Two Girls One Building

The Springs Hotel, built in 1874, was once owned by famous Deep Purple member Ian Gillian. He purchased the hotel in 1973 with a former Girlfriend, undertaking extensive restoration work. It was the couple that commissioned the hotels unique guitar-shaped swimming pool in the grounds. The hotel's last owners quoted that any potential profits from the hotel were being eaten up by online booking companies and increasing upkeep costs. The building closed in October 2014 with a undecided future, and unfortunately has been left abandoned ever since. The current owners of both golf course and hotel Mr and Mrs Franklin have decided to solely focus on the golf course business, and have said it would be an investment of millions to update the hotel. The hotel itself has a massive 32 bed room capacity, and is still on the grounds of the running golf course whom boasted 400 club members in 2014. Finding our way into site was surprisingly easy, but into the building itself, not so much....

In 1936 colonial-style Air Ministry development houses were built in the Harwell area, constructed by a John Laing. These homes are now some of the oldest surviving properties of the former airbase. RAF Harwell became operational as a bomber station in 1937 and inherited by UKAEA in 1946. By the end of the 1980s UKAEA no longer needed houses to attract employees, and one by one the homes fell empty. There were plans for builds submitted in 2013, to demolish 13 homes and rebuild a massive 120 dwellings, with associated infrastructure, parking and landscaping. But these have been challenged a number of times by local residents, on the grounds of traffic, parking, impact on wildlife, loss of privacy and effecting existing community amenities. You can find the disputed plans here.  This is unfortunately one of our failed explores, as we were unable to actually enter any of the homes. This is not an explore I recommend at the moment as security is quite intense. But we do want to ...

The Parish of Shirburn is a very tiny village in Oxfordshire. It's currently going though some development. A lot of these building were old farmhouses and buildings related to Shirburn castle, with some buildings such as the old gate houses being redeveloped into new homes, and old outhouses being transformed into village meeting halls. Below are some of the abandoned buildings and extra shots. It's a great little place to walk through, very interesting, although its a very private village.

Very little seems to be known about the site. From Wikipedia and other sites, it appears the Schoolhouse was originally a cottage, that was converted into a Schoolhouse in 1871. Originally it housed up to 28 boys, but in 1887 it was reported to be 57 children. In 1946 it was changed into a junior school, all seniors going to Chinnor and then Watlington School. In 1950 the school was closed. It does not appear anyone has touched the property since. We stumbled on the sight without realizing it, while looking at other outhouses and abandoned buildings in the area. Originally we tried (unsuccessfully) to explore an abandoned pub, when disappointed we tried a last-ditch attempt to salvage the day by exploring the nearby Parish of Shirburn. Again the original property we had heard rumours from on the internet had been developed, and we decided just to walk through the village. That's when we first spotted the building, and I very excitedly noted, the gate was wide open. My explorin...