Tales of the Urban Explorer: Marchington Barracks

Marchington Barracks; It appeared to me that just about everyone had visited this one, and old military barracks were cool to visit. This was to be my first and I was not relishing the idea of traipsing through room after room void of anything besides graffiti.

Art is the only reason to visit such places. They tend to be remote, hugely overgrown, and sprawling. These were my preconceptions and you can let me know if I was correct in my assumptions.

Marchington Barracks is a relatively new complex, built in 1957 and sustained a short life-span closing in 1993. Since then, it has gradually fallen into disrepair. Some further information can be found here.

Almost 30 years of being empty. At the time, I had no idea it had been vacant this long.

We approached with the usual caution walking down what looked like once a road, now slightly overgrown, especially at the edges. The building came into view soon enough and we were greeted with fencing, barbed wire, and menacing signs suggesting we turn back.

More off-putting was the amount of shit we needed to cross, simply to get to the fence. This was not going to be easy or fun.

The fence proved to be useless, being full of holes and we crossed into the grounds with relative ease. It was now a question of fighting through nature's greenery to get to one of three large buildings nearby.

The leftmost one was closest and after fighting the brambles for some time we found an access point and entered. For something that has been left for this amount of time, we noted that 'Marchington Barracks' had its fair share of sealed windows and doors.

Not words of wisdom but full stories abounded on the walls, and amazingly not about dicks, cocks, fucking, gays, or twats.

The inside was exactly how I imagined it to be, bare, but with lots of graffiti. There must be something better than this?

What was I saying about non-sexual content? This cock even contains veins.., the level of detail was frightening and made me tremble with fear.

The stairs, while being concrete were hardly going to collapse under our feet but were looking a little worse for wear.

I am guessing this was the patchboard for the telephone system.

The corridors were all pretty much like this, not as creepy as your average lunatic asylum but if you were solo, you would be listening for every stray, out-of-place sound.

That view in the morning when stretching and arising from your bed. Another block of concrete just like the one you live in.

This stuff is OK I guess, I prefer cartoon characters rather than these fancy signatures.

This block was the next on our agenda. Doesn’t it look amazingly similar to all the others?

There’s no holding the handrails when visiting ‘Marchington Barracks’. You do need to get used to the lack of safety options. Just don’t trip when nearing the stairs.

People come here to express their thoughts, usually on the walls in bright blue paint.

It wasn't getting any better...

Still, the graffiti was semi-decent and quite colourful.

Getting to this one looked easy enough, except when you took one of the infrequent paths, all of which contained plants that were taking great pleasure in stinging and scratching us, the place was boarded.

In the end, @anidiotexplores took a winding route leading to the back of the building which contained a hole to climb through.

An extra special room with a fireplace… Did all the rest of the soldiers freeze?

It was more colourful, and half of the spray paint had been left on the floor.

That dude was quite cool, at last, some decent characters.

I am undecided about this. The artist looks not quite at the adept level.

The idea is quite good, but the ‘M’ is poorly defined.

Was it a case of the deeper you managed to penetrate, the better the art? Now we are getting somewhere.

While I preferred this second building to the initial one, my preconceptions of 'Marchington Barracks' were fully realised. Barracks were about as interesting as schools, in fact, they were much worse.

A character within a frame, but someone had decided to mar it right in the centre.

Not every room was filled with finery such as this. Many of them contained absolutely nothing or the general, 'Your mum sucks dick' textual scrawls.

We looked out of the window at the next exciting building. Yes, there was a clearing but that was the exception and not the rule.

…’No fucking chance, that’s like a mile away and contains even more, ‘...you are a cunt...’ messages et al. We both knew it.’…

...'I'm not fucking going over there man, it's OK here but I'm already full of scratches'...

@anidiotexplores agreed, and so we agreed to try the third building which was in the initial cluster.

After exiting and walking past this thrilling piece of artwork, we saw this in front of us. After a while, it tends to get you down and all the bending gets tedious.

@anidiotexplores had a go at prising open the third building but came back with defeat in his eyes. He has a greater passion for old military bases than me, but enough was enough.

We made our way back to the collapsed fencing and left 'Marchington Barracks' forever. No way will I be returning to this one.

HOT TIP: Don't ever visit this place in summer, like we did unless you want to have arms full of scatches when finished.

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