After a day working hard in a Hampshire laboratory, slouching on the sofa and binge-watching Netflix is insufficient entertainment for chemist Archie Williams.
Instead, he laces up his heavy duty boots, packs his rucksack with a torch, updates his phone with a map of abandoned buildings, and heads off into the night.
Urban explorer Archie, 22, has visited more than 600 abandoned sites since he started scouting schools, convents, hospitals, observatories, power stations and other dilapidated buildings ten years ago.
Archie does not break in. He normally finds an open window or unlocked door.
It can be dangerous and he has to watch out for rusty nails through the boots and broken glass, though those are the least of his problems.
‘I’ve had people who have come out with guns before and people who have fired warning shots. You’d be surprised by how many people in this country carry firearms when they aren’t supposed to,’ he says.
‘Quite often you will find what we call ‘time capsules’, which is a house that has been abandoned with literally everything left behind. You can walk into a house that hasn’t been inhabited for 30 years and it’s as if the residents just walked away and have not come back
‘Everything’s in there from personal possessions and sensitive stuff to old washing machines, microwaves. They are mundane things, but they have been left to decay and have things growing out of them.’
The locations Archie visits are kept top secret so they are not taken over by vandals or looters. He wants other urban explorers to be able to have a look around before buildings are developed or demolished.
‘I’ve had countless messages from people asking us to steal things we’ve found and sell it to them. But we don’t do that. That’s not our thing,’ he says.
He is not looking for loot; he is simply broadening his mind.
‘The ethos is do not break, do not take. Some people call it TOPLOF, which means take only photos, leave only footsteps. There is nothing illegal about it. By English civil trespass laws, you’re allowed in anywhere that has an open route of access.’
He has also been chased by dogs, security guards and has become used to run-ins with the law.
‘We’ve had the police turn up countless times. But we’re not breaking any laws so we just explain what we are doing and go on our way,’ Archie, who always explores in a group, says.
The fascination was born from visiting museums with his family as a child. After visiting Bodmin Jail in Cornwall, the experience stuck with him and he has been urban exploring at every opportunity since. He documents his expeditions on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube as @urbex_with_archie.
‘I just love having the opportunity to see stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise see’
‘I’ve been to cinemas, mines, underground tunnel systems, industrial and farm buildings. I’ve been to a lot of hospitals and laboratories, which are really interesting to me, given what I do for work,’ says Archie.
‘Whenever I find scientific equipment or anything that I know how to use, I find that fascinating,’ he said.
‘I just love having the opportunity to see stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise see. After a day’s worth of exploring, we can cover 10 to 15 places in a day. We just want to see as much as we can before they are lost, because over time things will collapse, people set fire to them or they will be developed or unscrupulous developers will set fire to them.
‘You do get people who want listed properties to be unlisted, so they can develop the land. They will quite often pay people to go in and set fire to the place, just so that they can then use it again. And it’s a real shame. It puts a huge strain on the fire crews.’
Often these properties are stuck in probate, or the owners have gone missing or died. Sometimes they are simply too expensive to develop because of asbestos contamination or water damage.
Archie has also explored the sad homes of dead people who had been addicted to hoarding where it has become too expensive to those left behind to clear the house and it is just left to rot.
‘There was one property I found in the London area, full of priceless antiques. There was artwork on the walls and the whole property was hoarded between two to three foot from the ceiling,’ he says.
‘We see it occasionally, where people who have hermitted themselves, will actively collect their excrement or urine in various containers from bowls to bottles and in the case of that property specifically; it was in priceless teacups. In one property there was excrement smeared up the fridge. People live in beyond shoddy conditions. The smell really gets to you.’
He has also visited buildings where people have died in their homes, which leaves a sad and strange energy in the air, he said.
‘You get some places where you get a really bad feeling. There is a theory that if there has been a murder or something particularly stressful, those pheromones can be left in the air for somebody else to then detect later on. Suddenly you get hairs on the neck standing up, and you don’t know why. You get this feeling of ‘What the hell happened here?”‘ he says.
He has also been to properties that have been taken over by drug farmers or gangs, in which case he tries to explain what he is doing or leaves quite quickly. He visited a swanky spa once frequented by royalty, where the heated indoor pool is now full of stagnant water and pond weed.
In one property he found a passport hidden in a cubby in the wall, the owner of which was linked to the Royal Family. In another property he found a trunk that had not been opened for years. Inside was a flag from the First World War that had not been unfurled for more than 100 years.
‘Beneath it, was a stretcher that had blood on it from the trenches. It was amazing,’ he says.
In an abandoned convent he found a library of valuable books left to rack and ruin and priests’ robes hanging on the walls.
‘It is an archive of stuff that otherwise wouldn’t be seen. In Scotland we visited a property that had been abandoned for 52 years, and it was still in the same condition it had been left. The beds were still made. The lanterns had burnt out and there were old Lucozade bottles and golden syrup cans in the kitchen. You look around and nothing has changed in all those years,’ he says.
Sometimes Archie can date a property from records, and sometimes from a calendar left open on the wall.
I just love the history of it. I think this is something I will always do to some degree. This country is getting filled up with toy town houses with no character and these places need to be documented before they disappear,’ he says.