British Sugar - Ipswich

British Sugar – Ipswich
The sugar factory in Ipswich was built in 1925. It was closed by British Sugar 76 years later.
It’s a bit of a local landmark, right beside the busy A14, which is the main artery from the docks at Felixtowe, and Harwich, to the rest of the UK.
Arriving at the site, it was freezing. It was impossible to tell if I was shivering because of the biting wind, or the suspense which had been building since spotting the four huge concrete silos on the way here.


Soon after entering the site it was clear that we were not alone. They were heading straight towards us, we were wedged between two vats with nowhere to go. Normally when you spot someone heading towards you, and you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, you have three options: Run, Hide, or continue to strut around like you own the place.

Seeing as we were trapped we went for the third option. It was at that point I noticed he was holding a large hacksaw. He clocked us, clearly not expecting to be interrupted on his copper piracy operation, he shoved the saw up his jumper and started running towards the perimeter fence.




Unfortunately the presence of a copper pirate had not gone unnoticed by the on-site security team, who have now decided to patrol the site constantly. Almost every time we turned a corner, or entered a new space they were there, slowly crawling along in their white vans.


This game of cat and mouse continued for several hours while we wandered around the site. Try as we did for hours to climb the silos, every possible access seem to have been very well secured, with full height iron bars.

The site seemed to be covered in a thin layer of syrup, which sticks the soles of your trainers to the ground, leaving an incriminating trail straight to you. We made it to the main electrical control room and were just photographing the endless landscape of retro looking dials, when I heard a sniffing noise…


“Shit!” I muttered under my breath as I looked down to find a dog had made its way in and found me. The dog looked at me, before giving me smug smile, then barking like there was no tomorrow.


He was promptly joined by the security who had burst in and was now barking at me: “Oi! You! What d’ya think you’re doing?” That’s the problem with security dogs, no matter how good you think you are at hiding, they can always sniff you out.



As I surrendered “It’s a fair cop gov’ you’ve caught us” I turned round to see how my two associates were reacting, only to find my two associates were now just one. Unbeknownst to me, when the dog came in my fellow explorer had managed to somehow become an electrical cupboard.


We were unceremoniously thrown back over the perimeter fence from which we came, and told “not to even f***ing think about putting those photo’s online! Our insurance doubled last time our insurance company people saw people on top of the silo!”.

We were then treated to the spectacle of guiding my fellow explorer past the security patrols, whom we were now watching from beyond the fence. We never did get to the top of those silos. But as we were reminiscing about our tales back in the safety of the car we could see explorers proudly emerging onto the roof, mocking the police who had now turned up also to watch the whole spectacle.


The future of the site remains unknown, but the most popular option is to turn the entire site into a housing development with nature reserve.