Tales of the Urban Explorer: Barkerend Mills Part One

March 2020 · 5 min read · Bradford

Barkerend Mills is a two-part story. We visited this location in December 2019 (myself and @goblinknackers).

While casually driving around the broken down war-torn city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, we could not help notice this forlorn-looking mill full of broken windows from some distance.

Two parts could have been three as yet another section that we could have gained access to via a 10-foot drop into darkness was wisely abandoned.

The other part I will write about in a separate article.

Barkerend Mills has suffered from a fire not long ago, though the fire brigade didn’t seem to bother so much stating as much, ‘well… there’s not a lot to burn in there’

More digging reveals the building hails from around 1815, which is before the British industrial revolution and the last recorded occupants were a fish and pet supplier.

It was getting late and after a full day of getting inside everywhere we visited, we were feeling someone had slipped us some Felix Felicis.

@goblinknackers looked at the view in front of us and exclaimed, ‘just weeks ago there was a huge spiky fence here’. It was just one of those days.

The fence was gone, magically removed like it had never been there, and so we trudged across the mud-encrusted landscape to see what delights were inside.

See the building to the right? That was the one we didn’t bother entering. Let’s just say we were, ‘milled out’ that day.

Gaining access was as simple as walking through a door, or climbing through a ground floor window if you needed some extra excitement.

The ground floor was a little bare, but there were some offices at the far end. This leather sofa didn't half look familiar, I'm sure I had one just like it once.

Football scores and half-naked girlies? You know the type that used to hang around here.

There was both bread and milk available for visitors.

We checked the dates, both not possessing the current month but omitting the year of the best before. Better not try either.

Mills are a question of going up the stairs which are generally situated at one end and ascending until you get to the top.

Some floors look much the same but on every floor, there was this small section which looked quite different.

Sometimes it looked like some kind of dirty storeroom, enticing the viewer to come in and fall through the floor.

Yet on other floors, it looked like a gaping chasm ready to swallow up anyone dumb enough to get close enough.

I felt this alternating pit or storeroom, depending on the floor was something quite evil and should be avoided. I think @goblinknackers would be in agreement.

After ascending 4 floors or so we came across this thing with some paneling built around it. Is it a safe?

There were plenty of opportunities to jump to your death while on the upper floors of Barkerend Mills. This one?

Or this?

Or perhaps you want to jump in style with a glorious sunset to keep you company?

…'didn't they remove the boobies page from the Sun?, ah wait… this is the Sport'…

Reaching the very top we found this machinery and yet another safe. From here we had every opportunity to scale and climb the roof but felt it better to leave that for another day.

Now there was just the basement to look at. Basements are generally grim, drippy places so we were not expecting too much.

As predicted it was a mess of all kinds of crap and rubbish.

There was evidence of the last business held in the mill, which is the pet supplier. There an article here of the owner complaining about the numerous break-ins he had to endure.

I guess there was one break-in to much in the end, and he left part of his stock in the lower part of the mill. There were pet supplies brochures scattered all over numerous floors.

While rummaging through all the crap we suddenly heard a large bang from above somewhere. We heard no talking or other noise but it put the wind up both of us.