Visiting the old Asylum

[#1]

Last week I visited an old asylum building where I used to provide volunteer help in my twenties. The place is silent now and all the inmates have gone. No longer the groans and excited chatter.

It reminds me of somewhere ...?

[#2]

This forum ?

[#3]

Did they dose the inmates with Lithium? 

[#4]

Lots of WHITEwashed walls.

[#5]

Are we trying to say its Quiet around here

[#6]

Hadn't really noticed.

[#7]

The one nearest to us was demolished years ago and the area is now covered in a new housing estate.

I Doubt many buildings similar to that, such as work houses are still standing with the pressure on councils to build on every spare bit of land available.

[#8]

Many of them have been converted into housing and are in very good condition: I believe some of St Augustines at Chartham (near Canterbury) and Oakwood in Barming (Maidstone) have both been converted into housing. Some of the former is still unrestored (don't know if that's the case with Oakwood).

There are several unrestored ones shown on urban exploration forums such as 28dayslater.co.uk but I've never visited one. Urban exploration is quite fascinating when someone else is doing it, but I'll just look at their pictures! I'm always surprised at what remains as much as anything else.

[#9]

There used to be one at Hellingly in east sussex too and that is now housing too.

What annoys me is that the state sells off these places to private companies who then build on them and make mega money. Why can't the state just build houses on them and sell them to first time buyers at cost +£aBit ?

[#10]

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@7up wrote:

Why can't the state just build houses on them and sell them to first time buyers at cost +£aBit ?

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Cos they're not smart enough to think that way, of course...

[#11]

They were quite prolific too, and seemingly well placed, fi London is a good example. I hail from Essex, the part now taken in to a London borough. I recall there being one at Goodmayes another at Woodford Bridge, each c.9 miles from London, and another at Warley, Brentwood, 18 miles out. That one I had to visit as a young man as a result of a family tragedy. They could be grim with their locked wards, yet my feeling is that they were preferable to "Care in the Community", which not infrequently seems to equate with "not our concern".

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1832-1914/the-growth-o...

[#12]

care in the community was a euphemism for scared forgotten and probably dangerous, when they closed the local asylum half the inmates were moved to "community shared accommodation" which is a collection of squat unmanged 4 flat blocks, where there left to their own devises and can often be found wandering the streets rather bewildered some of them even get a community carer visit once a month but mostly there ignored unitl there found in a deranged state doing something wrong..... some of these people cry because they spent years in the asylum being looked after and now they feel abandoned, they often forget to take medication and family have disowned them

bulk closure of care facilities was one of the worst debasements against the vulnerable elements in society perpetrated by the labour party under the guise of progress, were they to receive the care they are supposed to get it would cost twice as much as running an asylum for a year and that's just for a dozen former patients who would only have occupied a single ward in the old building (that had 96 bed spaces + office's, treatment and day rooms) but because care in the community is "cheaper" they don't get the funding required and the police spend hours collecting the former inmates and taking them home when they take a turn.....