Paper Sack Factory

On the surface, industrial sites don't sound particularly appealing. If someone says "come check out this abandoned house full of trinkets," it sounds kinda intriguing, and if someone says "come check out these tunnels that were used during the blitz," that sounds awesome. 

"Come check out this abandoned factory" sounds like the prelude to my last day on the planet before my throat is sliced and my perky bottom is passed around by a bunch of crackheads. 

But they are photogenic (the factories, not the crackheads) and they're often just left to nature. 

A factory does have an often overlooked human element too, in the sense that it was a workplace, and we can mostly all relate to having a job. Whether we like to admit it or not, if we saw our workplace abandoned decades later, frozen in time, we'd feel some sense of intrigue and nostalgia. 

Not so long ago, people came here every single day to feed their families and keep the office-dwellers at the top feeling important. It mattered to people. 

This particular factory produced paper sacks, the kind that farmers use to carry fertiliser, potatoes, carrots, that sort of thing. There is a documentary from the 1960s that shows a range of their products, including rabbit pellets. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

In 1962 they also began making paper refuse sacks. But this sack factory was just the tip of the corporate iceberg, being just a small branch of a huge paper-manufacturing juggernaut. 

But it's the sack factory that's abandoned, so that's the part we're focusing on.  

It has been popular with urban explorers, and we all know that when it comes to research, they'll stop at nothing.

And stay there.

Their write-ups typically regurgitate the same three very mundane facts as if they're impressive: 

1- Materials would come in through one end and the final product would come out the other. (Its almost as if it's a factory) 

2- It had a cafeteria.

(It's almost as if it was a workplace) 

3- It had windows to let in sunlight. 

(Alert the freakin' media!)

 And then they typically say that there's nothing much else to be found online.  So, here's everything I found online!

The story starts with the Bowater family. The Big Cheese was a Mancunian named William Vansittart Bowater, and he had a pretty impressive beard. In fact, he had two. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

He looks like a wizard and I love it. 

William Bowater was born in 1838, and trained as a paper maker in Manchester until he was dismissed in 1881. He decided to go to London and set up his own paper company. He ended up making toilet paper. Well, actually he was making paper for the Daily Mail, but who can tell the difference?

His sons got involved too, and when William died in 1907 the business was taken over by his eldest son, Thomas.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

But Thomas became Mayor of London in 1913 so his younger brother Frederick had to take over the factory. 

I have a group photo of Fred's branch of the Bowater family. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

I much prefer photos like this. Portraits are great, but they're also unnatural. Here we have Frederick as a human, with his family. All of these people had identities, hobbies, loved ones, hopes and dreams. I feel like group photos capture that dynamic better. 

Frederick is sat in the middle with his walking stick. Standing behind his right shoulder is his son, Eric. Eric fought in the first world war, but retired from the military after being injured. Back in the UK he began running the family empire. 

As a super speedy digression, Thomas and Frederick also had a sister named Mabel who was murdered by her husband in 1919. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

She was feeling sick, was given some medicine by a doctor, ended up dead due to "heart disease" and her husband Harold remarried a much younger woman four months later. The locals were so suspicious, and the gossip so severe, that the police actually dug her up for forensic examination. They found arsenic in her stomach, and Harold was arrested. 

That is pretty cool. Do you remember when the police actually did stuff?

The trial took place throughout 1920, and it came to light that Harold had not only written to the doctor saying that he wanted his wife gone, but had also made honeymoon arrangements with his new wife, prior to losing his first. But he was acquitted because apparently all this evidence was just circumstantial. 

I guess the justice system has always been shit.

Back to the factory. 

With the company in Eric's hands, he expanded north into Lancashire, purchasing land in 1929. The land happened to have a mansion on it, and to be honest I'd much rather be talking about that. It was a Stately home dating back to 1540. In the 1890s a pit had been discovered on the premises containing pistols and swords dating back to the civil war. The history there is pretty awesome.

So naturally Eric had it torn down. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

The new factory went into production in 1931, and the mansion was demolished in 1937 to make way for expansion. 

To give them some credit, the mansions clock, dating back to 1704, was installed in the factory foyer, so there was some attempt at respecting the past. But not enough for my liking. Eric's a nob. 

But this expansion would see the creation of this sack factory in 1951. It allegedly had four hundred employees at its peak. According to one employee, the work pattern was about 39 hours a week, and the wage in 1966 was about £5 a week. I guess a fiver went further back then. 

