The chimney: the buildings to the left, up and down of it have already gone.
It is going to be a (slightly) historic day on Monday. The tall chimney opposite County Oak in Crawley is coming down. Over the last couple of weeks we have enjoyed watching various mechanical monsters chewing up the factory building next to it, and now we are ready for the main event.Unfortunately there will be no explosions. We had been hoping for a spectacular controlled explosion, or even a Fred Dibnah-style collapse, but somebody decided that was not appropriate for a chimney right next to the A23…  instead it is going to be dismantled brick-by-brick. On the plus side, that dismantling is going to be done by an enormous machine and it will all be done within the day.
In a way it is a bit of a shame. The chimney is a bit of a local landmark. I would like to have seen it kept, maybe painted up, like the Ikea ones in Croydon, but if it has to go at least I get to see it!  The real bummer is that I can’t take photo’s because we can’t take cameras on site.
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I think it’s a shame to see it go. It’s a reminder of Crawley’s recent industrial past, and should be preserved as part of Crawley’s ‘heritage’.
Do you agree?
I do think it is a shame that more effort was not made to see if it could be incorporated into whatever happens to the site – even if it was just used as a mobile phone mast.
Still… at least we get to see it chewed up by a really neat machine.