This is Lillesden School for Girls in Kent. Originally a private residence built in 1855 by the banker Edward Lloyd, it was sold after The Great War and turned into Bedgebury Girls Public School where it played host to myriad games of pattycake and hopscotch until finally closing in 1999 and reopening seconds later as a joyous little deathtrap for explorers like me.
This building nearly took my life, were it not for the steely British pluck I have alluded to in previous updates, I may very well have not been here to write this today.
I speak of course, of floorboards. It’s been my experience for some time now, that one thing liable to spell certain death to an explorer is a rotten floorboard. Few things define ‘trepidation’ like purposefully sliding your feet inch by inch across a room while the entire floor sags and strains under your quivering clodhoppers. Dodgy floors are pretty much par for the course in these buildings, because the everlasting truth about Urbex is that no matter how early you discover a new site, Gypsies will have been there first, and the roof will have left with them.
For years to follow, the infinite British rain pours through the hole left by wily Romanies, beating mercilessly down on the woodworm-infested oak floorboards until they are little stronger than that shitty cardboard thing McDonald’s mockingly try to pass off as a drinks holder. There the water-sodden boards wait to claim their first victim.
Having already received a warning about the state of floors in this place, I was proceeding with some caution. Extra caution again was being taken, as I’d happened across a fellow walking his dog within the grounds of the school who had warned me of entering the building, and told of a swarthy fellow who had fallen to his death only two years ago whilst trying to liberate the roof of its few remaining slates.
So there I was on the third floor, making my way carefully across a room, when the worst case scenario occurred. As I was making a large footstep to move over a particularly dodgy looking piece of damp, my leg pierced the floorboards like a skewer through meat. Luckily, luckily, as I was taking a footstep at the time, I had transferred most of my weight to my front leg, and as my back leg punctured the floor up to my knee, I was able to step out of the hole and proceed to calmly and safely urinate myself.
I continued the explore for as long as possible, but left soon after, because in the echoey vastness of this empty building, my own pitiful whimpering was, frankly, doing my head in. It is, however, a testament to my unyielding adamantine chutzpah that I was able to continue exploring those extra 35 seconds at all.
Ta Ta Ragazzas!
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In Urban Exploration • Tags: Colour, Dark, Eerie, Explore, Indoor, Lillesden School For Girls, Moody, Sussex Photographer
1 Responses.
My nephew was intrigued when reading this line on your post “my leg pierced the floorboards like a skewer through meat.” it makes him feel more knowledgable after learning it.