These stairs give us a quick detour away from the factory floor. 

I assume these would be offices for managers, with windows so that they can look down on their employees and feel like Mufasa looking down on his kingdom from the top of Pride Rock. 

Here's the "drop test" area, where the products durability was tested by dropping it from a certain height, to simulate real-life accidents that might happen. 

The 1960s definitely seem to be the glory days of the factory. It had its own sports club, its own football team, and in 1968 it had a "Miss Bowater" pageant for the female staff. The winner was 22-year-old Yvonne Oliver, who had been part of the sack factory sewing line since she was sixteen. 

(Yvonne Oliver. Photo not mine, obviously)

Check this out! This entire end of the factory is being taken back by nature. That's pretty cool. 

The 1980s were a time of immense media attention for the factory, riddled with signs that the golden age was at an end and it wasn't the most positive work environment. In 1983, a man was caught stealing two bags of gravel, and was subsequently sacked on the spot. But prior to this, in 1978, a new policy had come into place that said that in such situations, the employee would need to be suspended with full pay while the case was investigated by management, with a union representative present for the employee. Because the company failed to adhere to this policy, and probably because the guy had worked there for fifteen years and people liked him, 250 workers just walked out and went on strike. Apparently they had 320 employees at this point, so a strike of 250 people wasn't everyone, but it was definitely enough to hurt business.

But honestly, while I have no evidence for this, I think this was probably just the straw that broke the camels back. I mean, the guy was stealing, so he was in the wrong, but I can't see 250 people striking over that. People reportedly even cancelled their holidays to strike. There's actual dedication and passion here, and I think that is indicative of a long history of being treated like shit by their management. In fact, I can't see a guy working somewhere for fifteen years and then just start stealing. People don't do that unless they've stopped giving a shit, and stopped respecting their employer. 

Anyway, the strike was a success and the sacking was reversed, although he was still suspended.

Missing this mess entirely was a young lady named Sandra Burns. In 1980, at the age of 22, she died in a motorbike accident one weekend. She had been due to start working here that Monday. Perhaps in an alternative timeline, she's part of that strike. 

In 1984 there was another strike when the sack factory tried to get rid of the union representative and his on-site office. This strike consisted of 240 people, but lasted only six days until the managers gave in. It seems they'd learned not to fuck with their workers.

But then in 1986 the union official, a chap named Robert Drummond, was arrested for getting drunk and beating someone up. Apparently he'd been drinking with a man named Tony Jones, who was off work following a stroke, as well as a chap named Dennis Powell and his wife. They all ended up back at Robert Drummonds, but since Tony's health wasn't great, Dennis offered to take him home. Robert wasn't ready to call it a night, and just flipped, beating up Dennis. Dennis's wife tried to intervene but Robert hit her too. 

Robert's wife, Marianne, had been asleep on the sofa, but she woke up during the commotion and actively stopped Dennis calling the police. Dennis's wife had to flee the house, drive home, and call the police from there. It must have been terrifying because it meant abandoning her husband while he was getting attacked. Robert Drummond was fined. 

There's a water dispenser here. I wonder if it still works. 

1989 heralded the end of the factory. Different groups started buying parts of the paper company. Various buildings were sold to different companies, but the Swedish group "MoDo Ltd" acquired this building. They also owned a company called Papropack in Hull, so this acquisition made them the second largest paper sack factory in the UK. Managerial responsibility was taken over by Papropack, which the union reps here welcomed. But luckily the Sales Director and Finance Director got to keep their jobs. 

It went through a bunch of other changes as ownership swapped and company's merged. I don't know the ins and outs because I fall asleep when it comes to business jargon. But the bottom line is, this factory closed in 1997. Most of the machinery was kept by the company who had purchased it, while other bits were sent to Turkey. 

In my opinion, the best parts of the building are upstairs. 

Here we have the infirmary. 

And let's be honest, given that this place closed its doors in 1997, this is all remarkably preserved. Somehow it's dodged vandals and taggers for just over a quarter of a century, and that's pretty incredible. 

Here we have the staff kitchen, delightfully peely. 

And this was someone's office at some point. 

