Report - Benenden Hospital, Kent - July 2011

Maniac · Jul 2, 2011

This place has been "on the list" for a while, so I'm pleased that myself and Obscurity have finally got round to doing it after 2 failed attempts earlier in the year - it didn't disappoint!

There's quite a bit of history to this place, so here goes. (shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)

The organisation that is now Benenden Healthcare was founded in 1905 to help Post Office workers suffering from tuberculosis. At that time TB was rife, especially among sorting clerks. It was killing many thousands of people a year. Only the very wealthy could afford medical help or a trip to a Swiss Sanatorium to recuperate in the fresh air.

One man had a radical idea to overcome the problem. Charles Garland, a Post Office clerk himself, decided to create a mutual self-help organisation so that the less well off could get access to the healthcare they so desperately needed. Everyone would contribute a small weekly amount into a fund. It would be used to help their colleagues or themselves if they were unlucky enough to contract TB. In the early days, it was known as The Post Office Sanatorium Society.

Benenden Hospital was founded in 1907 and became the centre for hospital treatment for members of Trade Unions and Friendly Societies and subsequently large numbers of public sector employees who joined what is now The Benenden Healthcare Society. The services provided at the hospital have moved with the times. From treatment for tuberculosis, which was its original role, to the management of chest diseases, to the current day where the hospital provides a wide range of consultation, diagnosis and treatment services for most medical and surgical specialties.

It's only a small part of this hospital that is empty, the rest is very much live. This part is visually the most stunning thou, with the building forming a crescent with lots of individual rooms overlooking a fantastic bit of Kent countryside, obviously dating from its days as a Sanatorium for the tratment of TB. Most of the rooms are small and stuffed with various hospital items, some of which look pretty new to me! It's pretty clean in there and you could almost think this part was still used, but it really isn't.

Cheers to Obscurity for driving, this was the only success of the day as the other places planned were either undergoing conversion

, absolutely impossible in daylight or had security with big dogs.

Anyway, on with some pics. Apologies for some of these, muggins here forgot his tripod so these were handheld at a higher ISO and have had to be de-noised a bit.

It looks like this on the outside