Archive for the ‘Asylums’ Category
Severalls Hospital (2007-08)
Female ward blocks and Airing Court Shelter
I visited Severalls on five occasions between 2007 and 2009, some 10 years after its use as a hospital ceased, but prior to the commencement of demolition and some of the heavier vandalism that occurred in the later stages of dereliction. Although Severalls had been almost completely emptied of furnishings and other contents which give it a far greater sense of a well organised closure when compared to other derelict asylums I visited, it was an excellent example of a large post- GT Hine echelon design with villas, and the scale of the complex and its largely untouched estate ensured that an excursion to Severalls was always an immersive experience.
Park Prewett – lessons in dereliction
At the age of 20 and having spent the summer of 2006 staring endlessly at Urban Exploration websites I eventually took it upon myself to pull my finger out and actually participate in this hobby I had recently discovered. I signed up to a forum, and a week or so later found myself catching the train to Basingtoke one dusky February evening to meet a stranger off the internet. We took a bus up to the general hospital, and walked over to the clutch of derelict buildings on the edge of a cricket pitch.
St Cadoc’s Mental Hospital
On a weekend visit with Tom and Lula we passed by Newport and decided to call in at St Cadocs, while heading to Talgarth. Now St Cadoc’s isn’t your usual trip through a fence and in a broken window. Why? Because it hadn’t closed yet.
Cane Hill Hospital – Transcience, Ruin and Restoration
March 2011
“Transcience: an impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending or dying”
“Ruin: Verb. Reduce (a building or place) to a state of decay, collapse, or disintegration: “a ruined castle”.”
“Restoration: the act of restoring something or someone to a satisfactory state”
Memories of Hellingly
Nestled 10 miles back from the East Sussex coast lay Hellingly Hospital. Red brick, stark and decaying, closed in 1994; Hellingly is a place of some mystery from the exterior – an archetypal modern ruin. When Mental Health moved into the community in the early 1990s, Hellingly was boarded up and left, with only a small secure unit operating on site.
