. Frank and Betty retired in 1993, and it seems that the reigns were handed to their son James, who promptly left it to rot and set up shop in another town in 2005, under a different company name. This place has been empty ever since, apart from the occasional crackhead, squatter and urban explorer.

 

And it's bloody mysterious. There's still loads of viable stock here that could still be sold and used. There's still machinery here that, maybe not today but certainly when the factory closed, could have been put back to use. It seems odd that James would abandon the place when he's still clearly interested in the family business. 

 

 

There are bits of workshop machinery dotted around.

 

 

Here's a newspaper from 1997. As you can see, 25 years ago the mainstream media still had nothing useful to say. But newspapers in abandoned buildings are useful to find, because they give us an aproximation of when this space was last inhabited. One of the workers probably brought this in one morning, and then the factory closed and it's been here ever since.

 

 

There was a hallway sloping downwards from that little workshop area. This was where the staff toilets were, as well as their changing area. Their work uniforms were kept in this big blue metal wardrobe.

 

 

It's very faint, but the wardrobe is gender segregated into "His" and "Hers." So male uniforms were kept on the left and female uniforms were on the right.

 

 

There's still some old work clothes hanging up, complete with a pair of shoes. Part of me wonders if this is staged, having seen a lack of authenticity run rampant in the urbex scene, by people who want places to be what they're not. But it's still cool to imagine that one day someone hung their work gear up for the last time, clocked out, and it's still here 25 years later.

 

 

The door of the wardrobe is decorated in the stickers from apples.

 

 

A mop propped up against a wall.

 

 

And now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets. Don't worry, this company manufactured toilet brushes too, so I'm optimistic.

 

 

Well, so much for my optimism. They're still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

 

 

 

This area has a few pallets dotted about, and it opens out onto the yard. It's probable that this is where stock was stored when it was ready to be loaded and sent out into the world.

 

 

I have no idea what this doohickey does.

 

 

Here's a little collection of brushes, possibly built here at this factory. After all, even if they were used to sweep the factory, why would a brush factory buy brushes from somewhere when they have the means to make them?

 Included among them is the toilet brush, which I'll be honest, I added for inclusivity. When I saw all these brushes propped up against the wall, I felt that the toilet brush should be among them. After all, judging by the toilets, it never saw much use.

 

 

There's this really awesome sliding door.

 

 

I'm guessing it would have been some sort of store room, but I'm not sure what this contraption is. 

Meanwhile, towards the back of the factory we found an entire room full of awesome machinery. 

 

 

I think this would have been the main factory area, and each of these machines would have been manned by someone to serve some specific purpose in the wonderful world of brush making. 

 

 

I have no idea specifically what any of this stuff does, but it sure looks cool! I wonder how much of this stuff could be brought back to working order with a little TLC.

 

Some of the machines used clamps to take the brush heads and drill loads of holes into them, which would then be implanted with the bristles, which would be secured in place. The machines were very hands on, and the process needed to be overseen, with specific guide patterns for different size brushes, because each different kind of brush head would require a different depth and width of drill. Apparently it was very easy to split the brush heads if used incorrectly.

 

 

If you look closely, the green machine is actually holding a brush head, full of holes, without any bristles put in yet. It's as if someone was in the process of making a brush when the building closed, and they just left the work unfinished. And assuming it wasn't placed there for a staged photograph, it's been like this for 25 years! People have literally been born and grown up while this last job has been left unfinished. Next time your boss complains that you're working too slowly, take them here!

 

 

Here's a rusty old workbench in the back room.

 

 

 

The big silver cylinder has a drill protruding from the bottom of it. This would have been used to put hundreds of tiny holes into a brush head.

Despite the rust, this vice does still work! Rotating the handle caused the clamps to open and close.

 

I'm not sure what this contraption does, but it looks cool.

 

And then there's this big ominous looking thing. I have no idea what this could be.

 

Honestly though, brush making machines are terrifying stuff! It's all clamps and drills! These would make excellent torture devices in a horror movie.

Why do no Decepticons turn into brush-making machines? Some of them turn into cassettes and tape players! Brush-making machines are way scarier!

Unless the cassette has Abba on it or something... I just shouldn't even joke about that. That's too far.

 

 

There's a little staircase leading up to the roof, where there were even more workshops and store rooms!

 

 

This looks like a hexagonal workbench around a central contraption with a funnel. 

 

 

There's a big scary set of scissors fixed to the bench here! And yes, they do still open and close.Judging by the big pile of bristles, I assume they were used to cut brush bristles to the right length.

 

At the back of the upper workshop is this cute little office, which has enough nature creeping in to make it pretty. Back in the day, this would have had a view out over the factory, and would have been quite nice.

But that's about it for the main building...

 

With the larger factory complete, it was time to move on to this part of the premises. And just look at my arch nemesis, the pigeon, gathered on the roof ready to flap around and poop on my head, the bastards.

This was actually the oldest part of the factory, if one considers that the terraced houses were built for residential use first. The buildings once connected but one house was demolished at some point after the 1930s to faciliate vehicular access. 

Given that the factory expands back, away from the street, it's possible that this was the public-facing part of the business. However I doubt this place had an actual retail outlet where customers could rock up and purchase a broom, like B&Q. Chances are this part dealt largely with delivery drivers and distributors to other retail outlets.

As you can see, there is a doorway to nowhere high up. The aerial photo from the 1930s shows a wooden stairway leading down from there, but this has long since rotted away.

 

Now this building is basically an office block, and didn't really capture my interest whatsoever. But here it is. It was infested with pigeons so I didn't stop long.

 

There are these vintage lightswitches though, which I really love.

 

This room seems to have been the focal point of all the graffiti. 

 

And that's all I've got!

To summarise, the Brush Factory was prett cool. It's got some fantastic machinery, and it does have some historical significance. This provided employment to its locality for at least a century, and there are no doubt people still alive today who have fond memories of it. Everywhere mattered to someone once, and this is no exception. I've heard rumours that the building has now been demolished, or is at least in the process of it. In that case, with such sparse information available on the internet, the documentation done by myself and other urban explorers is perhaps the best insight into this little chunk of history that you're likely to find. So while I do complain about the world of urbex and some of the silliness that comes out of it, it does serve a positive purpose. I welcome anyone with any memories or stories about this place to come forward. Maybe I'll edit them into the narrative.

My next blog will be a very gorgeous Irish bar, and then a very awesome little mine. I'm really looking forward to writing up on both of them. But in the meantime, follow me on the algorithmic hellscapes that are Instagram and Facebook, as well as Vero, Twitter and Reddit. They're alright.

Thanks for reading!