Shipton Cement Works, May 2008

Another site located by the railway just north of Oxford, visited at the same time as Hampton Gay Tudor Manor, the Shipton Cement works is a partly demolished cement works that would have formerly been huge. The offices, two groups of silos, a processing building and a steel framed production room? remain. The enormous quarry, partly flooded lies to the west. There are plans to redevelop the site. I noticed a monitoring borehole cover (used for groundwater monitoring) and some dumped drillcore liners on the site. These are typical of there having been a site investigation.

Fuelling point



Extremely old speed limit sign



The quarry



Offices, a bit chavved up and vandalised











Something to do with the construction of the 250 foot chimney in 1946



The rest of the site

Wow, that's a huge site and some of those buildings are massive. Like those silos and the skeleton structure. Very neat explore.

Impressive place. Not too far from me so I might go for a wander.

thanks

Good report from about the only decent industrial site we have in Oxfordshire!

I'm pleased someone else sees it as worth the detour over the canal to see Hampton Gay manor too.

The development was a plan to put an eco town there. In their wisdom the government decided that a greenfield site next to the motorway junction at Weston on the Green was more environmentally worthy than this brownfield site next to a main line railway and turned the plan down. It's not often I'd welcome the destruction of a good explore but as an alternative to the wanton destruction of greenfield near junction 9 this site would have made excellent sense. Draw your own conclusions, I know what I think of the decision.

I love the look of this place. Cement works have that apocalyptic vibe to them I reckon. Were you able to get inside that big chimney thing? or whatever it is.

Glad you like it!.

I'd agree with you Batroy, its a nice walk over from Hampton Gay (where I started from), and that it does seem rather stupid to say the least to put a so-called eco-town on a greenfield site next to a really snarledup motorway junction instead of in a huge brownfield site with a good public transport link.

The chimney interior is not accessible or climbable. All exterior ladders have been pulled off at several metres above ground level.