Tiny Café

I know I said on my last blog that my next one would be some underground military fortification. But really, I lied. I didn't want to get you too excited by what was actually next on the to-do list.

This building, once whimsical but now wank, is "Wilson's Cafe." It's sat casually rotting away, surrounded by industrial buildings whose employees once congregated here for their full English breakfasts, coffee, and daily bitch about management.  

Given that we were in the area, I insisted that my opulent entourage stop to take a look, and they still haven't forgiven me. 

Slipping in was a piece of piss. While I scrambled in through the window, my friends checked around the perimeter and found that the door was, in fact, open. Silly me. Why would anyone lock this?

I mean, as much as I love urbex, sometimes we do need to be honest with ourselves. 

This is just an abandoned room. 

It isn't an urbex spot that has flaws. It's a flaw that can be urbexed. 

The blackboard is the main thing to see here. It's a surviving remnant of a time when this place was actually cared about. 

On the surface you'd think having the names would be handy for research, but the thing is... what if they're still alive? I am more than happy to research dead people. Researching the living is crossing a moral boundary for me. 

And even dismissing that moral boundary for a moment, I don't know if Jan and Hughie are a couple, a parent and offspring duo, a pet owner and their dog, a boss and their employee (same thing as pet owner and dog, except when it's a dog there comes a time when it's considered cruel to keep it alive), so things aren't as straightforward as you might think. 

The café was popular with a lot of workers on the industrial estate. But it is in closest proximity to the paper sack factory that I wrote about last time. In fact it's built on the same land as the factory, the land where an ancient manor house once stood, where back in the Victorian era they found a pit full of civil war pistols and swords. There was some real history here. 

I have a photo of that manor, just to make everyone sad. 

(Photo not mine obviously)

They tore that house down in the 1930s, and then they built this. And for what purpose? What's it doing that the mansion couldn't also be doing, but prettier?

Given that it was built around the same time as the factory, I assume the Bowater's owned it, which makes me wonder if "Hughie" is the same Hughie whose name was on the office door in the sack factory. Hmm...

Here's the counter where Jan and Hughie served their customers.

This pillar has a few old business cards stuck to it, once on display for customers. 

This sign says that the café was open at 8am. There's also a telephone number there, but I decided to censor it. 

There's some documents here. In particular, the staff training record. 

But really, that's about it.

This place made me question my life, not just as an urbexer, but as a person. Like what am I doing? Is this who I am? It feels less like a fun urbex and more like a questionable life choice.

People hear that I explore and document abandoned places, and they say "that sounds cool," but when they see that I mean this place, it's only a matter of time before the conversation descends to "So that's the life you chose, huh?"

But.... I still kinda like it. And that makes me happy in myself. Because when you've abseiled down mineshafts, swam out to shipwrecks, lay down on morgue slabs, climbed churches naked and poked around abandoned hospitals, it's easy to turn your nose up at this sort of thing and say "that's beneath me."

And I'd rather be the kind of person that can appreciate the little things, even if they are a bit shit. 

This place still mattered to Jan and Hughie, and it was still a popular hangout for the customers back in its day. Some people do have fond memories of this place and would be sad to see it like this. 

Onto the best part of any abandoned building (especially this one), the toilet.

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

That's it for the café. I had more fun than I thought I would. And by that, I mean, a little bit.

But what's this???

Just outside the café we can see the remnants of old rails. These are a piece of industrial history. 

These tracks once served the factories here, bringing materials in and shipping products out. And I have a photo of one of the trains!

(Photo not mine, obviously. According to the watermark it belongs to "In." Ingrid Nettle? Ian Nash? Instant Necrosis? Who knows?)  

This train has actually been along these tracks. That's pretty cool. Perhaps people were eating in this café, watching it go by back in the day. 

But maybe that's the saddest thing about this café. I finally found something of historic interest and it's just outside, with my eyes cast downwards to avoid looking at the thing I'm supposed to be talking about.

My next blog will be about an old military fort, and if its even half as good as this café then... well I'll be mad because that won't be good enough.

In the meantime, if you like my blogs then the best way to get updates is... probably to just keep checking back, because social media algorithms are about as trustworthy as a Prince Andrew alibi. But anyway, do have a Facebook page, I am somehow still clinging to relevance on Instagram, and I am on the smaller platforms like Vero, Bluesky and Cara, all basically filling the role of Instagram and Twitter before the algorithmic rot set in.

Find me there.

Thanks for reading!