Went on a day trip around St Albans visiting a couple of the mental hospitals there with Whitelighter and a non-member.
The morning took in Napsbury hospital, with Harperbury comprising the afternoon’s entertainment (after a mandatory pub lunch!)
I have split the reports for ease of viewing...
History:
The Middlesex County Asylum was founded in 1898 with the hospital designed in a country estate style by architect Rowland Plumbe
The hospital was designed for 1,205 residents. Napsbury opened on June 3, 1905. According to Middlesex County Record, the initial cost, including land and equipment, was £545,000, or £473 per bed. In 1908 Plumbe designed an extension to accommodate a further 600 patients.
During the First World War, Napsbury was used for and known as the County of Middlesex War Hospital, which tended for soldiers wounded at the Front. After the war, the hospital was returned to its original purpose and in the late 1920s a nurses home was also added to the site, which is the location shown in this report.
Although Napsbury suffered some bomb damaged in the Blitz, it was in continuous use as a hospital until its official closure in 1998 (although at least one building was still in use for psychiatric patients until 2002)
Crest Nicholson seized the opportunity to acquire the site and to create a unique community, centred on the preservation and conservation of both the architectural and botanical heritage of the site.
Onto the report:
That'd be a babies bath in the entrance of the ground floor corridor then...
Apparently, it would appear that I have a massive obsession with peely paint...
Wonder who stayed in room 77....
Stairs (above) leading to what we think was the lounge/common room (below) The most impressive room I think
Fuse stack
Laundry drier? Changing room? The shower room was in the next room, and was very small...
One of the stranger things we came across - a leather recliner with three empty vodka bottles and rose petals strewn around, and a number of pages from an unknown play (non sequential pages) attached to the wall. Well, the vodka bottles weren't totally empty - they contained torn up strips of other pages from the play...
Full set here Napsbury Mental Hospital - Nurses Quarters, July 2013 - a set on Flickr
The morning took in Napsbury hospital, with Harperbury comprising the afternoon’s entertainment (after a mandatory pub lunch!)
I have split the reports for ease of viewing...
History:
The Middlesex County Asylum was founded in 1898 with the hospital designed in a country estate style by architect Rowland Plumbe
The hospital was designed for 1,205 residents. Napsbury opened on June 3, 1905. According to Middlesex County Record, the initial cost, including land and equipment, was £545,000, or £473 per bed. In 1908 Plumbe designed an extension to accommodate a further 600 patients.
During the First World War, Napsbury was used for and known as the County of Middlesex War Hospital, which tended for soldiers wounded at the Front. After the war, the hospital was returned to its original purpose and in the late 1920s a nurses home was also added to the site, which is the location shown in this report.
Although Napsbury suffered some bomb damaged in the Blitz, it was in continuous use as a hospital until its official closure in 1998 (although at least one building was still in use for psychiatric patients until 2002)
Crest Nicholson seized the opportunity to acquire the site and to create a unique community, centred on the preservation and conservation of both the architectural and botanical heritage of the site.
Onto the report:
That'd be a babies bath in the entrance of the ground floor corridor then...
Apparently, it would appear that I have a massive obsession with peely paint...
Wonder who stayed in room 77....
Stairs (above) leading to what we think was the lounge/common room (below) The most impressive room I think
Fuse stack
Laundry drier? Changing room? The shower room was in the next room, and was very small...
One of the stranger things we came across - a leather recliner with three empty vodka bottles and rose petals strewn around, and a number of pages from an unknown play (non sequential pages) attached to the wall. Well, the vodka bottles weren't totally empty - they contained torn up strips of other pages from the play...
Full set here Napsbury Mental Hospital - Nurses Quarters, July 2013 - a set on Flickr
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