The Big Issue

A NOSE AROUND URBAN SPACES WITH THE BEARDED EXPLORER

A huge house, overgrown with nettles and brambles, sits in the middle of “somewhere near Wales”. The owner died in a fire in his home workshop decades ago and no one has touched it since. Out the back, a bunch of cars rot, abandoned to the ravages of time and nature. That is, until former-plumber-turned-urban-explorer Colin Smith fought through the undergrowth to reveal its secrets.

“It was very difficult to get in,” he says. “Inside it was very dangerous… the floors were falling through

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