Chipping Norton Hospital has, to put it bluntly, been a pain in the arse of a thorn in the side of myself and other Oxfordshire-based explorers for the last decade. I first checked it out very soon after closure in 2011, but unsurprisingly found it well sealed, it's location right in the middle of the town surrounded by houses which overlooked the site as well as the at-the-time open police station almost opposite the driveway meant it was pretty well overlooked and cared for. Over the ensuing years I attempted it numerous times and whilst getting on site was always very easy, I would frustratingly find it sealed every single time. Through the various trips I saw more and more windows getting broken and boarded up, and more heras fencing being erected, so idiots must have been getting in but it was being sealed very quickly afterwards. They'd even gone as far as leaving a couple of windows broken out which only took you into single rooms with the doors into the corridor screwed securely shut. I was beginning to think it was one of those locations which I'd never manage to do despite my best efforts, however a chance conversation with @CookieRaider suddenly saw things change. He had been taking some photos of his car on the road outside the nearby Caterham F1 site and he saw security escorting off a group of youths. They got talking and one of them casually mentioned that they had kicked a door open at the hospital the previous day, with that the plan was set to immediately go check it out, and, after a decade of trying, I finally found myself standing inside Chipping Norton Hospital.
On immediate entry I was underwhelmed. Stripped kicked around rooms was the first thing immediately obvious, however the more I pushed on through the deceptively large maze of a building the better it got - it's no epic, I don't want you to be under any illusions, but for a small regional hospital it was pretty good. Once we got past the more heavily damaged parts there were a few hospital related items left to be found and some very nice natural decay. It looks as if some sort of work has begun on the site recently with all the undergrowth cleared, a site office cabin in the car park and mini-dozer tracks around one of the wards with a load of rubble piled up in it, so it may not be around much longer.
X-Ray room, unusually it had a carpet! Machine long since gone sadly. The lead-lined door on the right of the shot was a cool touch though.
And that's all she wrote for the main building, outside the hospital there is an old small storage building which was always the only part you could actually get into, containing a few beds as well as a load of paperwork which by now has turned into a mushy mess sadly.
Thanks for looking
