Tales of the Urban Explorer: Attercliffe Radical Club

“We’re not getting in there”

The mosque looked used and would have been a first. Neither of us had ever been inside an Islam Hall of Worship and by the looks of the worn, but not abandoned décor, today's visit was not going to change that fact.

…but all was not lost, and maybe we were looking in the wrong direction.

Why were these houses attached to the mosque very much derelict and what was that mess over the rough ground?

Attercliffe Radical Club, or "The Rads", known amongst the local community was a popular venue often hosting piano nights, discos, bingo, and even the occasional drag acts.

It was renowned for its large stage where musicians and bingo callers would perform. The club closed down in the 1990s due to changes in the Attercliffe community demographic. It has been left for decades and is now in a severe state of dereliction.
Source

Scrambling over rocks, and loose bricks, we spotted the remains of 'Attercliffe Radical Club' nestling deep within a corpse of mini-trees and dense bushes.

@anidiotexplores took off at high speed with me in tow, snaking through the bushes and finding a well-used rabbit patch quickly. I lost sight of my comrade, such was his impatience at finding an entry point into such an important lost relic of the past.

…’Impatience can have its downfalls and bestow terrible, horrifying visions upon the seeker’…

Rounding a bend and still, in deep forest, I came upon a dude of probable Pakistani origin. He was pulling up his pants, and initially, I was not sure if he was finishing up a solo voyeurism session or thinking twice about flashing his cock to the local female talent, and without thinking I simply said ‘alright’ and careered past him.

Two things I noticed immediately after my misplaced greeting were something that looked like used bog paper and some very human sloppy-looking shit in the middle of the path.

@anidiotexplores had the misfortune to catch him as the turds were dropping and had run off in sheer terror, such is his aversion to human faeces and male defecation in general.

…’whatever his motives apart from dropping logs on the path, shitdropper didn’t seem to give a crap about two blokes jostling past him and treated it all as quite normal behaviour'…

…and still, we have failed to find an entrance to 'Attercliffe Radical Club'… though that was about to change.

The wall was a decent size and a little much for me to haul up. I had sent @anidiotexplores into the yard, far side to evaluate the situation. If there were a couple of fierce Dobermans in there, I would hear the screams but wouldn’t be able to see if they had bit into his gonads.

“Yeah, we can get in”, came the ever-reliable report.

It was the tree or struggle. I was once a decent tree climber but that was me as a teen. Today my body complains about any such notions, but regardless I made it to the top of the wall after much cursing and peered down. What a mess.

…'@slobberchops debates dropping down and wonders how the fuck he will get back out if so. Photograph courtesy of @anidiotexplores '…

Of course, I jumped. You can always figure out that other unimportant shit later.

Crawling on all fours through a hole in a broken-down door we entered 'Attercliffe Radical Club'; the views were not improving.

...'Just watch your footing here, it’s a tad unstable down below…

@anidiotexplores busily snaps away at something in the distance. It's probably that 70's hypnotic wallpaper.

We were not the first visitors.

The floor in this section was quite deadly. Hugging the decaying wall to the right, and somehow bypassing all those holes I was relieved to have navigated this section without dying.

Things seemed to be improving, though walking through 'Attercliffe Radical Club' was somewhat akin to a labyrinth, twisting and turning, with some double-backs at times.

Could there be a bar somewhere down those dark, decaying corridors?

The signs were proving positive when we came across this storeroom crammed with rotting junk.

The board with prices was quite illegible in terms of the cost of ‘Whisky and Rum’. It doesn’t sound like a plausible concoction to me?

If this was once a bar there was little evidence to substantiate that claim.

No seating could have meant it was so popular once that everyone stood up.

It hardly looks like a bar, but there were some suspicious-looking bottles within.

'Wha Gwan' contains 17.2% alcohol if you believe the bottle label. Could you even taste the Melon Cherry with it being that strong?

'Magnum Tonic Wine', at only 16.5%. They don’t like the weak stuff here!

To be honest, these bottles looked out of place. Considering 'Attercliffe Radical Club' has been closed since the 1990s, these bottles of extra strong 'tonic' looked to be in perfect condition, almost good enough to quench the thirst.

Looking at the images now, I should have checked the expiry dates, or even if they had any. It looks like something was stamped on the bottles.

'T' reg vehicles are from the late 1990s. Perhaps this was being used for something else?

We realised this final section was the inside of the derelict house, and we had taken some strange subterranean route to get here. I have heard stories of escape tunnels in houses dating from the 1600s that led to nearby hills, but not ones from run-down pubs to escape from angry pissheads.

There’s no doubt this wallpaper like the hypnotic stuff had been chosen by the same decorator.

We did find a few Sheffield signatures in the upper rooms of the house, but other than that it was quite bare. They look quite fresh.

I doubled back to the ‘bar’ after one more shot of that strange place with pristine Jamaican beer available for anyone who fancied a swig.

I wish it was an easy exit, but it wasn't that simple.

After spotting a ropey-looking toilet I climbed up to the window being careful my foot didn't slip thus entering the shit-laden basin, did the mid-turn twist, and jumped around five feet onto the edge of a sheer cliff.

One stroke of misjudgment and I would be careening down a steep hill with a looming river below. It was by sheer luck that I managed to keep my balance.

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