This room was apparently a lab, and I'm very happy because I've come across a shot of how it used to look in the 1960s. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Likewise, this boardroom, now rocking a carpet of brambles, is identifiable with shots from the 1960s, thanks to the wallpaper behind the table. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

But curiously, that is a different table. 

In this office we have an old tannoy microphone next to a retro telephone, lacking its outer shell. 

Who the hell steals the shell of a telephone?

There's some more phones over here. 

It's like some sort of phone cemetery. 

There is some graffiti up here, but nothing interesting. This is "my parents are siblings" graffiti. Someone has literally written 666. OoOoOoOh!!! Satanic!

Listen, I know Satan. He's a sweetheart. Get over him. 

This office belonged to someone called Hughie, who I guess worked in payroll seeing as the rules are stamped above his doorway so that nobody bothers him. I wonder if he was unpopular, because these little Nazi doodles outside his office seem a little too conveniently placed. 

I feel like a little too much effort has gone into these. Maybe they were scribbled by actual employees. 

There's a little reception area here. Next to the entrance is the "booth" that once housed a payphone. In 1986, someone actually broke into the factory and robbed the coins from the payphone. Oh dear. 

But now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets!

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

Some of the cubicles have designated names, which sure is interesting. Someone has written "Traitor" under Brian Beard. I wonder what he did. 

Here we have the sales department, where presumably a gaggle of cold callers sat at desks and rang farmers, persuading them to become clients. 

Even now it still has the bleak atmosphere of a telesales office. Such a job is my idea of Hell. I did briefly work in telesales, when I was picking myself up from homelessness. A homeless support organisation that no longer exists, following a decade or so of funding cuts to welfare programs, agreed to pay the deposit on my first apartment as long as I could get a monthly income. And so I turned to the only place that would hire a hobo, telesales. And it was awful. I wasn't good at it, because I'm too nice to lie to pensioners. But the job served its purpose. It put a roof over my head, and I never looked back once I left. 

I love the hallway of the sales department. It's one long corridor of peeling paint. 

Over at this end of the building, these offices are particularly fucked, more so than the others. Evidently there's been a fire at some point. Nature is taking it back nicely. 

There's the remains of an "out of order" sign on the kitchen door, which is kinda comical. 

But that's enough of the offices, and the places where all the paperwork really gets done. There's one place left to explore, and that's the area next to the loading bay. 

See, there's a bunch of offices and rooms here which are inaccessible. The stairs that led up to them have gone. But that's not to say it's impossible to get to them. I enjoy a challenge. 

By standing on this dubiously-stained sofa, I was able to pull myself up. 

There's an old key rack here, although all the hooks are gone. 

And here we have an absolutely tiny office. 

If this was my office, there would be just one saving grace, and that's all the ligature points around the factory!

There's still some paperwork on the desk. I guess with this office being inaccessible to those who can't stand on sofas and reach for things climb, this has been relatively more preserved.

It's possible to use some pipes to climb one floor higher too!

I guess this is the highest floor of the factory, no longer accessible via stairs or ladders. Presumably it was once used as a store room. 

Ah yes, what blog would be complete without my camera strap obstructing the only shot I got of a specific angle? I'm an idiot. 

I guess that's it. As far as popular urbex spots go, I think I covered it in its entirety. I doubt everyone has made the effort to climb up to the top floor, so that's quite cool. I really don't like leaving places unfinished. For all I know, this could be demolished next week. 

I wasn't particularly invested in this place. It didn't grab me the same way the Fletcher factory did, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means I did a better factory shortly before, and now I'm chasing the industrial dragon. It's definitely worth a mooch if you're in the area, and in my opinion it is more worthwhile than things like houses and ROC bunkers that get pretty samey. 

It's a solid "Alright" in my opinion.

My next blog on here will be a war-era underground thing, and then probably one of the most visually spectacular adventures yet. I'm quite excited to write about it. Whereas on my Local Blog, I'll be covering a chapel and a few other bits pretty soon too. I have loads to talk about. . 

If you like my blog, and aren't going to be mean to me for daring to say that the Holocaust wasn't very pleasant (I wish I was joking) then by all means follow my Facebook page. I'm on Instagram too for some reason. I do kinda want to put more emphasis on the smaller social media platforms, so give me a follow on Cara and Vero, two smaller creativity-based platforms that are basically everything that Instagram should be. I'm also on Bluesky, which is basically what Twitter used to be before it became (even more) shit. 

Thanks for reading!