The history
I couldn’t find much about this place on the internet, only brief snippets, so I’ll give you what I know
A new £30 million QEII Hospital in Welwyn Garden City, opened fully to patients on 15 June 2015. Once this has happened, the old hospital was closed and the land on which it sits sold for the development of housing, including affordable homes and a care home.
The original QEII hospital opened in 1963 and was opened by none other than Queen Elizabeth the second, quite rightly so I guess. The local school children were all given flags to wave at the queen, they were rumoured to have been supplied by local author Dame Barbara Cartland as the local council couldn’t actually afford them at the time.
The Explore
I’m beginning to learn that the explores myself and @slayaaaa go on are never straight forward and never really go to plan.....We both have a habit of getting sidetracked.
For a while I've promised to take @slayaaaa to show him what’s left of Harperbury Hospital. Well that was the plan, we headed off in that direction and along the way got sidetracked by an old aerodrome that is due for demolition, and well we both like an airfield so stopped and had a look. There’s a report coming for that one so don’t think I’ve left you guys out. Anyways we finished there and got back on the road. Me driving, @slayaaaa surfing the net. As we where most of the way through our journey we saw a sign for Welwyn and @Oxygen Thief's lead on the Queen Elizabeth the 2nd Hospital came up in conversation. Sod it lets take a detour, again!
From what we had read it seemed like it had been mostly demolished so we didn’t hold out any great hope.
Sat nav pointed us in the right direction but almost threw us a false lead when we drove to the location and saw the sign at the entrance saying it was the “new” Queen Elizabeth 2nd hospital. Bugger it had gone. We decided to take a drive in and have a nose anyways. Oooo look, a partly demolished building and what appeared to be a huge 8 storey hospital. Was it or wasn’t it shut? We decided to have a wander round, Heras fence, a few broken windows and lots of stay out signs confirmed this must be it.
We headed inside the fencing and straight for what we assumed would be the morgue.
Typical morgue looking building, slope up to it for the trolleys, high windows, in the right kind of area of the site and more importantly open windows. So in we went.
Oh with such disappointment it was just an office. We could only assume that it was once a morgue and the newer morgue has either been demolished or moved elsewhere. With that we checked the other buildings in the area and then moved on to the main hospital building.
After trying what seemed like a hundred doors and windows a door opened and in we went. You’ve got to love a key holder who locks up a padlock without actually sliding the bolt over lol lol
Wow, its so lovely inside!!
Very little dirt, very little grime and no peeling paint etc. We made our way around the hospital using the various maps on the walls in the reception areas.
We got to a level with very little signage and guessed it must have been the pathology labs, a big red sign confirmed just that and we had a look. Sadly most of the furniture has already gone and most of it is in a pile in the yard. We found various lights, which all seemed to work and the odd bit of kit lying around.
We headed up a few floors and found the operating theatres, these we realised were the parts that stuck out on the side of the building. Game on, the big lights and x-ray screens all worked and we had a bit of fun playing around with them.
We then headed up to the roof tops for some great views
Over all the place is pretty cool, we spent an easy 4 hours in there, if you fancy it get there quick as the contactors won’t leave it long, oh and if you do happen to find the morgue, please let me and @slayaaaa know where it is as it drove us mad trying to find it
As always enjoy the pictures J
