Jungle Factory

Visited in 2022
Duration of visit : 3 hours

This was one of those locations I knew nothing about when planning my trip. I knew it was an abandoned factory, presumably wool mill. I didn’t even bother pinning it on my map since it looked sealed tight.

On our trip we drove by. I recognized the building and we decided to give it a chance, a chance I didn’t regret. We managed to find an entrance and when we walked into the first hall I immediately spotted a green oasis in the distance. This was a beautiful example of nature taking over old, man-made structures. It looked like some kind of mini jungle, with the ground covered in beautiful large ferns and even little trees. When I peeked around the corner, we saw it didn’t end here. In the next room there was a boiler house with two industrial boilers and an control panel, with little ferns crawling over the ground.

I would like to tell you everything about this wool mill, since its story is so interesting! Yet, I can’t tell everything because that’d give away the location too easily.

What I can tell you is that it was established in the late 19th century and shut down after almost 8 decades of production. A part of the production was already moved to a different location, which kept operating until the end of the century. From that moment on the brand only stayed active as a clothing store.

Most of the abandoned halls remain empty, but around the main entrance we found a few old knitting machines and other machinery I’m not familiar with. The abandoned offices still contained fabric samples and all kinds of interesting documents, some with a date from 2003. Suggesting that the abandoned factory might have been used for storage after the closure.