JPD Urbex Photography

01/06/2023

Burnt van

12/05/2022

Church ⛪️

09/05/2022

11/04/2019

In the Köpenicker Straße in Berlin-Mitte is still a historic ice factory.
It is one of the oldest ice factories in Germany.

Many historic ice factories were destroyed by fire and war.
The Norddeutsche Eiswerke , which included the Köpenicker Str. 40/41, were by far the largest natural ice producers in Germany.
In Berlin Rummelsburg reminds today only the name " Bolleufer " to the huge ice storage .
The ice factory on Köpenicker Strasse in Berlin-Mitte is the last building that recalls the times of the ice industry and the North German Ice Works.
The operation was continued during GDR times by VEB Kühlbetrieb . It was only in 1995 that Berliner Kühlhaus GmbH ceased operations in Köpenicker Straße. Since then, the area in Berlin's center on the Spree is empty.

But now the Spree is recognized in this area as an attractive location, and you could make as owner supposedly much profit, if, yes, if this heritage protection would not be ....

The ice factory was of vital importance for everything that needed to be refrigerated . Artificial ice cream has been produced here since 1896, and bar ice has been produced here since 1914 with an ice cream machine from Linde AG ( Halleschen Maschinen- und Eisengiessereigeä Nov. 2008 ), which was of great importance to the growing city of Berlin.

There were no refrigerators. Ice was delivered to breweries, pubs, households, fruit shops etc. in bars of approx. 20 x 20 cm with a length of up to 1.50 m. The milk on the car of the dairy Bolle was cooled with bar ice. The elderly know that very well. I know that this practice took place until the end of the 70s of the last century (if not longer ...) ..

The ice factory also includes several cold stores . These were insulated with 15 cm cork (!!!) between the walls.

The ice factory in Berlin-Mitte is a listed building.
But now the owner, the Treuhand (TLG), wants to demolish the site.
Of course, the plan raises many topics. For example, the question of dealing with old buildings and the value of history.
Due to years of vacancy on the factory premises, the owner has created conditions to call into question the preservation of most of the buildings, but the condition of the buildings is still not too bad. There are also plenty of other examples of preserving such once-important objects.
Since the ice factory is located on the Spree (at that time waterways were still very important for the construction of the city and trade), the question also arises of how to handle the Spree shore.
Last but not least, it is also about the use and design of the residential building on the street side, which should be preserved.

It is also important that TLG, as the current owner, is a member of the Mediaspree project and thus also participates in measures that will bring about noticeable changes for the residents as well. That's why we want to introduce the ice factory and collect information and point out the further development.

29/03/2019

RAF Spadeadam is an active Royal Air Force station in Cumbria, close to the border of Northumbria. Covering 9,000 acres, it is the largest RAF base in the United Kingdom. It is currently used as an Electronic Warfare Tactics Range, to train the Royal Air Force and NATO allies. It is also the only mainland UK location where aircrews can drop practice bombs.

Spadeadam has always been a remote and uninhabited part of England, until 1955 when the Intermediate Ballistic Missile Test Centre was constructed for the Blue Streak missile project – a project that was launched to develop a nuclear deterrent missile. The RAF took over the base in 1976 and under their control it became the Electronic Warfare Tactics Range in 1977. The range itself contains ground-based electronic equipment, including some that was manufactured in the Soviet Union, that create simulated threats to train aircrews. Across the site there are different real and dummy targets which include an airfield, a village, portable buildings, tanks, aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and vehicle convoys.

The site was originally used in secret as part of Britain’s Cold War nuclear weapons programme. This information was only made public in 2004 when tree-felling work uncovered the remains of abandoned excavations for a missile silo. Since then, the RAF and English Heritage have attempted to survey the site and record what was so secret about the place, because there are no official records or plans for the base still in existence from the Cold War period. What is known, however, is that Spadeadam was chosen as a launch site because of its isolation, access to road connections and the surrounding environment which supported it with plenty of water. It is thought that Spadeadam was meant to be one of sixty launch sites across the UK, but most of these were never built.

06/11/2017

The 33-acre youth detention centre Hassockfield is where dozens of boys were sexually abused by staff in the 1970s and 80s.In 1988 the centre closed after the scandal of the pa******le officer Neville Husband. However, it later re-opened, and admitted its first residents in 1999. In 2004 Adam Rickwood, one of the residents of Hassockfield committed su***de. However, after this incident Hassockfield made strides forward in its performance. Hassockfield later closed in 2015.

06/11/2017

06/11/2017

26/07/2017

MV Plassy, or Plassey, was a steam trawler launched in late 1940 and named HMT Juliet in 1941. She was renamed Peterjon and converted to a cargo vessel in 1947. She was acquired by the Limerick Steamship Company in 1951 and renamed Plassy.

On 8 March 1960, while sailing through Galway Bay carrying a cargo of whiskey, stained glass and yarn, she was caught in a severe storm and ran onto Finnis Rock, Inisheer, Aran Islands.

A group of local Islanders, the Inisheer Rocket Crew,[1] rescued the entire crew from the stricken vessel using a breeches buoy — an event captured in a pictorial display at the National Maritime Museum in Dún Laoghaire.

Several weeks later, a second storm washed the ship off the rock and drove her ashore on the island.

