Report - Cambridge Military Hospital - Aldershot - December 2012

[Chaos]

Some history

The first military hospital in Aldershot was a wooden hutted structure, near the Garrison Church established for lunatics and infectious diseases as well as providing some family accommodation.
Secondly there was the Union Hospital at Wellington Lines. It was converted in the 1860s from a workhouse, the Union Poor House, which had originally been a private residence. It was small, but for the time, well-equipped. It closed shortly after the opening of the Cambridge Hospital.
Thirdly there was the Connaught Hospital at Marlborough Lines. Established in the second half of the 19th century, it was named after Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and was for a while a specialist venereal disease hospital for 300 men. It was later a dental facility before it closed on 29 September 1973.

The Cambridge Military Hospital, built by Messrs Martin Wells and Co. of Aldershot, was located at Stanhope Lines. It was named after Prince George, Duke of Cambridge and opened on 18 July 1879. In the First World War, the Cambridge Hospital was the first base hospital to receive casualties directly from the Western Front. The Cambridge Hospital was also the first place where plastic surgery was performed in the British Empire. Captain Gillies (later Sir Harold Gillies), met Hippolyte Morestin, while on leave in Paris in 1915. Morestin was reconstructing faces in the Val-de-Grace Hospital in Paris. Gillies fell in love with the work, and at the end of 1915 was sent back from France to start a Plastic Unit in the Cambridge Hospital.
After the Second World War, with the decline in importance of Britain's military commitments, civilians were admitted to the hospital. It pioneered the supply of portable operating theatres and supplies for frontline duties. The hospital also contained the Army Chest Unit. It was closed on 2 February 1996 due to the high cost of running the old building as well as the discovery of asbestos in the walls.

This has been on my radar a while now and for one reason or another, something else has cropped up and I've never got round to it. After sitting around watching the rain pour down all over my christmas holidays, my feet were getting itchy. After a late night discussion with Nobby we decided that enough was enough, come rain or shine, first thing in the morning we'd hit it up. Well as luck would have it, we got rain. Thanks to Mr Landy for a heads up about how to get onsite, once in the grounds it became clear that this place was un-pikied because it's pretty well secured. It took us an hour or so of dodging about in the rain to finally make our way inside. Our chosen method of entry was like something you'd see on a bond movie, sliding down collapsed rooftops, dropping from stupid heights and the like, thankfully our gamble paid off and our entry point did indeed lead inside and not another dead end like we'd previously come across with the hospitals numerous out buildings. Thanks also to the other explorers who stuck their head out a window and tried to direct us to their entry point which turned out to be a lot lot easier than ours, if only we'd found it!

This place is colossal. We only had about 4 hours to do the whole site. Points of interest are spread far and wide through out the site, a lot of it is empty rooms, all much the same but it's well worth spending a day here to sweep through floor by floor, building by building. We'll certainly be back to finish off.

We started by having a look around the morgue which we passed on our way in. We then made our way to the main building and bumped into another group of explorers, phantombish, laura, chrisr86, webbly and a few others, sorry I can't remember your names. We headed up the clock tower, back down and through the main building, kitchens and wards, childrens' section and finally out into the maternity ward which is the best bit.

On with the pics

Finally the gates of HELL