Urbex Diaries Past - RAF Nocton Hall
📸 Camera: Sony A500
This is a well known and very well trodden location in Lincolnshire. In this area there is a lot of derelict buildings and sites (airfields and barracks) from the second world war. Lincolnshire was awash with Royal Air Force bases due to its vast, flat open spaces. Whatever you do, do not enter the actual Nocton Hall itself, it is crumbling in a big way. Do look for the RAF Nocton side.
During the First World War the house was used as a convalescent home for wounded American Officers. In the Second World War the Americans again used the house as a military hospital after which it was taken over by the RAF and an extensive hospital developed in the grounds. It reverted to private use in the 1980s. In 2004 there was a major fire which left the building in a derelict state {source}. This is what remains of the Hall and the adjoining RAF site, which incidentally my dad was based for a very short while in the 80's. He remembers it well and can't believe the state it is in now.
I visited Nocton after a morning trip to St John's Asylum (see my post on it here). Sometimes you have to get up early and visit multiple sites to maximize your time and also have a second option in case of disappointment... It happens, you know, when you turn up to a site and there is some fat security guard with a dog that will only tell you to leave once or twice before they start to get real tetchy...
Enjoy the images of decay.
To actually get into Nocton Hall, I wasn't quite prepared to scale the fence, it was fairly high and I didn't fancy getting stuck/skewered by fencing wire in some of the more tampered with 'accessible' parts... Note the crest to the bottom right of the image. This coat of arms dates back to 1530, so this house may be one of those Frankenstein types that gets added to over the years/through change of ownership. How the wealthy houses of the English past have changed.
To other Urbex folk out there. What are your thoughts on HDR? I feel like it is massively overdone in the Urbex community (not on this chain though) but online in general. Popular Urbex images always seem to be made to look like something out of Silent Hill. I don't dig it. None of my photos are manipulated because these things are best raw and I only enhance imagery that I'd sell, such as my drone stock photography.
