The History
This place doesn't need a whole lot of introduction, but it was perhaps the last ever purpose-built county asylum whilst never officially named so, given that such phrasing was dated by this time. The foundation stone was lain in 1934 and began taking patients in 1936 as Runwell Mental Hospital. It was essentially Essex's third mental hospital with Warley and Severalls being the first and second, although it was a joint-venture between the boroughs of Southend and East Ham, connected via railway.
With Essex's previous two hospitals representing Victorian and Edwardian asylum architecture, Runwell represented something different to any other that I have found. It was built in an unusually clean Art Deco modernist style, in contrast to the second latest mental hospital; Cefn Coed in Wales of 1932 which followed a more traditional Edwardian-inspired design. The Art Deco influence is more apparent on the admin block and water tower, although the wards were more plain and aged less-well with their flat roofs which at the time would have been somewhat futuristic. When you look at people's interior shots though, some rooms and the sash windows still hark back to the asylums of years gone by.
It was designed by London architects Elcock and Sutcliffe and the layout of this hospital showed a departure from the popular compact arrow plan of the previous decades, towards a colony layout with the wards comprising separate villa buildings connected by corridors. The hospital wound down by 2009 and by 2010 its final staff member had left. I'm sure others will be more knowledgeable about the technicalities of the stuff I've mentioned but that gives you an idea.
It's also worth mentioning that this place had a real local reputation. I was too young to know of it, but my parents and everyone else all seemed to know of Runwell. My dad tells me that when he was at school, kids would insult each other by calling out 'oii Runwell!' - how endearing. As well as knowing a few people with friends/relatives who found themselves inside, my grandad would tell me that he once had to visit there to make a delivery or do some sort of repair job (can't remember why) and a patient shouted 'av you got any 'f' sweets?' as he politely worded it. My mum also tells me one of her colleagues once worked there and was chased by a man wielding a chair! In all seriousness, it seems it had a dark history and stigma right up to its closure, although Facebook would tell you that the staff had a very happy time there.
The 2012 Explore
As a 15-year old, this place was only 20 minutes away from me which now I would make my local, but back then that felt like a big expedition. I'd only gotten into urban exploration the previous year, and all my explores were strictly local reliant on lifts and buses. @KismetJ and I managed to convince my mum to drop us near some surrounding fields and wait for us to explore, parked down some track which she soon realised was on the edge of a gypsy encampment. We rambled through the fields for what felt like an eternity, having to jump big ditches and hedges to approach the site from its western outskirts. The water tower loomed in the distance, and as we got nearer we were greeted by a heras fence surrounding the blasted shells of some of the villas, their hollow window frames leaving a daunting impression on little me. We next saw security and guard dog signs and the adrenaline was kicking in hard, as I don't think we'd done any large-scale sites before.
Climbing over, we soon found ourselves walking the overgrown paths of the hospital. We passed several wards and took photos on our tiny compact cameras, and got some footage on a classic camcorder with plenty of unnecessary zooming in and out on everything. One of the compact camera's had a sepia mode which applies a horrible warm tint and harsh vignette to, and stupidly we thought it'd be a great idea to take most of the pictures in this novelty mode. Most of the pictures in this post I've recently re-edited to try and correct this, so feel lucky that they've been restored for your viewing. I've even upscaled a few but these are too big for the post.
We must've hit the site at the wrong time, or weren't trying hard enough, because I'll break it to you that we never actually found a way in. Slightly off put by asbestos signs and the imposing nature of the post-apocalyptic place, we carried on walking around the villas, firstly of the bare-brick finish. We saw bits of several corridors that were accessible, of the style open to the elements. We also passed some of the larger villas painted in white, one of which was surrounded by high-security fencing for the trickiest of patients. Finally we found an open door, but it led to nothing more than a single room with two porno mags neatly opened on the table. I assumed that the construction workers came here when their shift was dragging on, the dirty bastards.
We eventually came towards the centre of the site. We approached it from the rear near the water tower and boiler house, snooping around behind walls as we heard signs of construction workers and vehicles near the admin block where some demolition was already underway. The central section was a building site and there was a lot of rubble. We should've gone closer as the half-demolished buildings were wide open. We also looked at a few garage and single-storey buildings in this area, I presume for various services.
After all this, we decided to call it a day as we had a long walk back and didn't want to keep my mum waiting any longer at the mercy of Wickford's finest. Funnily enough it was actually on Halloween, and it was a memorable explore I'd absolutely kill to redo. Now I'm having to travel to Scotland and Wales for asylums, back then there was one on my doorstep. I'm glad the photos have come out half decent with a bit of editing, but I'll leave you with an example of how the one above looked when I took it in all its sepia glory.
