In regards to history and information it’s a bit of a mixed bag, and after an exhaustive search online it still baffles me. Its a mish mash of varying steel companies and take overs that span a few hundred years. In modern terms steel has been produced at the CSDG site since around the early 1800′s. It was an independent company until 1966 where it joined a large company comprising of off shoot steel production installations in Belgium, France and Germany. In the 1980′s the French plants closed leaving the Belgian Plant to function alone up until early 2000′s. This in turn saw the company switch hands again. It ran until late 2008 when the the need for cheap steel from countries such as Korea, China, and Brazil take over the industry. The plant closed down operations in 2008 with plans to restart in the future which unfortunately never happened due to a massive failure in another potential merger.
The plant closed in 2012 with the loss of thousands of jobs which had a detrimental impact on the local population and area.
We had no idea where to begin, this place is massive, an absolute behemoth of a place. It dwarfs the likes of Pyestock, Thamesteel etc. The weather was once again searing, touching over 30 degrees, we decided on a potential entry point and just went for it, in our less-than-suitable all-black exploring gear, we were glad to get into the shade and behold what stood before us. We probably only explored about 1/4 of this site, we ran out of time, daylight and energy. The place is disgusting, everything is filthy and covered in a sooty black dust which gets everywhere, by the time we came out, our skin was the same colour as our clothes.
As we made our way gradually through the buildings, all you could hear was the buzz of high voltage electricity, the place has clearly been mothballed and could sprint into action again at the drop of a hat. Control panels of illuminated switches scream “press me, press me” but I was strong to resist the temptation.
Partway into the explore, we spotted fresh dog paw prints in the dirt so decided to be extra vigilant with regards to being stealthy. Thankfully it paid off and we remained undetected. Whilst we were up at a high vantage point, we saw a jeep doing his patrols, Markymark was still down below and didn’t see my warning text in time. Thankfully he ducked and hid when he heard the jeep coming which ended up being a very close call, the guard was virtually breathing on him, it was so close.
