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Report - - Leybourne Grange Mental Hospital, Kent - September 2016 | Asylums and Hospitals | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Leybourne Grange Mental Hospital, Kent - September 2016

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Minor

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Visited with: @UrbanZ, @Dora Grew Up & a non-member.

Short History:
Kent Council built the hospital on an existing estate in order to house the mentally unstable and, by 1936 the site had a population of up to 1200 patients sectioned by gender and or age, with the old manor house being used as an administration building, the clock tower for maintenance, and the main hall which was used as a church on Sundays, and a hospital/hairdressers during the week. A swimming pool was also added at a later date.

Due to Care in the Community becoming more prevalent, the hospital was closed in 1996 and was left to decay in the elements until the Healthcare Communications Association sold the buildings to developers, Leybourne Chase Housing. Only the Manor House, clock tower, and a few outbuildings are to be retained in a mass of new housing.

Explore:
Emerging from the woods we caught sight of the once impressive manor house, which is now completely encompassed from chimney top to ground floor in an vast exoskeleton of scaffolding. I could only try to picture what it would have looked like in its heyday, quite a sight to behold I imagine, and I couldn't help regretting the fact we hadn't had the opportunity to see it earlier. Looking to the left, in the distance behind the dense sea of urtica dioicas protruded the clock tower, which immediately drew our attention so we headed off in that direction.

Many parts of the clock tower have roof support jacks placed in strategic positions, which I and UrbanZ discovered, almost to our detriment, having both fell through the floor in parts of the building.
Dora and the non-member proved it is still possible to get to the top floor of the manor house, but this was not something I wanted to risk after looking down a couple of stories through my size 8 shoe-shaped hole in the ceiling of the room below.

This was a very enjoyable explore and much more interesting than we had expected, especially finding the escape tunnel in the basement (similar in size to the escape tunnels in Zero Stations). I managed to walk through this tunnel much to Urbanz's annoyance, as I kept asking him to hurry up because my back was aching from bending over while he was on his hands an knees crawling through it.

We spent a good couple of undisturbed hours here which was a pleasant surprise, but enough of my blabbering and onto the pics...

1. Old Manor House.
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2. Clock tower protruding above the urtica dioicas.
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3. The manors attention grabbing staircase.
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4. Clock tower main hall.
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5. Library
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6. Clock tower main hall, 2nd floor.
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7. One of the rooms in the manor with original fireplace. Pity the woodwork was concealed behind paint.. destroys the character.
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8. Trusses in clock tower main hall, 2nd floor.
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9.Clock tower mechanics
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10. Should read "MIND WHERE YOU STEP"!
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11. Library, open 10am till 4pm every weekday except Weds & Fri, when it closed at 2pm
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12.
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13.
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14. One of the floors in the clock tower.
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15. Corridor leading to tunnel in basement.
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16. Storage room in basement
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17. One of the main manor house rooms
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18. Escape tunnel in basement, surprisingly with most of the original wooden door attached.
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19.Urbanz crawling through the tunnel
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20. Manor house 1st floor room
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21. Top of the manor houses main staircase.
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22.
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23. Car mechanics garage in one of the outbuildings.
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24. Manor house staircase and emergency exit.
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Thanks for looking.
 
Last edited:

Oxygen Thief

Admin
Staff member
Admin
You did better than me - recently got caught there, just as I came down from the tower. Ghurka guy wasn't too impressed.
 

Minor

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Confirms my suspicions our visit was a complete fluke. What a pain, would've liked to have seen your report on it. Haha, I wondered why there was Gurkha defamatory spray paint all over the place.
 

Oxygen Thief

Admin
Staff member
Admin
Confirms my suspicions our visit was a complete fluke. What a pain, would've liked to have seen your report on it. Haha, I wondered why there was Gurkha defamatory spray paint all over the place.

Only took pictures from the tower, didn't see much else tbh. I'll add them on here in a bit.
 

Minor

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Such a shame about the secca :(. But i'm still looking forward to seeing them nonetheless.
 

ZerO81

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Some nice shots there.

Good to see they are attempting to do something with the building, rather than the standard quick knock down job that normally happens with these places.
 

Dora Grew Up

Banned
Banned
This was a great explore Minor. You definitely missed out not going beyond the first floor in the bigger building. Even if the floor did cave beneath me a few times!

I went here again recently, and almost got caught. Secca started opening the main gate. Never did I realise I could vault over a fence, till that moment in time.

Roll on the next explore.
 

Minor

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Haha, can just imagine the finesse of you vaulting a fence Dora.

Thanks for the feedback @MuseHaze :thumb. Yep, all that is left is what was included in my report.
 

Reiss

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Asked us where we got in (we pointed to a random bit of knackered heras), then phoned the cops. We just left anyway.

Oh okay aha, thats interesting. We went at night and got to see everything. I've still got to make a report on it tho aha
 

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