This place doesn't need a whole lot of introduction, but it was perhaps the last ever purpose-built county asylum whilst never officially named so, given that such phrasing was dated by this time. The foundation stone was lain in 1934 and began taking patients in 1936 as Runwell Mental Hospital. It was essentially Essex's third mental hospital with Warley and Severalls being the first and second, although it was a joint-venture between the boroughs of Southend and East Ham, connected via railway.
With Essex's previous two hospitals representing Victorian and Edwardian asylum architecture, Runwell represented something different to any other that I have found. It was built in an unusually clean Art Deco modernist style, in contrast to the second latest mental hospital; Cefn Coed in Wales of 1932 which followed a more traditional Edwardian-inspired design. The Art Deco influence is more apparent on the admin block and water tower, although the wards were more plain and aged less-well with their flat roofs which at the time would have been somewhat futuristic. When you look at people's interior shots though, some rooms and the sash windows still hark back to the asylums of years gone by.
It was designed by London architects Elcock and Sutcliffe and the layout of this hospital showed a departure from the popular compact arrow plan of the previous decades, towards a colony layout with the wards comprising separate villa buildings connected by corridors. The hospital wound down by 2009 and by 2010 its final staff member had left. I'm sure others will be more knowledgeable about the technicalities of the stuff I've mentioned but that gives you an idea.
It's also worth mentioning that this place had a real local reputation. I was too young to know of it, but my parents and everyone else all seemed to know of Runwell. My dad tells me that when he was at school, kids would insult each other by calling out 'oii Runwell!' - how endearing. As well as knowing a few people with friends/relatives who found themselves inside, my grandad would tell me that he once had to visit there to make a delivery or do some sort of repair job (can't remember why) and a patient shouted 'av you got any 'f' sweets?' as he politely worded it. My mum also tells me one of her colleagues once worked there and was chased by a man wielding a chair! In all seriousness, it seems it had a dark history and stigma right up to its closure, although Facebook would tell you that the staff had a very happy time there.
The 2012 Explore
As a 15-year old, this place was only 20 minutes away from me which now I would make my local, but back then that felt like a big expedition. I'd only gotten into urban exploration the previous year, and all my explores were strictly local reliant on lifts and buses. @KismetJ and I managed to convince my mum to drop us near some surrounding fields and wait for us to explore, parked down some track which she soon realised was on the edge of a gypsy encampment. We rambled through the fields for what felt like an eternity, having to jump big ditches and hedges to approach the site from its western outskirts. The water tower loomed in the distance, and as we got nearer we were greeted by a heras fence surrounding the blasted shells of some of the villas, their hollow window frames leaving a daunting impression on little me. We next saw security and guard dog signs and the adrenaline was kicking in hard, as I don't think we'd done any large-scale sites before.
Climbing over, we soon found ourselves walking the overgrown paths of the hospital. We passed several wards and took photos on our tiny compact cameras, and got some footage on a classic camcorder with plenty of unnecessary zooming in and out on everything. One of the compact camera's had a sepia mode which applies a horrible warm tint and harsh vignette to, and stupidly we thought it'd be a great idea to take most of the pictures in this novelty mode. Most of the pictures in this post I've recently re-edited to try and correct this, so feel lucky that they've been restored for your viewing. I've even upscaled a few but these are too big for the post.
We must've hit the site at the wrong time, or weren't trying hard enough, because I'll break it to you that we never actually found a way in. Slightly off put by asbestos signs and the imposing nature of the post-apocalyptic place, we carried on walking around the villas, firstly of the bare-brick finish. We saw bits of several corridors that were accessible, of the style open to the elements. We also passed some of the larger villas painted in white, one of which was surrounded by high-security fencing for the trickiest of patients. Finally we found an open door, but it led to nothing more than a single room with two porno mags neatly opened on the table. I assumed that the construction workers came here when their shift was dragging on, the dirty bastards.
We eventually came towards the centre of the site. We approached it from the rear near the water tower and boiler house, snooping around behind walls as we heard signs of construction workers and vehicles near the admin block where some demolition was already underway. The central section was a building site and there was a lot of rubble. We should've gone closer as the half-demolished buildings were wide open. We also looked at a few garage and single-storey buildings in this area, I presume for various services.
After all this, we decided to call it a day as we had a long walk back and didn't want to keep my mum waiting any longer at the mercy of Wickford's finest. Funnily enough it was actually on Halloween, and it was a memorable explore I'd absolutely kill to redo. Now I'm having to travel to Scotland and Wales for asylums, back then there was one on my doorstep. I'm glad the photos have come out half decent with a bit of editing, but I'll leave you with an example of how the one above looked when I took it in all its sepia glory.
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