The History
High Royds Hospital in Menston, West Yorkshire, opened as the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in 1888. It was constructed in a Gothic style following the broad arrow asylum plan which predated the compact arrow plan commonly seen at later asylums. High Royds was a typical Victorian county asylum and functioned for over a century. Following the care in the community act of the 1980s and general datedness of its facilities, it became ill-fitted to modern practise. In 1999, the chief executive of Leeds Mental Health reviewed complaints of violence and cramped conditions, and operations were transferred to other local hospitals. High Royds Hospital finally closed in 2003.
Post-closure, High Royds has been the subject of some of the more extensive efforts to research life in the asylum, including by author Mark Davis and featuring heavily in the 2010 BBC documentary Mental: A History of the Madhouse (possibly the best UK documentary on the subject, I first saw back in 2015). The hospital remained abandoned for a long time after closure, eventually recieving planning permission in 2017 for its redevelopment into a residential area called Chevins Park. Many of the original structures have been retained sympathetically.
If you want to see what the mortuary looked like a decade ago, I suggest you search the many reports on this forum including this one from 2009. It hasn't changed much, although the post-mortem slab table has been removed. Fear not, it's apparently ended up in Wakefield's Mental Health Museum (wanted to go but alas was closed). The below pic came from here and shows what appears to be the table from High Royds in the museum:
The Explore
In my efforts to document the final traces of the UK's abandoned asylums, I was keen to see this after first discovering it via @KismetJ who saw it on the 28DL Facebook group. He had visited and taken a few phone shots but we knew it needed to be photographed in full. The problem with High Royds is it is a long way from the south of England. After a spontaneous invite to a party in Sheffield, I decided I finally had an excuse to swing by the north of Leeds and see this - not exactly a minor detour but as good a reason as I'd ever get. There we go, the furthest I've travelled for one abandoned building. Somehow, the mortuary has so-far escaped conversion, but it is a building site now so it won't be long. I was nervous as heck getting out the car, not because it was going to be tricky, but because I'd gone so absurdly far to see it. As I strolled through the converted hospital, a man was sitting on a chair infront of his house directly opposite me waiting for a bouncy castle to blow up. I decided to just clamber in and hope for the best, and luckily he raised no eyebrows.
Cadaver Fridge Room
Central Post-Mortem Room
Rooms off of the Central Room
Other Rooms at Rear of Building
Final shot looking over the aslyum
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