This building along Long Road was most recently a health centre, but closed in 2018 and has been sitting disused since. It was once perhaps Canvey’s most substantial civic building, opening in 1934 as Canvey Island Urban District council’s offices. The district was newly created in 1926 when Canvey grew out of the Rochford Rural…
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In 2023 we set off on a road trip through Wales, with the aim of documenting the country’s former lunatic asylums. These institutions were commonly built towards the end of the 19th, and early 20th centuries, for councils to look after the mentally ill. Today most of the sites lie either ruined or boarded up…
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Ordnance Survey 1945-1965 mapping showing the five Epsom Cluster asylums In Epsom, Surrey, the former London County Council decided to create five London County Asylums as suburban mental hospitals. These were mostly typical ‘lunatic asylums’ as they were initially known – large institutions to accommodate those with mental illnesses, disorders and learning difficulties. The Manor…
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At the junction of the Sadlers Farm roundabout and Tarpots on the A13 road lies a suspected wartime remnant passed by hundreds of people everyday that goes largely unnoticed. The A13 originally formed the London-Southend road that historically connected the capital to Southend, and was a frequent route for holiday makers as well as being…
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Hellingly Hospital began construction in 1898 and first opened in 1903 as East Sussex County Lunatic Asylum. Originally, East and West Sussex shared a joint asylum, being St. Francis at Haywards Heath, when the county was still one body however when it split into east and west in 1889, East Sussex needed its own institution,…
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The first iteration of Lisnevin school opened in October 1973, at a premises known as Kiltonga House near Newtownards. It could accommodate up to 40 boys, many of which were either violent or were at risk of absconding. It then moved to Bangor, before moving again to this site at Millisle in County Down in…
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Play from 10:06 to watch our footage of Gartloch Asylum If you’ve ever watched a horror film or read a scary book about a psychiatric hospital in the middle of nowhere, you might picture somewhere like Gartloch Asylum. The imposing administration building with its two striking towers still stands today and is one of the…
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The Murray Royal Hospital in Perth is Scotland’s oldest surviving asylum and was one of the grandest built. The now derelict asylum was named after local man James Murray who funded the construction of the hospital after inheriting “considerable wealth.” Designed by William Burn, the original plans were based on designs for West Riding Asylum,…
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High Royds in Menston is one of the most well-documented and now infamous of the county asylums to be built, instantly recognizable by its looming clocktower. In 1885, some 300 acres of land was purchased and over the next 3 years construction work began to build one of the more lavish asylums ever constructed. The…
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In February 2024, we visited what remains of South Ockendon Hospital, and were shown around the beautiful recreation hall and other surviving rooms with kind permission of the Brandon Groves Community Club. The hall formed the centre of what was once a vast villa-plan institution for people with learning difficulties. Whilst not a county asylum,…
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