YMCA Parent Centre - Northampton

This building was known as the "YMCA Parents Centre" which was located on Cheyne Walk which is in Northampton town center. This centre offered a variety of servises that help promote a positive family and there relationships, It is one of the largest providers of childcare and school-based iniatives.

Now the building is more or less an empty shell, used by local skaters and also by local graffiti artists. The building is opposite the NHS General Hospital and Beckets park. There is no story about why this building no longer exists so the only reasons could have been that there was a lack of funding for the area or the building contained dangerous substances such as asbestos.

YMCA England supports and represents the work of 135 YMCAs providing professional and relevant services that make a difference to the lives of young people in over 250 communities. The YMCA reaches out to over 1 million young people each year, working with them at every stage of their lives and offering support when and where they need it most. Founded over 160 years ago, the YMCA in England builds on a long history of providing a place for young people to find acceptance, community and activity.

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Street-Art and Demolition - Dublin City

When arriving In Dublin City I caught an air-coach to O'Connell street In the heart of Dublin City, there was heavy amounts of graffiti but of a poor quality. It was mainly just tags and scrolls. However I then saw something allot more interesting, Buildings that were left abandoned In Dublin City were not left to sit and rot but instead simply torn off the street as you can see above. This was not rare to see in the city, on each street (especially the older ones) you should expect to see a vacant lot similar to this. When I arrived In Dublin city I had a closer look around and still only saw graffiti artist tags of poor quality, most of them had used metal paint on stone or wood surface which made it look even worse. But as I walked down s

ome of the Dublin backstreets and also out towards the edge of Dublin City another style of art seemed to emerge. Stencil art can be found everywhere in the city, and some of it is brilliant.

Lots of stencil art can be found both In and around the city however you do need to keep your eyes peeled because it will hideaway from your eye, also you might want to check out some of the side streets and alley ways to see some of the larger stencils. All of the stencils are not only just for decoration, there are more political stencils then there are just for show, The Treaty of Lisbon (also known as the Reform Treaty) is an international agreement signed in Lisbon on 13 December 2007 that would change the workings of the European Union, A popular political party Sinn Féin are against the change of this treaty and you will come across hundreds of political stencil art pieces around the city that are in support of Sinn Féin and against the treaty being changed.

On the last day of my travel we visited the old Jameson Whisky distillery and on the way out I heard the sounds of a festival going on in the area we had a look around for this festival and came across a environmental festival with things like organic and health foods onsale, however we came across a guy painting graffiti art onto canvas, Towards the end of the holiday I started to think that there were no major graffiti organizations in Dublin but after seeing the skill of this guys work It changed my mind, he had done some amazing portraits that can be viewed in my gallery at the bottom of this blog.

Finally the last thing I noticed was all over dublin was advertising stickers, they covered on the lamposts, ATM's and building walls, some of them were very attractive, the one that caught my eye was a sticker advertising a graphic design blogspot called "andalltha" he is a graphic designer all the way from paris and has some great work and designs, It was pretty amazing to find a graphic designer advertising his services in such a far away city, but it works, they caught my eye in a number of places, his work is WELL WORTH checking out, you can get to his blog by clicking here

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Disused Freight Line - Northampton

Behind Nunn Mills Power Station is a set of old freight train tracks going out along the bedford road (A426) and under the A45 and then out possibly out to bedford, I will have to do some more research first! (I will update this when i have)

The tracks are no longer in use and sadly no old trains or carriages were left on the tracks, some of the old track equipment and signal boxes still remained but there was very little, Along the way is a huge hotspot for graffiti (I won't name exactly where as I would hate to see it trashed.) probably as it is so close to Nunn Mills, we came as far as there today as we were pressed for time, possibly in the future we will continue along the tracks hoping to find something exciting, but for now here are some photos of our find.

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Nunn Mills Power Station - Northampton - Incomplete

Nunn Mills power station is an old disused and gutted power station in Northampton, the River Nene runs along its northern boundary whilst an infrequently used rail freight line, together with disused tracks and siding marks the southern boundary of the site.

Further south, beyond the railway, is Delapre Abbey, which is set in an area of recreational parkland that includes a number of nature conservation designations and a golf course. The Abbey is a Grade II Listed Building and has a number of associated buildings that are listed as Grade II. The area is also the site of a registered battlefield from the Civil War.

To the north of the site, on the opposite riverbank, are two recreational areas, Beckett’s Park which is a formally laid out public park, and Midsummer Meadow, which is a more informal recreation ground.

