Tales of the Urban Explorer: Clayton Lodge

So what’s the story behind ‘Clayton Lodge’, an ex-Ramada hotel that is now trashed?

@anidiotexplores mentioned this one to me and of course, it got added to our 'Stoke' schedule and happened to be the last visit of our trip.

"Everyone has been there, the real explorers, the paint sprayers, the vandals, the thieves, and the opportunists. Now it's full of snotty kids using it as a 'cool hangout'", mentioned my comrade.

While this seemed less than promising, I was still intrigued. It needed to be visited and ‘Clayton Lodge’ was not going to be an easy explore.

52 new houses will be built on the grounds of the former ‘Clayton Lodge’ Hotel says the news article. The ex-Ramada hotel was a victim of the COVID farce that stopped the whole world for the best part of two years in 2020.

It has a chequered history of child abuse, and drugs and has been ravaged by fire on several occasions. This newer article from 2023 states the housing deal has been approved. I expect something might start happening several years from now.

...'Clayton Lodge, in better times. You can almost spot the 'Grand' through those lit windows'...
Source

I tried to book a room for 2 nights in October, via Expedia. Sadly it wouldn’t let me and is listed as ‘Unavailable’.

It was getting late and the sun was starting to wane. We approached the lumbering hotel from the left side, jumping up a wall and entering the grounds with relative ease. So far so good.

“There’s fresh Tin everywhere”, I bemoaned at @anidiotexplores who was looking similarly glum. The sealers seemed to have just left and donned us with fresh, smooth metal plates complete with immovable iron rivets.

We strode around the outside areas looking for weak spots and found bugger all. One small outhouse was crammed with chairs and a scary sight. Unless you are some kind of chair freak, going that way was very inadvisable.

Ramada are supposedly known for their quality; not here, not anymore.

The local council is hardly impressed with the owners, and very recently they must have seen it and done something. Our bad luck.

@anidiotexplores entered what looked like an underground building in search of a basement access point, cracked his skull hard on a hanging pipe, and emerged with one arm covering a large lump as well as lots of ‘Owwws’ and a plethora of profanity. This was starting to seriously suck.

Nonplussed we headed around the back to find more metal sheeting, commonly defined in the Urban Exploration world as ‘Tin’. We were at the point of conceding and then noticed an upstairs window open. That’s just fine, but how the fuck do we get up there?

Climb on the red bin and haul up suggested @anidiotexplores hopefully?

What looks like a tall Zimmer frame was not initially lounging against the side of the wall, but was quickly adapted into a climbing aid.

It was fucking awkward and with the edge of the roof crumbling away in my hands, it was hardly helping, but with a hand up we were both on the roof and made quick work of entering the window and a hellhole.

These upper areas appeared to be offices and there was plenty of ‘crap’ on show to rummage through.

Descending was not a case of dancing down some lovely stairs with plush carpets but what you see. Just at the far edge of this was a mudslide with no handholds. Balance, slide and try to hold on.

I could see the vandalism immediately, the poor hotel had been ravaged and ransacked by the worst types of dickheads and mindless idiots.

This part of the lower section was very fire-ravaged and resembled a classic derp more than an ex-3-star modern hotel, and then it all changed.

Go to the right toward the ‘Chic Bar Ballroom’ and it’s not quite as bad.

Not everything had been torn apart, the curtains and some of the chairs were quite intact. I was guessing this was part of the aforementioned ballroom.

Chandeliers are generally swung upon until they collapse, just like this one. Hopefully, the body underneath received some serious injuries when it snapped off. Fuckwits!

More of them in this room, and a lot more trashing. He wasn’t shitting me when he said, everyone has been before us.

Upturned chairs. I never see the point in this, at least you can sit in them if they are correctly positioned.

Is it a large wine rack? If there was wine once, now there is none.

These two chairs were miraculously unscathed. A small piece of evidence of what ‘Clayton Lodge’ may have resembled once.

Terrible graffiti everywhere, no signs of any decent artwork, and it would look out of place here anyway.

I zoned in on the Grand Piano. Pitiful and wrecked, it screeched out some bad notes when I tried to play it, many of them uttering silence.

Sickening sights. Some things I see, I really don’t like.

There will be no more guests that will pick up this, interested in seeing the local sights.

The kitchens, more sights I didn’t want to see. I can’t remember any stenches of rotting meat, we were spared pungent horrors.

It was time to head back up the mud slope and toward the exit. This was steeper than it looked and needed a run to get to the top.

At the top, it was wise to quickly stop and assess your options. With some luck, the door would hold, and a quick skip across the far gap would seal your life for at least a little longer.

Another scout through the offices revealed a few papers. It had been a long day, and I wasn’t in the mood to rifle through much.

A shot of the not-so-sturdy roof from the top. Getting back down on the Zimmer frame was tougher than getting up.

“My fingers keep slipping on his bloody roof”, I was complaining to @anidiotexplores who seemingly had jumped from the top and was grinning from the bottom.

The roof appeared to be coming apart I stretched my leg reaching for that evasive climbing frame, bits of crap falling into my eyes and mouth.

With a little help, I planted one foot on the topmost rung while simultaneously chewing some tasty roof morsels. I can still remember the taste, a little like decaying rat meat laced with stale cow shit.

We left, adding a few externals and fortunate that ‘Clayton Lodge’ was a notch on the bedpost that had been conquered.

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