Tales of the Urban Explorer: Wapping First School

It’s just as well that last Sunday I managed to get in a full day of Urbex visiting no less than 10 places.

Now we are essentially locked-down I have some content and memories to write about at least.

I visited Wapping Road School around a year ago with both @mender1 and @goblinknackers in tow. That day we failed to get in and considered climbing the big gate.

The problem is that it’s next to a public walkway and would no doubt attract unwanted attention.

THREE Middle aged blokes climbing big gates just doesn't fit the public eye and would likely have the police sirens blaring in no time, as we scrambled out with stolen broken glass shards, wooden splinters, and slimy mud.

That’s about all there is left to steal in Wapping Road School nowadays but not everybody is aware of this or our honourable intentions.

We were hardly expecting to gain access this time but thought to look as we were in Bradford. How things change and sometimes you need to look at the obvious in front of you.

Wapping Road School opened in 1877 and was the first school in the country to have its own swimming pool.

It shut in 2000 and in recent years the historic building has suffered arson attacks and vandalism, leaving it a shell of its former splendour.

We quickly moved inside the grounds before the local snoopers caught sight of us and looked on at the devastation surrounding us.

A classic haunted house stood in front of us. It was good that night had not fallen as I’m quite sure the living dead reside in there somewhere.

The inside was wrecked, burnt and gutted. We took care not to fall through the burnt beams complete with nails by avoiding them completely.

…'it may look dark but there were several hours of daylight left..., we were safe… for a while'…

I figure the headmaster may have used the ‘haunted house’ as his own residence once.

Now I have been in some Deathtraps in my time, but Wapping Road School is right up there in my top three. The floor was terrible and beneath the ground floor was a swimming pool with a 15-foot drop in between.

See that big hole down there, that's the big drop to the pool which now lacks water but is filled up with mud, bricks and all kinds of shit.

@goblinknackers is quite brazen in these places, but the area he got into was quite devoid of anything interesting.

We walked down the terrible conditioned steps trying to avoid brambles and creepers to see the swimming pool.

Do you see what I mean about the big drop now? Dodgy floors are always bad and this one would have had some terrible repercussions if it collapsed.

Would you walk over this area? We did, but we are a little crazy.

I was hoping to see something, anything besides a total wreck but there was little. A closure of twenty years ago is unlikely to yield schoolbooks, reports, etc.

There was this piece of amazing literature. There's always one!

Graffiti was in short supply besides the swimming pool. Most of the walls are now overgrown with nature.

…’there are some exceptions, even the old graffiti is beginning to peel from the walls’…

@goblinknackers scrambled under the floorboards. What he was looking for I really don’t know.

I do love some of the wordings I find in these places, it’s almost religious.

Given the wording on the school sign, I think in more recent times the school was host to the Asian community. I was a little disappointed to find absolutely NOTHING within what’s left of the walls.

The ruins of Wapping Road School are now a shell and its only use is for Urban Explorers. If you do visit, take extreme care as this one is really dodgy.

• Earn Passive Manna by simply signing up for it here. Mannabase is a Universal Basic Income Cryptocurrency
• Earn STEEM and digital cards while playing STEEM Monsters, the best game on the STEEM Blockchain here.
• Earn JSECoin buy simply creating an account and Mine while you browse here
  

If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.