The previous winter I was travelling to the North for a business trip with a photographer and drummer Vesa Ranta, when we spotted a large abandoned building next to the road. It looked like an old school.
It was in the middle of the winter and we had a schedule so we didn’t stop. But as I now was on a summer holiday and the weather was a bit better for an exploration, despite light rain, I came looking for it.
The only problem was, that I was unable to locate it. After a bit of searching on maps I managed to find it. And soon could see, why it was so difficult to notice during this time of the year.
It had sat abandoned for so long, that a forest had grown around it.
It was next to impossible to get a good external photo of it.
So let’s stop wasting time and go inside instead. The appearance of the place was pretty rough.
The school had been closed way back in the 1970’s. At least that is when it stops being marked as a school on maps.
After that the building was enlarged with a lower wing. Apparently it has served as some kind of a workshop judging by the texts on the wall, which are phone numbers to a car workshop and hardware store. The numbers start with a 9, meaning that they were written on the wall before 1996, when all numbers started beginning with a 0.
There was a lot of old stuff stored in one corner of the space, which looked like a garage.
The front of the extension.
The downstairs of the school were quickly explored.
Let’s go up. The decay was evident here, and the building has most likely been abandoned for decades. The front yard looks pretty overgrown in aerial photos from 2016.
The top of the stairs. The door features a lock meaning, that this was probably where the teachers lived.
The forest was surrounding the house.
A bathroom. The radiators have been removed.
It once again looks a bit like somebody has started renovations and given up.
The roof seems a bit leaky.
The damage to the walls looks a bit like something has been attached to them before.