Archived Report - Former Ashworth Secure Hospital - October 2009

[ukmayhem]

Visited with Darkzac

We stopped off here on our way up to Scotland as it seemed worthy of a visit and we was not disapointed. It was a very wet and cold morning which added to the whole atmosphere of the place. Most of the site seemeed boarded up tight but made our way into as much as we could. The floors are up there with the most dangerous i've incountered and mainly because the carpet was hiding the dodgy floor boards.

History

The former Ashworth Secure Hospital ( aka Mosside Hospital ) sits to the south of the new Hopsital which just a stones throw away and visable from the site.

Ashworth Hospital is a high security psychiatric hospital in Merseyside located in the north Liverpool suburb of Maghull, England.

Ashworth is one of the three "special" hospitals in England and Wales, along with Rampton and Broadmoor, that exist to work with people who require treatment in conditions of special security due to their "dangerous, violent or criminal propensities". Ashworth was formed from the merger of the old Moss Side Hospital (originally a learning-disability unit once used for the treatment of "shell shock" in World War I) and the vastly more modern and considerably more appropriate Park Lane Hospital, opened as a Broadmoor overspill unit in the early 1970s.

The hospital has had a mixed history and has been the subject of two major public inquiries; Blom-Cooper in the 1992 and Fallon in 1998. It currently houses some 275 male patients, most famously the moors murderer Ian Brady is housed here.

The old East site of the hospital has been leased to Her Majesty's Prison Service, and is now the location of HMP Kennet.

In the surrounding area of Maghull, Lydiate, Melling and beyond, Ashworth is noted for the weekly test of its alarm system, sounded at 9:00AM every Monday morning. Such an alarm system is audible in much of the surrounding area, as far afield as the outskirts of Kirkby and Skelmersdale. This alarm system is intended to warn residents and institutions of escapees, of which there have been two in its history as a psychiatric hospital.

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Al my photos will be on my Flickrshortly

Matt