Who are we?
We are two brothers and like you, we hold down full-time jobs and lead a relatively normal life. The only difference is that every once in a while we don old scruffy clothes, grab our cameras and head off into the wilderness to venture into forgotten buildings. Occasionally we remember other useful items such as water, torches, the odd snack and even a camera battery. Unknown to each other we had spent the same week reading about derelict buildings online on various websites throughout the web. That was back in 2007 when we discovered that there was 100 acres of industry laying derelict on our doorstep. Since then we have not looked back, except when we hear the scuffle of footsteps behind us or the loud banging of a door in the wind. It has been an adventure filled with tense moments, incredibly stupid moments, and moments when we forget we are in the middle of a guarded derelict site, laughing like hyenas because one of us has taken an unexpected nose dive out of a window.
We can’t explain why we do it, we just do. It probably has something to do with being cooped up in an office block five days a week. It is a bug that we cannot always ignore. We blame That Smell.
All thoughts and opinions are our own.
The Website
If we are honest, it is not what we had ever expected. It started as somewhere to post a few photos that we had taken so that we could share them in the ether. Then we began reading about the buildings we were visiting. So it started to expand. Then it expanded a little more, then was redesigned to become more functional and then it set about expanding again. We started out with a few page hits a day and didn’t see much growth until Virgin Media picked up our page after a ‘Most Haunted’ program on Denbigh Hospital; we peaked over 10000 hits in a single day. Since then, the website has consistently averaged about 500 hits and we have been referenced, back linked and published by a number of websites. All of this has led to a rather comprehensive site, not only filled with photos, but information. Eventually the website was split down into two sections, Places we have explored and a section dedicated to our photography exploits unrelated to our explores.
In 2011, we decided to bolt a blog to the side of the website so that we could add some human elements to the mountain of historical documentation. The website had started to become a little sterile and too much like a half-filled university text-book. A blog was a useful addition, where you will find our ramblings on just about anything crosses our minds. The WordPress platform proved useful and so easy to use that we decided to move the entire website over and TheTimeChamber was re-re-re-born for the third time. Hopefully this should allow us to more easily update the website in the future as we had fallen into the habit of doing ‘mass updates’. A side effect is that it may cause us to uncontrollably tinker with everything. Especially after an update, which has an obnoxious habit of resetting things.
We don’t plan any further upgrades, they take far too long. Don’t hold us to that statement.
Contributors
There are a number of people who have helped us along our journey that we would like to thank. They are, in no order,
- Our UK Friends (Kingrat, Lilli, MarkR, Ridds, WIMR, Mex, Esp, TC, Box, Tumbles, PaulN, Citadel Monkey, Pix, Lee, Lora, Monk, DMax, DK. The list goes on…),
- Our ever suffering partners who put up with our random trips/muddy clothes/broken cars and general exploring obsessiveness with out (too much) fuss,
- The rowing in circles crew,
- The cupboard adventurers,
- The ‘oh, that left’ tour group,
- The Wartling Bunker Fetishers,
- The Scottish Bunker Society / 28 Group Control
- Our German and European friends, Sascha, Peter, The Berliner Unterwelten and the Bundeswehr,
- South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust,
- North East London NHS Foundation Trust,
- South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare Trust,
- Wealdon Cave and Mine Society,
- Subbrit & the people we have met,
- Don @ Upper Heyford,
- Various Council Planners throughout the country.
- The Chernobyl 58 hour crowd
A Small Disclaimer & Copyright Notice
Derelict buildings pose an enourmous hazard to people who enter them, so if you do decide to get off the computer and enter the big wide world, please take care. That is all we ask. That and we cannot be held accountable for your own actions, whatever they are. It is your life and your responsibility, by reading this you agree that anything that happens is not our fault and we cannot be held responsible. Dangers include, but are not limited to, unguarded drops, asbestos, lead paint, broken glass, rusty metal, wild animals, radiation, poor quality air, other human beings, prickly vegetation, rotten floors to fall through, rotten ceilings to fall on you, rotten walls to crush you, cutting remarks, eerie atmospheres, egos, unstable egos to crush you, poor navigation skills, pigeons and rodents. By visiting derelict buildings you could die, or suffer permanent life changing injuries so we advise you don’t. Also its worth remembering that you should only visit with the land owners permission.
P.S. The photos contained within this website are property of the website owners (unless otherwise stated), so is the text and words contained within. They are under our copyright. We have tried as far as possible to identify material we have used by providing website links to the original material, or credit to the original authors/photographers/drawers but in some cases despite trying we have been unable to do this. If you wish to use anything from this website, or discuss any material shown please contact us via the contact page and we will try to come to an arrangement.