The Birmingham Dental hospital - Birmingham - September 2018

[mockney reject]

The History

There’s not much to tell regarding the history of the Birmingham Dental hospital. It was used to deal with the more complicated dental procedure that a normal dentist wasn’t equipped to deal with. The hospital was also home to the University of Birmingham School of Dentistry, and provided high quality dental treatment, together with undergraduate and postgraduate training for dental students, dentists, dental nurses and dental hygiene therapists. In April 2016 services were transferred to a new £50 million facility at Pebble Mill in Edgbaston, and the St Chad's Queensway site closed its doors.

The explore

After having had a cross purposes conversation with @clebby regarding this place and realising we were actually talking about two different buildings we decided to give this one a look. Accompanied by a non-member we had a wander around the boring looking high rise and eventually found a way in.

However this was short lived when we tripped a PIR and bounced. We hung around for a bit to see what response the noisy alarm got. Soon enough a couple of security type bods turned up along with a security guard who it appeared to have arrived on a motor bike complete with a Hi-Viz helmet.

We retreated to the pub over the road,

Highly recommended if you are that way, and grabbed some lunch whilst keeping an eye on the hospital. We decided whilst eating it would be a plan to set the alarm off a few more times in the hope that they would get bored and turn it off.

The next morning we had made a plan and arrived at the hospital hoping that we could avoid the area where the PIR was and do the rest of the hospital. This seemed to work.

I’ll let you decide whether it was worth it or not.

The building is split into three main wings each compromising of 9 floors.

To keep to some kind of logic we decided to check out Tower one and start at the top and work our way down. Helping us avoid the PIR sensor.

I’ll start with tower one.

We headed to the top floor and made our way down.

The top floor appeared to be an old lab

The next floor consisted of mainly what appeared to be a lab/classroom for students with some teeth left on the wall lol

The next floor got us a little excited as we walked into a room full of dental chairs!

Wow this was cool

 

[mockney reject]

After this floor the next was a baron and empty library, shame really.

The next floor was again full of dental chairs, again pretty cool to see

The next floor was a little more exciting and revealed one of the best operating theatres I’ve seen in a long time, well since the QE2 in Welwyn at least.

He was a happy little monkey lol

On getting to the bottom of this floor we found a huge lecture theatre, again like the rest of the hospital in pretty decent condition.

After getting to the bottom of tower one and knowing there was a PIR jus the other side of the lecture theatre we made our way up to the roof and decided to head to tower 2 and come back down.

The roof views were pretty cool with views of the Aston Gasholders and the now infamous or should that be Instamous “Methodist Hall” We couldn’t quite see the bus stop outside but we later heard the tour bus was in full effect lol

 

[mockney reject]

We headed into the top of tower two and made our way down through the workshops and into yet more dental chairs…

They were getting a little boring at this point

We ventured into the reception area this time as we could now see from the opposite side that the reception areas didn’t hide any PIR’s.

We got to the bottom floor of tower two and found this spiral staircase reminiscent of the one in Fawley Power Station. This headed down into a massive storage room under the tower used mainly for patient records.

Next we headed back up and into tower three

Tower three was mainly offices and a little boring, No dental chairs in this one though, thankfully as 200 odd is enough to see in one day lol

The top floor held some old labs which was starting to decay nicely
​

The canteen and kitchen area was still in place but with very little stuff left, the tinted windows made the light in here a weird dark purple hence the odd shade to the pics.

Coming down from the canteen we found this smaller lecture theatre

Then looking through a hole that had been punched in the wall on the main staircase we found this mad Paternoster lift. This was basically a continually running lift that you took your life in your hands by using. The idea was you jumped on and off it as it was moving depending on the floor you wanted. Sounds like a recipe for disaster it you ask me lol

The Main staircase was tempting but we knew the PIR we tripped the day before was at the bottom so we decided to let sleeping elephants lie and left

All in all the Hospital was pretty ace and the three of us had a fun half a day monkeying around in there​

 

[Speed]

I was hoping there would be a bit more old tat in there really but the building itself is a ace. 1960s epic.

 

[Seffy]

Very thorough! You’ve delivered again mate

 

[mockney reject]

Very thorough! You’ve delivered again mate

Cheers Seffy

 

[Els]

Bob on mate.

 

[tarkovsky]

Nice report, this looks great.

 

[Ojay]

*Note to Goontubers/and Model Photo shoot numpties, It's not the Methodist Hall, there is no comedy access swinging in the wind, stick the tourbus back on standby for the weekend now Whitchurch has stalled

 

[Bugsuperstar]

Enjoyed reading that. Nice one mate.

 

[mockney reject]

*Note to Goontubers/and Model Photo shoot numpties, It's not the Methodist Hall, there is no comedy access swinging in the wind, stick the tourbus back on standby for the weekend now Whitchurch has stalled

lol lol lol lol

 

[dave]

Good stuff enjoyed that. The old paternoster lift was interesting there was one in I.C.I Billingham house i remember getting an email from a German lift enthusiast asking me if i had anymore pics of it. Your right mind a recipe for disaster.

 

[Seffy]

Access looks a bit different now aye

 

[tumbles]

Good stuff enjoyed that. The old paternoster lift was interesting there was one in I.C.I Billingham house i remember getting an email from a German lift enthusiast asking me if i had anymore pics of it. Your right mind a recipe for disaster.

Paternoster lifts ftw! Going over the top of one should be on everyones bucket list! - I think there was an article on Sheffield Uni finally removing there's recently?

Good stuff MR, how many dentist chairs can one place need

 

[raisinwing]

Can't beat a Paternoster lift, believe there is still a few working in the UK.

Looks like a decent place, and enjoyed looking at your report. Nice mix of stuff from different ages.