The power station is next to the Avon Cosmetics building so is very hard to get a good look at durning the week, there is high security on what's left of the old building including CCTV and speaker systems, we took a look around the back of the site and stood where more of the building used to stand before it was nocked down and got some pretty decent photo's of what's behind there.

When going round the side of the building to try and enter what's left we were discovered by CCTV and asked to leave, which we did. Hopefully I will update this post with internal photo's at a later date as this building is rumored to have some famous graffiti inside.

For more than 10 years, graffiti artists have met at a warren of abandoned factory buildings behind the town's old power station.

The power station became known across Europe for its work, have hosted hundreds of paintings over the years, some of which took weeks to paint and cost the 'artists' hundreds of pounds. The site is now being bulldozed to make the way for the development of more than 1,000 houses, artists from across the country have begun to take notice of the work on show there.

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Grange Park Maisonette - Northampton - Section B (DEMOLISHED)

This building is a derelict maisonette on the border of the newly developed Grange Park housing estate in Northampton, This building can be seen when traveling down the A45 Southbound near the M1, the building is directly opposite the Hilton Hotel. When we first came across this building we thought it was one big house, once inside it felt like it was smaller, that is when we realized this building was a maisonette, sadly Section A (Front) is blocked off however section B can be entered from the rear. The building is in a VERY bad condition so caution had to be taken, some walls had collapsed and most of the roof has been taken away probably due to weathering. This house is heavily graffitied mainly by Northampton's local "NFA" boys, some of the art inside the house is extremely impressive, there is a stairwell with a length long piece of graffiti art stretching up the stairs that is a must see piece.

When upstairs most of the flooring has been broken and the only footing is the timber beams that are keeping the structure of the house together, the stairwell is safe to climb as is completely constructed out of concrete however the upper level does not offer much to see. There has been allot of tales about the history of this house from simply people living there and working up at the local service station to the house being a huge crack den, sadly I cannot confirm any of these tales as after researching as much as I could nothing came up.

This house is a hotspot for local photographers to do urban photography and modeling.

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Old Meals on Wheels Centre - Northampton - Site A (DEMOLISHED)

As many of you will already know Meals-On-Wheels is a service typically ran by the NHS to provide hot cooked meals to the elderly or disabled, they cook the meal and deliver it to there door. Around 2002-2003 the Meals-On-Wheels centre closed and relocated it's self as part of the re-development of the Northampton General Hospital, I could not get much information about the building and that's probably because there isn't much! The building is not incredibly old, possibly 70's/80's but no earlier. It seems that when the building closed they did not plan to take anything with them, many items were left, including industrial kitchen equipment and heavy duty office equipment. The doors are left wide open on Site A and there are signs of homeless people sleeping there, however there was no trace of drug use. Site B is boarded and bolted and there is no immediate access at this time. There is also heavy amounts of graffiti in all rooms of the building and some are very impressive, local vandals have literally taken this place apart but nothing has been taken.

We went to this site in a team of four,the building consisted of two kitchens and two industrial fridges, an office block, a cafe and a huge storage room there was also a small waiting area. The building has no signs of collapse and still holds a good structure. Meals-On-Wheels is located behind the Northampton NHS Hospital and next to the Harley Davidson Garage.

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Northampton Workhouse/Asylum (Far Left Building) - Photo Included

Northampton Union Workhouse was erected 1836 on Wellingborough Road, Northampton to accommodate 300 inmates, from designs by G. Gilbert Scott. It became known as St Edmunds Workhouse, and later St Edmunds Hospital.

The Hospital was closed in 1998 and services relocated. The building is still there to date but has been heavily vandalized by junkies and common vandals, Damage includes 100's of smashed windows, collapsed ceilings, doors ripped from hinges and on one particular site a whole floor has heavy fire damage. The site still contains small amounts of medical waste and very high amounts of used syringes that near-by junkies have left behind. If anyone is interested in visiting the site I strongly recommend visiting during the day and with a team. I will hold no liability for people being attacked or injured at this site.

In July 2009, Me and a good friend visited the far left building which consisted of three floors, a basement and a loft. The basement was not visited and nor was the loft due to safety reasons. This building included what we believe to be a visiting area, staff quarters, three medical wards, a waiting area and a storage room. Below are photo's of our visit.

I believe that on the ground floor was the staff quarters, store area and waiting rooms, the second and third floor contained several wards and storage area's - We did not use the lifts as the building does not have any power supply and it would have been very unsafe.

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