History
This This was the first full hospital to be built by the NHS after being officially opened by the Queen in 1963. It had 100 beds. However at the start of the new century it became apparent that the local NHS was massively overspending and had to be restructured. This allowed a new hospital to be built to replace the ageing QE2, however it would come at the price of many services which were currently provided at the old hospital.
Interestingly what should have been a controversial move stirred relatively little uproar as a 2007 inquiry led to unanimous approval for the project. There were some complaints surrounding the promise to keep A & E at the site which did not happen.
Fast forward to 2014 and the majority of services had been transferred over to the new £30 million hospital and the site was ready for closure.
Explore
This place got a lot of attention last summer and the access closed almost as quickly as it had opened. After seeing some stunning shots a friend had taken of the operating theatre, me and a non-member headed that way immediately. The place was in mint condition pretty much, and still stank very much of hospital.
We wandered around the bottom floor, then headed into the tunnels with the aim of heading up. Whilst in the tunnels we heard someone knock the door at the other end we had just come through, so thought it best to make our way up the staircase but unfortunately the door slammed a little too hard behind us alerting to those behind us. No idea who they were but we could hear them running up the stairs after us once we reached the top floor. Taking cover in a dark cupboard, I'm guessing they aren't security as we can hear them trashing the place on lower floors. So we sat and waited before deciding to come back another day.
To top it all off, we got lost finding the way out (although saw some more stuff we'd missed) and then came out from the fence almost into a policeman who thankfully didn't notice us.
I really hope these and lots of other stuff were just in storage...
