Kesteven County Asylum (Rauceby) - 2006

[jip]

check out Simon Cornwell's pages for some excellent info on this site: http://www.simoncornwell.com/urbex/projects/r/notes/sg1.htm

a friend and i visted the complex today, compared to the photos featured in the above link, the place seems to have deteriorated dramatically in materiality.
we had a good scoot around, not only is the place huge, it's rich in spatial and textural variety, obselete artefacts and documents. we only had enough time to look at about quarter of the buildings.

it's likely we'll be visiting again tomorrow. would write a lengthier report but i'm short on time. more photos coming soon.

if anyone uses soulseek, feel free browse my urbex folder for videos and sound clips (my folder isn't shared yet, but will be). my username is: jawnt

cheers j

[jip]

easy! yesterday my mate and i had another visit to the asylum. and what a visit it was. scroll down for pics...
after covering a few tracks from tuesday (the chapel and a few rooms in the admin block) we came across the 'retro', medical machinery in the x-ray room, hosting x-raying apparatus and x-ray prints. the dials and switches on the x-ray control panel - despite their age and deterioration - still have a feel of build quality to them. circuit-boards, cables and plugs also spill out on show, offering a choice subject for macro photography, a pretty entertaining find.
we kept exploring medicine storage, canteen space and toilets around the main corridors, before finding the recreation hall: a huge space with historic traces of its usage scattered about. the removal of the floor has exposed a curious looking hole in the wall opposite the stage. this led us into the fairly vast subway network which runs beneath most of the main corridors. these being service tunnels, there are loads of pumps, pipes, old telephones, cables and eerie dark drip noises. wicked: well worth a look! wish my camera wasn’t so low on battery at the time, would have got some close ups of the pipes/taps etc. the tunnels are accessible from at least two or more staircases around the site, we eventually took one of these up to the ground floor and continued to the first floor, where the dorms and wash rooms lead off from communal areas (or day rooms) - which were flooded beautifully with natural light, a stark contrast to the seemingly minimal and rather bleak spaces allocated for some of the bedrooms and washrooms.
we wondered the puddled corridors and were somehow led back to the large hall. i love it when nature starts to penetrate a ruin: some of the corridors are being ‘reclaimed’ by ivy and the damp has invited moss to blanket over the soggy carpets of the first floor, would love to see the place in a month or two if it’s still standing, i'm hoping it’ll be overgrown with intruding foliage.
we had another look around the hall, then discovered a catering area across the corridor, left of the stage: hefty blue rooms with an industrial, pitched roof and a weird smell of food, which we later honed in as chip fat coming from jiggered, rusty fryers full of the stuff.
the catering area led us outside to the room with a mezzanine level and a basement which we also found on tuesday. the presence of a cold-store/walk-in freezer suggests the room was used for food storage, but it’s also heavily littered with documents of various sorts: microfiche, x-ray film envelopes, payroll slips, sick leave documents and also what appear to be plastic medicine cups? this room then, i presume was the steward’s store, where the ground floor operated as a general store with serving lobbies and office fittings and the mezzanine acted as a gallery.
the (flooded) basement is accessed by steps running alongside a conveyor belt, located beneath the staircase that leads up to the mezzanine. it’s a very dark, brooding space, and i suspect it was also used for tinned-food storage, or/and perhaps mail.
an adjoining room on the ground level led us in to what was probably delegated as office space, this contained the knackered microfiche reader and an interesting engineer’s plaque on the wall, possibly referring to a printer press? in here was another mezzanine, which once housed some work stations, again, beneath an industrial, pitched, glass roof.
as it was getting dark, we decided to make our way outside to the infamous water tower. walking past various workshop spaces, possibly the black smith’s and engineers shop. a boiler-room still contained one of the mammoth lancaster boilers.
the climb up to the water tower was pretty funny if not, a little unpleasant. pigeons and pigeon shit galore (and as a tip, i'd recommend going up the ladders first and coming down them last - cheers for the mouthful mate).
unfortunately my camera battery ran out before we started to climb up, but although it was a tad overcast, the views were superb.
i will re-visit and take some more photos tomorrow, this time with views at the top of the tower and some more detail of the tunnels.

apologies to batman. sorry I didn’t get in touch mate, feel free to join us tomorrow, think we’re getting there for around eleven. hope you can make it, as this is a wicked ruin to explore, there’s still shit loads we haven’t checked out yet – i'm itching to find that radio room! i can’t believe this place is up for demolishment merely to plant yet another wanky housing estate on the outskirts of sleaford? erasing such an old building with so many layers of history is, in my opinion fucking obsurd!

enjoy the pics, more to follow

j

[jip]

more pics...

like i say, if anyone uses soulseek, my username is jawnt. you can download videos, sound files and higher quality photos from this site.

j

[jip]

lol, think i meant plundered not plummaged?

some pics from friday's final visit, enjoy. what a place...