An entire town, complete with spacious four-bedroom houses, a barracks-style apartment block, sports amenities, and even a petrol station, has been left to the mercy of nature for over 10 years.
Built by the British government during the peak of the Cold War, JHQ Rheindahlen served as home to as many as 12,000 British servicemen and their families from 1952 until its abandonment in 2013. Interestingly, this ghost town isn’t located in the UK but in Germany.
“This place is so big it is pretty much its own city,” remarked Colin Hodson, who explored and recorded the site for his Bearded Explorer YouTube channel. “I cannot believe this whole estate is completely abandoned.”
He recounted the surreal experience of roaming the empty town, now a home for deer and red squirrels, likening it to a scene from a post-apocalyptic film where humanity has disappeared.
The vast site spans 376 hectares and becomes so engulfed by foliage in the summer that the buildings are nearly completely covered. During Colin’s visit, the absence of leaves allowed a clearer view of what life might have been like when the garrison was bustling with activity.
If put on the market today, the individual properties could fetch millions. The total value of the deserted development is beyond estimation.
Despite some signs of vandalism and graffiti, the site largely remains pristine. Colin said that despite the warm weather, there was an odd chill inside the homes.
“This is actually incredible,” Colin declared in his YouTube video. “This is probably the closest I’ve ever felt to be like walking around in The Walking Dead. This is exactly what it would look like if the world ended everyone disappeared nature would just literally take over everything.”
Following the British Army’s official transfer of the town back to German authorities in December 2013, blueprints were established to transform it into accommodation for asylum seekers, yet more than ten years later, there has been no movement on these plans.
A group of Arab investors put forward proposals to transform the location into a park in 2015, however those schemes now appear to have collapsed.
Another section of the complex is scheduled to serve as a training centre for the North Rhine-Westphalia police force, enabling them to practice hostage situations and other operations under the most authentic circumstances available.
The town bears a striking resemblance to any typical contemporary British or German community. Many properties feature individual garages, several of which remain secured.
In some instances, vegetation has sprouted before the garage entrances, rendering them inaccessible: “Some of these haven’t been opened in a very very long time,” Colin observed.
During its peak, the location, formerly called JHQ Rheindahlen, boasted a NAAFI superstore, a BP filling station, two postal facilities, a clothing boutique, and five British primary schools.
Colin reveals he’s returning there in future for another exploration of the vast complex, though beyond that, the future of the haunting settlement remains unclear.