A close-up of one of the Zombie Apocalypse prepared doors, this time secured with a hoe.
Some notes on a blackboard left behind from when the school closed, but filled in by vandals, it made me chuckle.
A server rack hanging from the ceiling, it had water running through it, so couldn't rely on it being operational. However, by just using the unpowered patch panel, I managed to connect IP based security camera's to the router we installed downstairs, and got the security cameras online, and still operating to the current day.
The top floor explored, we headed back down to the main hall, an area which was going to become a shop area for various island brands, making this Arran on the mainland.
A blueprint of the building, located next to the front entrance.
Heading to the final building, the Gymnasium, we had difficulty locating an entrance point. As all the doors had been secured with wooden bars screwed into the frames. Looking down into the boiler area, we could see that was flooded, and no entrance could be attained through there.
Looking towards the back of the playground, with road type markings painted on the ground, presumably for cycling proficiency. The Lunch hall can just been seen on the left, and the ramps to the Gymnasium on the the right. My colleague grabbed power tools from the van we'd traveled here in, and made short work of the barricades into the gym.
Disarming the alarm system (good thing we chose this door, or we'd have been sprinting through the building to disarm it), we entered the boys changing room, with a lone gym bag, and a number of dead wasps. The building had remained secure, and paying little attention to the communal showers at either end of the building we headed into the gym hall itself.
We were super excited to find monkey bars still stowed away at the side of the hall. It was the cleanest part of the school we'd found, and looked as if it only had been used yesterday.
Climbing ropes, there was no way two middle aged guys were taking advantage of those, but cool to see.
Honest, we were just checking the roof, we in no way rolled out the monkey bars to have a play.
Leaving the Gymnasium, we secured it once again, setting the alarms and securing the wooden barricade, and headed back into the School Cafeteria for one last look. Finding these posters they'd put up to let the kids know about their new school.
Checking out the flooring in the cafeteria, which was sprung wood (nice and springy for kids to play and fall on), incapable of taking the heavy loads we were going to require it to take for storing beer. We used truck trailers to store our products on site, and when we finally moved some bottling machinery into the cafeteria hall, found that indeed the floor wasn't strong enough as the pallet truck wheels kept breaking through the floor.
And there ends our first visit to the site. As I mentioned at the start of these pages, the Brewery employed 10 people to work from this site, and they cleaned and renovated the site, repairing the ceilings (but not the roof, so they soon came down again), fixing the windows (which got vandalised, and we replaced the boards to protect the new windows), and generally clearing the place out. As time dragged on, the staff were let go step by step, until the last left in the early part of 2017. The site is now only manned by staff from other sites as required, and is on the market to be re-developed. Whether this redevelopment will require the buildings to remain or not, is to be seen. But I've put these pictures up just as a record of this site, before any work began and changes were made. The pictures were not originally intended for anything but personal use, so they aren't the best, but may be of interest to some.
The End