The wreck still lies on the shoreline and is a tourist attraction. She is visible in the opening credits of the television series Father Ted. In early January 2014, Storm Christine shifted the wreck's position on the coast for the first time since 1991.

26/07/2017

Closed in 2002 - Our Lady’s first opened its doors in 1868 and was then known as Ennis District Lunatic Asylum. For 134 years it continued to operate on the same site as a mental hospital and indeed until the 1950s very little changed in the manner in which it was run. The hospital was one of the largest public buildings in Clare and was both a large employer and purchaser of goods from local suppliers.It played an important role in the economic life of Ennis, especially in earlier years when jobs were scarce and pensionable positions were highly prized.

The hospital had changed very little from its opening to the 1940s and 1950s but after this change was rapid.Interviews with staff who worked in the hospital in the 1940s are extremely valuable as they are almost describing the hospital form its earliest days.The custodial approach was in practice and the hospital was highly routinised.It was terribly overcrowded with only inches between patient beds and up to 70 beds in a ward.There were no drug therapies available and highly disturbed patients simply had to be restrained. One former charge nurse recalled his impressions of the day room on his first day of work in a disturbed ward as a vision from hell, which frightened him terribly. Another charge nurse recalls in great detail a very similar picture, while both soon became quite used to it.Another nurse recalled the advent of drug therapy describing Largactyl as a wonder drug’, which allowed some previously chronic patients to go home. These were also the days of Electric Convulsive Therapy without anaesthetic, and insulin therapy, both of which methods are described in the interviews.

Male nurses describe the female ward as much tidier and cleaner in appearance than the male side of the hospital, with curtains on the window, but claimed that the male wards were “more relaxed”. The hospital was highly segregated and no males worked in the female wards and vice versa. The project involved interviewing a domestic cleaner who spoke about being the first woman to work in the male hospital. Another retired nurse spoke about how intimidating it was for him as a male member of staff to begin working in the female wards in the 1980s.One nurse who worked in the female side of the hospital in the 1950s before she married, and who returned to nursing in 1970s, described amazing changes that had taken place in the interval in patient care as patients received three and four-course meals and wore their own clothes.

28/09/2016

Under the reforms imposed by the Local government Act of 1889, Gateshead became a county borough within it’s own right, administratively independant from the County of Durham and within the next twenty years it became evident that pressures for space at the county’s Sedgfield asylum would lead to the end of contracts with the new Gateshead authority. By 1910 Gateshead corporation had purchased part of the isolated West Duddo estate west of the Village of Stannington in the neighbouring county of Northumberland and were to engage George Hine and Carter-Pegg as architect for the new 500 capacity asylum to be built there. The asylum would be the last project to be completed by Hine during his lifetime.

The structures were in typical Hine style of red brick with yellow brick banding, multiple-paned sashes, concrete lintels and with grey slate roofs.The pricipal ward blocks were positioned en-echelon facing plantations to the south separated by the recreation hall, with male and female departments and services to the east and west respectively and separated by central services flanked by three-storey staff blocks. The administration block, similar in style to those already existing at East Sussex and Hertfordshire asylums faced out onto a formal green space with various access routes to the chapel and isolation hospital, superintendent’s residence and main entrance. The main drive and gates formed part of a patte d’oie arrangement with spur routes leading to the main hospital, six pairs of married staff cottages residence and farmland enforcing the self contained nature of the site.

Almost as soon as the asylum was opened, it was requisitioned by the military for the duartion of World War I. Following the end of its war duties the site was returned to Gateshead who addded a nurse’s home in 1927-8 and modified the isolation hospital to form a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Further pressure on the County Durham mental hospital led to a union with the neighbouring county boroughs of West Hartlepool and South Shields during the 1930’s. The joint funding and demand for further space provided impetus for major additions to the Stannington sitewhich would be completed in 1939. Built in plain red brick with slate rooves, the new units provided ten further pairs of staff cottages, two additional blocks flanking the main building, male and female detached working chronic blocks and a large admission and treatment hospital with convalescent villas at the north of the site.

World War II led to the development of a hutted Emergency medical services hospital (later the Burnholme unit) to the north of the admission unit, which was also requisitioned. Peacetime brought about the creation of the National health service, under which the hospital became known as St. Mary’s – named after the Stannington parish church. The hutted emergency hospital was converted to house mental defectives. Limited development under the NHS consisted of a new staff training school and a number of prefabricated units providing social and occupational therapy facilities.

Resettlement and closure led to retraction of wards and services back into the main building, with the areas to the north closing first. Despite the hospitals remote location, and considerable distance from it’s catchment area, it remained open as late as 1995 when most surviving facilities were relocated to Bensham general hospital.

After the closure, the site remained undeveloped for many years with the majority of structures intact with the exception of the Burnholme unit, whose hutted buildings were demolished. The main hospital grounds were listed Grade II due to their largely unaltered layout.

The hospital buildings themselves were subsequently stripped in anticipation of conversion to housing with utilitarian structures and later additions being cleared. This did not occur, however, and the majority of the remaining structures were demolished with exception of the administration block, chapel, former superintendent’s residence the former having been refurbished for use as a pub-restaurant and the latter as a private residence.