Just like humans, buildings have lives (admittedly shaped mostly by human's) and change over time. Such was the case with this phone xchange in the City. It had been checked into the Swiss clinic for euthanasia. No longer serving a purpose, other than being an eyesore amongst more modern buildings. We'd paid a visit before, when a myriad of pirs and alarms had scared us off. So when some other explorers had posted shots from the roof, we knew we should go back and check it out. And also whether anything had changed with access to it's big prize in the basement.

Access was the usual wait until quiet and pop in affair, and as usual we worked top down, so it was onto the roof first. Looking South over London Wall. The Shard cheekily peeking over everything

The roof of the Exchange and towers l to r, the Barbican triplets, Heron MP and Ropemaker.

Inside was a fairly solemn affair. The bright buildings around made for plenty of light inside the building, creating lots of window reflections all over the walls.

One of the floors, still with some fittings in situ.

Inside one of the cabinets that sits in rows above. Whatever was in there has long been removed.

Kev on the stairs, with typical 1950s railings.

Some kind of air filtration/ventilation equipment on a mid level floor.

One of the mid level floors. Unfortunately at this resolution it looks a little dark, one of the problems with webspace is having to shrink photos to 800x600. This website currently has 1gb of images!

The first basement which opens onto a car park area in a quadrangle. Strange routes drawn out on the floor. The dark area on the extreme left, lead out to the quadrangle with the doors wide open!

The first basement level door to the Deep Level tunnels, at the end of the corridor seen above. A cheeky dome cam sits in a recess on the left.

Dropping down into the lower basement, a huge steel blast door had been opened by the demolition company, and it was possible to see a bit more down here. Previously we'd found our way into an area with large fuel reserves, and i'm guessing that they supply this back up generator.

In another room nearby were what look like two more back-up generators. Along with mounds of stripped cable casings and a few empty cabinets at the end. A door next to the cabinets was now open, and lead into the large empty room seen in the first trip.