Yeah, so, in the process of doing some photography work for the local newspaper, I got the chance to have a nose around the CMH for a full afternoon, with pretty much free reign. It's a hard life...
Bit of history from Wikipedia:
We got a tour from the developers on the day, which was pretty much access-all-areas (inc. clock tower, children's wards, basement, etc.), and were also given the freedom to poke around wherever we wanted in the meantime (which led to me nearly getting lost and left behind a couple of times, but I certainly wasn't complaining about that). I only wish we'd got a chance to see the maternity wards, but they're not deemed as 'safe to access' yet, so they weren't included in the 'tour'. Meh.
The angle of our piece for the paper was mainly going upon the future of the building, so it was interesting to listen in to the conversations our reporter was having - also pretty reassuring in some ways. There's been a lot of noise going around about demolition etc, but as far as I gather, the entirety of the main building is going to be preserved. The developers have been working over the last few months on making it safe (which unfortunately - from a photographer's perspective - has involved a lot of removal of peeling paintwork, dirt and pigeon shit and debris and stuff), before they move on to the asbestos removal. Still plenty of spiders in the clock tower though
As for said clock tower, apparently the developers were saying they hope to turn it into a publicly-accessible aspect of the building, rather than just remodeling it into a fancy penthouse. It would definitely be a shame to lose that view.
Their attitude to the presence of the occasional urbexer in the building wasn't the worst, to be honest - one of the guys showing us around has been on 28DL and is genuinely impressed with with the work people have been doing to document the building, but did of course say they can't condone it because health and safety, gonna get sued if someone breaks a leg, no trespassers please, etc. etc...
Anyway, couple of pictures:
Some of the floors on the ground floor had been taken up to reveal a network of service tunnels beneath, a lot of which were tall enough to stand up in:
There's a full set of photos on Flickr here.
And if you want to have a gander at the article, it's here (with some video, too!)
Cheers for looking guys.
Bit of history from Wikipedia:
We got a tour from the developers on the day, which was pretty much access-all-areas (inc. clock tower, children's wards, basement, etc.), and were also given the freedom to poke around wherever we wanted in the meantime (which led to me nearly getting lost and left behind a couple of times, but I certainly wasn't complaining about that). I only wish we'd got a chance to see the maternity wards, but they're not deemed as 'safe to access' yet, so they weren't included in the 'tour'. Meh.
The angle of our piece for the paper was mainly going upon the future of the building, so it was interesting to listen in to the conversations our reporter was having - also pretty reassuring in some ways. There's been a lot of noise going around about demolition etc, but as far as I gather, the entirety of the main building is going to be preserved. The developers have been working over the last few months on making it safe (which unfortunately - from a photographer's perspective - has involved a lot of removal of peeling paintwork, dirt and pigeon shit and debris and stuff), before they move on to the asbestos removal. Still plenty of spiders in the clock tower though
As for said clock tower, apparently the developers were saying they hope to turn it into a publicly-accessible aspect of the building, rather than just remodeling it into a fancy penthouse. It would definitely be a shame to lose that view.
Their attitude to the presence of the occasional urbexer in the building wasn't the worst, to be honest - one of the guys showing us around has been on 28DL and is genuinely impressed with with the work people have been doing to document the building, but did of course say they can't condone it because health and safety, gonna get sued if someone breaks a leg, no trespassers please, etc. etc...
Anyway, couple of pictures:
Some of the floors on the ground floor had been taken up to reveal a network of service tunnels beneath, a lot of which were tall enough to stand up in:
There's a full set of photos on Flickr here.
And if you want to have a gander at the article, it's here (with some video, too!)
Cheers for looking guys.
At the outset, we didn't know exactly how much of the hospital we'd get to see/didn't want to specifically request stuff, plus they were most interested in showing us the stuff that would be impressively re-developed and we were quite limited by time... so yeah. It wasn't the perfect tour by any means, but I was quite glad to have the chance to grab some shots of some less-seen views (front externals and clock tower, etc), so no massive complaints from me!
