NGTE Pyestock – September 2010

Visited with Kent-Urbex

First of all, a brief bit of history, although I am sure you’ve all read it all before:

“The National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE Pyestock) in Fleet, part of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), UK was the prime site in the UK for design and development of gas turbine and jet engines. It was created by merging the design teams of Frank Whittle's Power Jets and the RAE turbine development team run by Hayne Constant. NGTE spent most of its lifetime as a major testing and development center, both for experimental developments as well as supporting the major commercial engine companies.

For over 50 years Pyestock was at the forefront of gas turbine development and was almost certainly the largest site of its kind in the world. V Bomber, Harrier and Tornado engines were all rigorously tested on site, the power of the air house allowed Concorde's engines to be tested at 2,000 mph, every single gas turbine installed in the Royal Navy were checked here, captured Soviet engines were discretely examined - and all this on terra firma, without a single plane taking off.

NGTE Pyestock closed down in 2000. The Pyestock campus is now in the state of being decommissioned pending the building of a large business/industrial park.”

Click to expand...

Kent-Urbex and I had talked about visiting Pyestock for the best part of a year, but kept trying to go with someone who had visited before, as we had heard it wasn’t the easiest explore, and we wanted to see as much of it as we could. Plans kept falling through, and eventually we just decided to bite the bullet and go for it ourselves.

I was glad we did, as the explore went as well as I could have hoped for. It really is an unbelievable place, possibly my favourite ever, definitely right up there. The scale of everything is absolutely huge, and it’s not in particularly bad nick for being closed for a decade. We heard security driving about, but we had no real scares at all.

We managed to see the Air House, Number 10 Exhauster, Cell 3 West, Cell 4 and a few small buildings. I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t see Cell 3, but that’s a pretty good excuse to go back. Cell 4 was definitely the highlight, it reminded me of the Japanese anime ‘Akira’ a bit with all the wires everywhere and an almost organic feel.

Some photos:


















































Thanks very much for looking.

Nice pics mate i agree its not the easiest place to explore i got caught last time i was there by a police dog :| also Zotez had tried 3 times and failed 3 times lol its his unlucky charm i might try and have a look around again sometime soon

LiamWG

Congrats for cracking this one..the air house control room sure does look rough now though.

Nice one guys. Next time I'll come along too

Never get bored of looking at this place.

Ta for looking and responding, guys.

Tom46 - I'd be more than happy to make a return visit, mate.